Salespeople will leave your company – it is an undeniable truth. Selling Power offers this short article – Recruitment Planning 101 – that covers the basic points that all sales managers should be aware of.
A couple of strong points:
Keep your pipeline full of qualified candidates. Determine the skill sets for each sales position and keep your search open for candidates with these special qualifications. However, remember that top candidates aren’t usually available for long and you need to be upfront with them about what you’re doing. “Let them know that you are building a candidate pipeline composed of individuals that your company may have an interest in hiring if or when appropriate requisitions open up,” says Pritchard. “You may also want to consider creating a position to take advantage of a great candidate.”
Maintain a network of contacts. Talk to your clients, competitors, and qualified candidates who may know other possible candidates. Join associations and network. Go to career fairs.
The window for top sales candidates, in this market, is limited and fast closing. Anyone searching for a salesperson recently has realize this fact. Part of our business is to know the pulse of the market and the approaches that are working best.
It is always difficult for companies (especially smaller ones) for jump into the sales hiring market when they have not had to search for some time. The modern market moves quickly and new channels open overnight while others close in almost the same time. One of the items we point out to sales managers is that successful sales recruiting cannot be accomplished in the margins of their day.
Far better to hire a company that solely specializes in sales recruiting.