Recruiting Quality Salespeople is a Major Key to Being Successful in Sales Management

The term sales management is very misleading, because the emphasis is really on the word “management” and not “sales”. Ultimately, this means the game changes dramatically for an individual who is making the jump from salesperson to sales manager.

While there are many responsibilities that come with being employed in sales management, perhaps none can turn around the sales equation quite as fast as effective recruiting. You can have the best sales strategy and plan around, but it means very little if you don’t have the quality personnel in place to carry out the plan of attack. At the same time, picking up a couple of top sales performers and putting them on your team can turn around those sales numbers pretty quickly.

Sales managers need to constantly be recruiting and meeting potential new hires, even when hiring for a sales position doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. People leave positions and companies for a variety of reasons, so you have to be fully prepared for when this happens. A bad new hire or a string of new hires that don’t work out can quickly turn your once great sales team into a dysfunctional sales force incapable of meeting your sales plan or quota.

The ways to meet qualified individuals to fill your sales team is only limited to your imagination. However, I’ve listed several ideas below to get you started:

1) Take a Salesperson Working for a Competitor to Lunch

-In this situation, you want to make sure not to talk about customers, prospects, or anything that can be construed as an unfair information grab. You can talk about the industry you share in general, but primarily focus on learning about the salesperson to see if he or she would be a good fit for your team. It is best to meet with a salesperson from a competitor when you are not looking to fill a sales position at the present moment. If you go about it in this way, you will already have a good idea about whether or not the individual is a good fit should a position come available.

2) Be on the Lookout for Good People Not Presently Working in Sales

-Don’t forget to give a “look” at people that are not presently working in a sales capacity. Retired & former teachers, recently discharged military veterans, and experienced restaurant servers are examples of people who could be great “finds” for your sales team. While these folks will require much more attention than a veteran salesperson, the upside is you will most likely have more employee loyalty and better long-term retention. In most cases where a salary is involved, these folks come a bit cheaper than experienced salespeople, too.

3) Don’t Rule Out Salespeople Who Work in Other Industries But Have a Very Similar Customer Base to Your Own

-You should never rule out salespeople who work in another industry but share a very similar customer base to your own. Again, it is best to have a lunch meeting with these folks long before a need arises so you can qualify them beforehand. The downside is that if you do hire out of this group you will have to train them on your industry. The upside is that they already know how to sell and might even be able to get you in some new doors where they already have an existing customer relationship.

Recruiting is “no doubt” a major key to being successful in sales management. In order to have ongoing successes in this area, this is a management responsibility you must take seriously and give constant attention to. If you do, your long-term and short-term recruiting goals will be successful endeavors.

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