Why Hiring the Right Salespeople Can Transform Your Company

Hiring the right sales reps can turn five-year projections into next year’s reality and transform lackluster sales organizations into quota-busting performance powerhouses. 

Top-performing sales reps can bring in four times more revenue than most of their coworkers. And companies that halve their turnover rate with strategic hires can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime and replacement costs.

These are just the first of many reasons for companies to re-examine their recruitment and hiring process. Hiring is a crucial aspect of building a world-class sales organization. Read on to discover why hiring the right salesperson matters more than ever as we head into 2022. 

How Sales Hiring Has Changed 

Sales hiring once depended mainly on informal hiring practices that were subjective at best and biased at worst. Unfortunately, these hiring strategies were largely ineffective, as evidenced by consistently high turnover rates, bad hires, poor worker satisfaction, and average career lengths spanning months rather than years.

Data intelligence and similar advanced technology are reshaping the sales hiring landscape. Branches of data science like predictive analysis provide new and improved opportunities for hiring and sales managers to evaluate candidates’ performance, productivity, and more. 

Now, predictive analysis uses cutting-edge data mining and machine learning to create highly accurate forecasts. By taking advantage of these capabilities, companies’ leadership can significantly reduce turnover by evaluating metrics when it matters most- pre-hire.

Why Hiring the Right Salesperson Matters

Hiring the right salesperson should be one of the top priorities of every business. While companies rely on the interconnected efforts of various departments and parties for success, sales have the most direct impact on revenue and growth. 

And hiring high-performing sales reps isn’t just beneficial for revenue. The best sales reps’ specialized skill sets and experience can also dramatically improve the overall salesforce, the customer experience, and your company’s reputation.

This article breaks down how identifying and onboarding skilled sales reps can enhance sales performance across the board and elevate your business. Let’s examine four areas in which the right salesperson can make the largest impact on your company’s success:

Four Reasons Hiring the Right Salesperson Matters in 2021 and 2022

1. Increased Revenue

No surprises here. Increased revenue tops our list for why hiring the right salesperson matters. Hiring the right salespeople can increase revenue exponentially, with top-performing sales reps creating four times more revenue than average sales reps. 

That happens because skilled sales reps understand how to relay value, overcome objections, and anticipate pain points to close deals effectively. Skilled sales reps are emotionally intelligent and well-versed in strategies to intrigue, excite, and connect with prospective customers. 

High-performing sales reps' management of pivotal sales activities places them head-and-shoulders above their average colleagues. That’s largely due to the low bar for sales performance to qualify for ‘average.’ 

Typical sales reps close less than 40% of qualified potential deals, and two out of three sales reps fail to meet targeted quotas. This performance gap means hiring the right salesperson is crucial every time you expand your sales team. Consistently hiring above-average talent is possible, and it is imperative to build a high-performing, revenue-driving team.

2. Improved Business Reputation

Sales reps won’t replace dedicated customer service and support agents any time soon, but they can still put their soft skills to work for the benefit of your company’s reputation. 

This enhances public relations and marketing efforts and creates more sales opportunities. Customers today are wary of hard sales pitches and prefer to work collaboratively with sales reps to make informed and largely self-guided purchases. 

Companies with a reputation for heavy-handed or unpleasant sales experiences will find it difficult to book appointments or grow their customer base through referrals when dealing with this new breed of consumer. 

Meanwhile, companies that invest in adaptable and personable sales reps who tailor their sales pitches to various customer preferences will enjoy higher sales numbers and an improved image in the public eye.

3. More Profitable Customer and Coworker Relationships

Hiring the right salespeople can have an outsized impact on inter-office and customer relationships. 

Onboarding a good cultural fit can improve your sales teams' productivity, morale, and performance. On the other hand, introducing sales reps that clash with established workflows and communication styles can bring progress to a grinding halt. 

Candidates who have experience developing and growing a customer or client base are also invaluable for sales teams. Experienced and highly skilled sales reps are comfortable putting themselves out there to make new connections and grow their network, a skill many bad hires simply do not possess. 

The best salespeople don't just make connections. They maintain relationships by building trust and rapport with prospective clients. They practice effective sales strategies like consistent follow-up sales calls and cross-selling. 

This combination of hard and soft sales skills empowers top-tier salespeople to foster genuine and valuable customer relationships. This relationship-building ability is doubly important for the revenue-boosting potential of targeting repeat and recurring business as a new or alternative revenue stream. 

Companies should remember that 78% of customers stay loyal to brands that keep them happy. And repeat customers often spend roughly 67% more than new customers. These shocking statistics outline a clear need for competitive businesses to recruit and retain top sales talent with a knack for customer service. 

4. Peer-to-Peer Coaching Opportunities 

We’ve all heard it: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This advice rings particularly true within sales teams. Here’s how high-performing salespeople can elevate your entire sales organization's sales strategies and successes:

• Keen insight, seasoned perspective, and hard-earned experience allow top-tier salespeople to enhance and adjust sales methodologies according to customer needs, market trends, sales targets, and more. 
  
  
• They create new and innovative strategies for boosting conversions. Expert salespeople are skilled at spotting new opportunities to develop business, whether in alternative sales channels or areas ripe for expansion based on current products and services. 
  
  
• They’re also experts at stress management and maintaining high productivity levels when dealing with challenging or sub-optimal selling conditions.
  
  
• Despite being at the top of their field, excellent salespeople know the importance of regular and ongoing sales training. So they keep their ear to the ground for any new sales strategies or emerging practices that can help close more deals and even commit personal time to ongoing training and development.

All of these valuable skills and habits are a boon for your less experienced sales reps. Bad hires drag down performance, but onboarding the right sales candidate can nurture the skill sets of your entire salesforce. The best reps share their specialized knowledge and expertise in informal or structured peer-to-peer training sessions.

Peer-to-peer training by experienced and talented sales reps introduces the rest of your sales organization to sales tips, practices, and strategies that fuel success:

• Companies can encourage skill-sharing behavior with a working environment that celebrates collaboration and rewards group efforts. For example, sales managers facilitate peer-to-peer learning through mini-seminars and training sessions that allow top performers to share advice with the rest of their sales teammates. 
  
  
• Sales managers should consider training tools like simulated sales calls for average and low-performing reps to observe high performers in action. Then, the rest of your sales team can pick up on subtle communication and sales strategies that may be highly effective but difficult to teach in theory. 
  
  
• Additionally, a visual demonstration of the combination of hard and soft skills that make high-performing sales reps stand out from the pack can boost motivation around the sales department. 

How We Help with Sales Hiring 

PerceptionPredict is a predictive analytics firm striving to revolutionize the sales hiring process. 

PerceptionPredict leverages advanced data intelligence, next-gen, and highly specialized statistical and computational modeling algorithms to introduce unmatched insight, objectivity, and success to the hiring process. PerceptionPredict uses unique predictive analysis tools to build data-driven candidate profiles called Performance Fingerprints. 

Performance Fingerprints quantify candidate experience, skillset, and personal characteristics into accurate forecasts of future performance, ROI potential, predicted length of tenure, and more. As a result, they empower hiring and sales managers to make strategic and profitable hiring decisions every time.

Our Performance Fingerprints and predictive tools have assisted titans of industry like Mercedes-Benz and Crowdstrike in optimized sales hiring for improved financial performance, enhanced customer experiences, and reduced turnover. 

Learn more about PerceptionPredict’s cutting-edge hiring tools to help your company consistently recruit high-performing talent. Book a demo today.