Great Sales leadership can make the difference between a mediocre sales organization and an outstanding one. Sales leader responsibility doesn’t focus only on Revenue numbers but also on building a high-performing team. Most leaders feel their role in hiring a top sales talent starts once the HR team has built the shortlisted pipeline and they are not ready to take any blame for the delay in Sales hire.
Sales leaders’ role starts with your Go to the Market strategy based on which you have to create your Sales talent strategy. This is built on analyzing what type of skill sets are required to perform the job to meet the desired outcome.
Sales leadership requires the ability to make strategic, big-picture decisions that drive the talent structure and need to follow the below.
-
Create a Job Profile that outlines mandatory skills and what are the challenges in the role.
-
Identify how to create a candidate pipeline – Who is accountable for this? Are we using our internal recruiters to build this or use some external Sales Recruitment Agency for this?
-
End-to-end hiring process and who is accountable at each stage
-
List down unique selling points for the role and communicate the same to recruiters and Sales recruitment agencies.
The entire hiring process is the same as your sales process wherein you will focus on who are your prospects, how we reach out, and focusing on identifying needs and how your solution can solve this. You have to focus on building the candidate pipeline and keep selecting the best talent from them
It is always recommended to use multiple Sales recruitment agencies that can focus on building the candidate pipeline, but it is the responsibility of Sales leaders to communicate the Ideal Candidate expectations while building the pipeline.
As a Sales leader, you will have absolute visibility of the status of a Sales opportunity and what is required to close. In the same way, you should know what it takes for good talent to join your organization. We have observed most Sales leaders take time to shortlist and conduct the candidate assessment and finalize the right talent but they feel it is not their role to convince a candidate to take the role. They often think it will be the role of HR or the Sales recruitment agency to sell the role & the brand. If the Sales leaders take this extra effort in selling the role and it will have a much bigger impact on hiring the right sales talent.
Most organizations think using a Sales Consulting Company In India adds to the hiring cost and try to use internal resources to fulfill the Sales roles. Delays in Sales hiring cause a bigger impact on the bottom line rather than using a recruitment agency.
Sales leaders prioritize Sales opportunities when compared to the hiring process which is a wrong approach. Your prospective candidates are like your sales leads where if you do not reach out on time or do not give a good experience during every touch point then this will fizzle out. Clearly put a plan with a timeline and accountability and focus on the same. Hiring a top sales talent is important for consistent revenue growth and to incorporate your success.