It is needless to state the importance of an effective sales force to a company. If sales don’t happen, then a company cannot make any money. It's impact on the company’s bottom line is enormous and cannot be ignored. A study revealed that full time sales jobs account for almost 12.3% of all the jobs in the U.S., and sales representatives is one of the top ten hardest positions to fill. Also, the reason why 64% of salespeople fail to make a sale is because they are in the wrong job, not because their lack of the ability to sell. Interestingly, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of the sales force in most companies. Therefore, it is necessary for companies to find and build an effective sales team in the fastest possible way.
Here are some ways to help you make this happen.
1. Do research first
You need to understand what is required to be a sales professional in order to hire a sales professional. It is unrealistic that you simply make a vague wish list for a super-multi-skilled employee or highlights a few basic requirements in order to cast a wider net. Investigate the features of your company’s products and services and think about the specific skills and personal characteristics needed for sales. If you have an existing sales team, you can gain useful opinions from them since they have real experience. Or try to ask salespeople who have successful experience in similar companies. In addition, your current and potential customers are also your best source to refine sales hires. Through their voices, you can get what is lacking and what needs improvement in your current sales team.
2. Polish job descriptions
You have probably written something like this in a job description: as an ideal candidate, you are ambitious, high-energy, self-motivated with an entrepreneurial spirit. It is no doubt that the aforementioned characteristics and traits are of great importance to a sales professional. But they are subjective and most applicants will probably agree they will have these or those similar qualities. More importantly, characteristics can be easily assessed during interview but not from a resume, So the primary focus of a job description should be the required skills and the substantive duties and responsibilities, which can screen out unqualified candidates in a more effective way.
3. Use employee referral program
Your next ideal candidate may be found through your existing sales team. It is no secret that most sales professionals will have connections with other sales professionals, who might be their previous co-workers or friends in online communities sharing ideas of how to generate sales. Since they have been in the industry and possess experience and expertise, they are often a good fit for your team. However, remember that your sales team won’t actively help you recruit unless you encourage them with some rewards to do so.
4. Post on niche job boards
General big name job boards may have better traffic, but you are going to receive a lot of unqualified or irrelevant applicants. Also, the spend on these job boards is relatively high. In contrast, niche job boards can provide more relevant and qualified talent without costing an arm and a leg. Therefore, you will be saving time from not having to sift through hundreds of thousands of resumes to find suitable applicants. On the other hand, these candidates are usually reported that they tend to be well-equipped and best-suited for the positions as they know exactly what they are looking for and normally have successful experience in the sales industry. That’s probably why candidates from these niche job boards are always a better fit.
How Gapmarks.com can help
With Gapmarks, it is not complicated or hard to find top sales staff for your team. Gapmarks.com offers an industry-leading automated posting system distributing your job ads to job boards with titles, descriptions, contact information and images. For your sales hires, our software has incorporated all the most-visited sales job boards where sales professionals are looking for job opportunities. Our strict review process guarantees the job boards are of good quality and high traffic, assuring the maximizing exposure and visibility for your job ads. The whole posting process on Gapmarks is unbelievably simple: fill out the job form, click “post out” button and you can sit and enjoy the incoming responses. Another innovation of our proprietary technology is the unique intelligent postingwhich is able to smartly detect the time when salespeople prefer to find jobs. It will analyze your job posting and auto-select the best approach for you without you ever needing to customize it.
Therefore, your sales jobs are always posted at the right time and at the right place with best results. In addition, it can support XML feeds, from which the system can automatically pull and update all your sales jobs every 24 hours.
No other software or service can provide you the amazing posting experience that Gapmarks provides, with affordable price packages targeting businesses of every size.
Check out: http://gapmarks.com/lpr for more information