Investing in attracting and retaining top sales performers is vital to landing and maintaining a high volume of sales. However, with the sales market being as competitive as it is, finding top-notch talent is not always as easy as posting a job opportunity. The saying goes “It takes money to make money,” and investing in finding and developing excellent staff is exactly what good companies do to continue their growth and success.
Attracting High-Powered Talent
Bringing in top talent requires creating an environment that candidates want to be in. This means creating an attractive environment, one that those you’re interviewing will want to join. As Next Gen Leads notes in a recent post, you’re speaking to top candidates in their field, so you need to be great at your job. Writing a compelling and informative job description, having a powerful and actionable mission statement and values, and offering great incentives for high performers will help get these top candidates at your door.
Identifying Leading Salespeople
Once these candidates start filing in, it’s a matter of effectively screening them to get the top performers on your team. Screening is one part of the process, and employing an interview strategy that includes more than one member of your team is a great way to get different perspectives and thoughts on each candidate. TalentSum suggests that you use multiple interview rounds, and pepper in both situational questions and behavioral inquiries to get a feel for both how they perform on the spot and how they might interact within your team. Also, don’t forget the importance of a reference check – some of the best candidates on paper may end up being poorly referred. Remember, you can’t judge a candidate by just their cover letter!
Rewarding Performance
Once you have top performers, how do you keep them in your organization? The key lies in offering these individuals incentives that reward them for your success. Depending on the processes you have in place, this can take many different forms. You can reward your best salespeople with additional compensation – whether in the form of profit sharing or a higher commission rate – or you can offer ongoing professional training and learning opportunities to help them further enhance and refine their skills. Some companies even offer competitions internally to drive success; consider rewarding your top talent with a trip to a sales conference or nontangible benefits like additional paid vacation time. What drives people is a unique thing from person to person, so developing several options and being flexible with your compensation strategy can give you a leg up in retention.
Build from Within
Finally, you can use your existing team to help you build the better team you’re looking for. By having great company culture and offering attractive rewards to your leading performers, your existing talent will be more likely to speak highly of your organization to their friends and peers within the industry. Incentivize your team to help you grow – offer a referral bonus to employees who bring in people through their networks to join your team. This can be a simple referral bonus based on bringing aboard a new hire and requiring they work for a designated period at your company, or can even be more significant, offering an additional compensation amount if the new hire reaches a predetermined sales milestone. No matter how you approach it, your employees can be some of your best assets and allies in building the best sales team possible.
CSS can also be a great ally in your corner. We have decades of experience searching, screening and recommending top talent to hundreds of sales companies and can help you find great talent to join your team. For more information, contact CSS today!