Recruit & Hire Better Sales Talent Than Your Competition

Are you the biggest player in your industry or are you fighting for market share? If you are like most of our clients, you are constantly trying to set yourself apart and attract top sales talent. All of our clients have one thing in common: they want the best salespeople but struggle to find, interview and hire on their own. They also struggle to compete against bigger or more well known companies.

If you are competing against bigger brands in your industry in order to find and hire better sales talent, here are 3 ways to help yourself:

If you are trying to figure out how to hire your competition’s sales reps but seem to be striking out, here’s why: Your strategy is not great. How has your competition been able to find great talent but you can’t? Let’s look at this. It is not because they have a magic wand and easily find their great talent. They have created a scalable process to find talent. Their talent is not from their direct competitors, more likely they researched what industry they found a vein in the market where their top producers came from . They then started to pluck talented sales professionals from companies in that vein that got excited about their opportunity, culture and money. Last but certainly not least, they train the heck out of them to be the top producers you compete with every day. It is unlikely that you will find success in the recruitment of these top performers without breaking the bank. So the answer is: Create your scalable process. Go to Linkedin, find the top producers at your company and your competition and see where they came from. If you find a handful of top talent is coming from certain industry or from certain companies, now you can compete for this same talent.  Again, in order to compete in a candidate driven marketplace, you need to talk with every person who comes across your desk. The diamond in the rough is out there, you just need a process in place to find them.

It is important to note that this strategy takes bandwidth and patience but if you can do it, and it will pay off. Account Executives and BDR/SDRs are in high demand and top candidates go fast. This is why you need a strategy when you talk with candidates. 

You need to streamline your process and combine interview steps. You win top talent, first and foremost, by getting people excited and selling your company. You need to get candidates excited before you start blasting them on why they should work at your company. In order to ultimately win, you need to move fast. Streamlining or speeding up your process is key to having an advantage over your more well known competitor. Speed is on your side and you need to utilize it. Bigger corporations tend to have lengthy interview processes and required procedures before they can make an offer to a good candidate. If your current process consists of more than 2 in person interviews and another phone interview for an account executive or BDR, it is too long. Top candidates are interviewing at multiple places and if your competitors have a more efficient interview process, you will lose top talent because you’re not moving fast enough.

You are probably losing candidates for a mixture of reasons and in order to compete, you need to get creative. Start by evaluating your industry and understand what works well for your brand. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use social media to get your name and brand out there, set yourself apart. You could play with perks like a beer fridge in the office or flex time off, etc. You do not have the name recognition that your bigger competitor has and therefore you need to make a conscience effort to set yourself apart in the recruitment process. Combine interview steps, do video interviews, text to follow up – figure out what works for your company and your candidates and go with it.

Understand who your competitors are and how they find their talent. Position yourself differently. Set yourself apart and find the right type of talent for your brand. You might not want every person who is applying to your competitor, they might not be a cultural fit for your team. Some of them will be a good fit for your team, those are the ones you need to keep in mind when you are creating your recruiting and interview plan.