Posted by
Matt Cook on Thu, Apr 19, 2012 @ 02:57 PM
If you are hunting for a new sales job today, it can be tough to know which companies are hiring and which companies you may want to work for. It’s tough to really understand how a company works internally and what the culture of the sales team is until you actually start the job. Unfortunately, at that point, it’s too late. Using a sales recruitment agency can help you find the best sales job and give you better insight into how the company operates. Here are 3 reasons to use a sales recruitment agency when looking for your next sales job.
Access to More Jobs
Sales recruitment agencies work with hundreds of companies helping them hire great sales people. Quite often, they will have jobs that are not even posted on the company’s own website. Companies work with sales recruiters to ensure they are only interviewing the highest quality candidates. Over and above that, when a sales recruitment agency meets a great sales person, they will also reach out to other clients who may not be actively looking but will interview great sales people. Good sales recruiters actively try and get you in front of good companies that may or may not be looking for a sales person but will hire them when they meet them.
Save Time
Hiring a sales recruitment agency is in a sense like hiring your own personal sales recruiter. You'll have a professional that is actively seeking the perfect sales job for you. This means you won’t have to spend as much time scouring jobs boards looking for the next step in your sales career. Once they have interviewed you, they will only present you to companies that are ready to hire and are a match to your unique selling style and personality.
Tools for Success
Because of the nature of what they do, sales recruitment agencies have a vested interest in seeing you succeed and have many tools to help you in your job search. They will start with helping you clearly articulate your personal value proposition on your resume so that it is in line with what a potential employer is looking for. You will also have access to all of their resources about preparing for a sales interview and how to answer sales specific interview questions. You will have a whole team of people who are there to make sure you are on top of your game when meeting a potential employer by providing you with tips and advice.
If you have been trying to find you next sales job but can't seem to find the right fit, you're not alone.
The key is to set yourself apart from the crowd, but that's always easy to do on your own. But with a sales recruitment agency you will have access to jobs you never knew existed, have trained professionals helping you apply for them and to be prepared when you land that sales interview. Working with a sales recruitment agency can mean the difference between finding your dream sales job or staying where you are.
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Posted by
Matt Cook on Tue, Apr 17, 2012 @ 12:23 PM
Your company is growing and is looking to continue to grow revenue so you begin to look for sales people to help. You struggle to find good sales resumes, you interview a few sales people but you don’t really find what you are looking for. What do you do now? It may be time to engage a sales recruitment agency to help you with your search. Sales recruitment agencies specialize in helping companies find and hire top performing sales people in a timely manner. Sales recruiters also will provide a guarantee should the sales person not live up to expectations or you find you need a different skill set. There are a few things you should consider when engaging with the right sales recruitment agency.
1. Make sure they have the right experience. Ask for references from clients they have worked with in the past and the types of sales jobs they have worked on in the past. This will help you determine if they have the experience to find a sales person in your industry, geography and at the compensation level you are hiring for.
2. Process. It is important to understand the process the sales recruitment agency uses so that it is seamless with your company’s interview and on-boarding process. This will ensure they are screening for the right skills, attitudes and behaviours that are in line with your company’s vision and culture which will lead to a successful hire.
3. People. The people who are working at the sales recruitment agency will give you a good idea of the quality and caliber of sales person they will be able to hire for you. They should exhibit the behaviours and skills you are looking for in the sales person you want to hire. You should want to hire them for the job! If they are not polished, articulate and clearly listen and understand your unique requirements, walk away and look for another sales recruiter as it will lead to a bad experience.
Like everything in life, not all sales recruitment agencies are created equal. Hiring sales people for your company is critical and will have a direct impact on revenue growth. If you are having trouble finding the right fit on your own, a sales recruitment agency can be a valuable partner in helping you and your company hit you targets.
Photo by: The Imperfect Photographer
The world of sales is very much a people-centric business but there is much more to a sales job than just warming up to customers and flaunting a pronounced gift of gab. Not to suggest that good interpersonal communication skills aren't a key facet, in fact most sales job descriptions go to great lengths to detail the requirements of customer interaction. So the question remains, what is a sales job?
Sales jobs are essentially the key cog in the confluence of merchant supply and customer demand. Sales professionals are responsible for determining customer wants and needs, communicating the features and benefits of the products or services being offered, and solidifying transactions to supply those products or services. More specifically, the duties typically associated with sales jobs, in general, include:
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Prospecting for new customers through cold calling, following up on leads from marketing, or meeting prospects in person either in a store or the customers workplace
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Participate in trade shows, seminars, and telemarketing events
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Tracking important data such as prospect activity, potential future sales opportunities, revenue and profitability, and other transactional data
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Make presentations/demonstrations of products or services to customers
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Create and maintain sales materials
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Demonstrate on-going knowledge of relative products, competitive environments, and consumer needs
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Develop and maintain relationships with new and existing customers
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Communicate customer related information to design, production, and or purchasing personnel to facilitate proper supply
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Implement marketing initiatives
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Field complaints from customers and facilitate appropriate resolutions
Processing all that detail is a bit tedious but the essentials of a typical sales job are all there. Finding customers in need of the products offered and getting customers to purchase them, it doesn't get much simpler than that.
There are two distinctive types of sales jobs, consumer (B2C) and business (B2B). The two can be quite different but the basic elements tend to be the same, as detailed above.
The most common type of B2C sales is in the retail environment. This is where a customer walks into a store and a sales person aids them in finding the appropriate product and closing the transaction. Other varieties of B2C sales include door-to-door sales, phone sales, and web-based consumer product sales.
B2B sales jobs are much more complex. The most basic B2B sales job is probably that of a manufacture selling products to a reseller such as a distributor or dealer. This is also referred to as wholesale sales. But there are many other varieties and can include any sales job where the transaction takes place between two businesses. A few examples:
Sales jobs involve pretty much anything required to motivate and facilitate the sale of a product or service. Duties begin with identifying customers and end with closing deals and resolving post-sale issues. There are many different varieties of sales jobs with countless business and consumer environments in which they take place. But one thing rings true in nearly all of them, the most important aspect is the people involved.
SalesForce Search specializes exclusively in sales recruiting across Canada and serves small, medium and Fortune 500 companies. SalesForce Search helps companies find qualified sales people who will have an immediate impact on their sales targets.
Every industry has its own nuances. The skills and traits necessary to succeed in that industry are, of course, very important when recruiting sales people. But specific industry experience does not equate to instant success. A potential hire that comes from within the industry can fail just as well as someone from the outside. In fact, many inner-industry hires fail because of their industry experience. There are four main reasons for failure when recruiting sales people from the same industry:
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Employers hiring from within their industry often fail to train that person properly. The assumption that a new hire with industry experience has all the necessary knowledge and training to succeed immediately upon hire is a poor one that, in the end, costs many industry hires their jobs. A key ingredient to success when recruiting sales professionals within the same industry is the make certain sales training protocols are followed.
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Bad habits die hard, especially when they are successful. Many salespeople changing jobs within an industry find that habits that were successful with one company lead to failure with another. This is often the result of a difference in business practices and management style/philosophy. Recruiting sales candidates from other industries involves some additional training and education but they are often more apt to welcome necessary changes to previous habits, not knowing of differences within the industry.
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Another assumption hiring managers make about recruiting sales candidates from their industry is that industry lingo and name-dropping make for good hiring criteria. A candidate with industry knowledge may know how to answer questions to an interviewer's satisfaction in lieu of real skills due to those affiliations. Screening and thorough interview practices can reduce the risk of hiring a lemon from one of your competitors.
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Selling styles don't always mix. Your competitors or other companies in your industry may have success selling in ways very different from your own. The talent you hire away from them may not become your next top producer unless those styles and requisite skills are compatible.
Recruiting sales talent from within your industry may cause as many problems as it solves. There are numerous potential pitfalls that must be avoided in order to ensure mutual success. Don't have your blinders on when interviewing and assessing candidates due to their industry and you'll be a step ahead. That, along with proper training and a good meshing of styles will put you in position to take the industry by storm the next time recruiting sales people is necessary.
SalesForce Search specializes exclusively in sales recruiting across Canada and serves small, medium and Fortune 500 companies. SalesForce Search helps companies find qualified sales people who will have an immediate impact on their sales targets.
Skill development for sales people involves a litany of intangible traits not all that common to non-selling careers. As sales is a people centric field, the focus of skill development is primary based on interpersonal talents. Honing those skills can be successfully accomplished within nearly any role of the sales process and is a key element to advancing promising selling careers.
Become a Better Listener
Most successful sales professionals are natural talkers. The gift of gab is a prerequisite in most selling careers but just as important is the ability to listen effectively. Honing your listening skills can be accomplished in just about any environment. Start by making a focused effort in the office when among colleagues and supervisors. Practice information gathering techniques that will benefit you in the field and then take those practices to your customers. Listening effectively when dealing with customers will help you develop better relationships and more easily meet your quotas.
Time Management
Managing daily activities and maximizing production is common flaw in many selling careers. Improvement in this area begins with setting specific goals within the work day with completion points being used as the key metric. Don't give in to the "ready, fire, aim" temptation that haunts many sales people. Set daily goals, check them off your list and move on to the next. A daily planner is a good start, be it old-school paper or as part of your contact management system.
Communication
This one may seem simple as many successful selling careers begin with extroverts that know how to talk, but good communication takes place in many different areas, beginning with writing. A key transferable skill, good written communication skills can be honed within the confines of a busy work day. Focusing on clear and concise e-mails or other written correspondence can go a long way to improving your sales potential. If you have shortcomings in your writing try reading letters from others that excel in it, absorb their techniques and even borrow basic outlines for use as templates. But never plagiarize, even your customers will notice non-original content.
Relationship Building
Building great relationships is a vital component in all selling careers and yet it is often ignored as an area of development. To advance your relationship skills you should begin within your own company. Good relationships with colleagues can go a long way to enhancing selling careers. Developing trust and confidence within your relationships will land you referrals and valuable insight that will aid your bottom line. When it comes to customers, the same applies. Work to maintain a professional tone while introducing personalization and a friendly demeanor. A customer can be a friend and those who trust and value the relationship will become paramount to advancing promising selling careers.
SalesForce Search specializes exclusively in sales recruiting across Canada and serves small, medium and Fortune 500 companies. SalesForce Search helps companies find qualified sales people who will have an immediate impact on their sales targets.
There are many headaches associated with the process of
recruiting and hiring new salespeople. One of the most costly parts of the process is the time it takes to find the right employee while the company goes without needed staffing and the resulting sales. But using a sales recruitment agency can greatly reduce the time-to-hire and get a sales staff back up to full speed in short order.
Candidate NetworkThere are a number of ways in which sales recruitment agencies reduce time-to-hire . One of the most influential is their ability to
find qualified candidates through an established network of sales professionals. This is one area that employers just don't have access to. By tapping into their prospect networks, sales recruitment agencies can reduce or even eliminate the time it takes to devise an appropriate advertisement, post the ad and wait for responses in hope that a qualified candidate will see it.
AssessmentsSales recruitment agencies routinely put prospective candidates through specific assessments designed to determine their level of qualifications and skill set. By doing so the agencies reduce the time employers spend performing
interviews of under-qualified applicants and those without the necessary skills to do the job. Those efficiencies relate directly to the time-to-hire and the employer's success.
CommunicationMost employment vacancies are not planned and the time it takes to respond to a vacancy can be disastrous to an employer. Dealing with the fallout from a termination or the sudden quitting of an employee takes time as does the process of deciding what to do next. However, a simple phone call to a
sales recruitment agency can get the process started in just a few minutes. That initial communication can start a process that may take the employer weeks to undergo, with applicants showing up for interviews before the human resources department had time to digest the vacancy.
Screening
One of the most time consuming parts of the recruitment process is the initial interview phase where numerous applicants are screened for the peripherals of job requirements. This part of the process routinely takes weeks, depending on the level of the position opening and the depth of the talent pool. Sales recruitment agencies are uniquely positioned to screen high volumes of sales applicants and determine viability through a reduced number of steps due to efficiencies and staff qualifications. In short, they are professional interviewers and can do the job quickly.
Sales recruitment agencies can reduce the time-to-hire for employers by tapping into existing pools of talent, assessing candidates qualifications, cutting out down time in the process and screening candidates prior to employer interviews. By doing so they save employers time and money while getting their staffing needs filled in the near term.
Posted by
Matt Cook on Wed, Mar 14, 2012 @ 01:40 PM
Whether you are a fast growing company or a large mature organization, from time to time it may be necessary to engage with recruiting agencies. Recruiting agencies can be very helpful in helping to fill a role fast. However, finding the right recruitment partner can sometimes be hit or miss. So how does a company ensure they are working with the right recruitment partner? When engaging recruiting agencies, there are 3 things you should look for in order to avoid getting the wrong people put in front of you for the roles you need to fill.
Specialty
We are sales recruiters. We only recruit sales people...period. If you want us to find your company an engineer or accountant, we are not the company for you. By focusing on selling, we have the ability to do a better job for our clients because we are not distracted by working on other types of roles where we may not have as much experience. Plus we are all sales people ourselves which is why we are great at filling sales roles and not so great on finding you a controller. When engaging recruiting agencies, make sure they have expertise for the roll you are looking to fill. Otherwise, you may get someone who is unfamiliar with the requirements of the job and not get the right candidates.
Experience
When I say experience, I’m talking about experience they have working on similar roles for similar companies. If you are looking for a tech support person, look for recruiting agencies that have experience filling tech support roles for software companies. Get references from them and make sure the person you are dealing with was the one who worked on that role.
Process
Many recruiting agencies do not have a well laid out process for how to find, screen and submit candidates to organizations. This quite often leads to a lot of resumes that don’t meet the requirements for the job. Ask about how they go about finding candidates (both active and passive), how they conduct their screening and finally, how to they rank or prioritize candidates they submit. You should be getting no more than 3 or 4 submissions per role. If you have to sort through more than that, they are not doing their job and they are not the recruitment agency for you.
By following these 3 simple guidelines, you’ll avoid a lot of hassle and more importantly, you’ll have a better chance of finding the right candidate for your role.
B2b sales jobs involve unique clientele that know their own businesses well and are well educated on the applicable industry as well as what is available from vendors. In this way, b2b sales jobs involve a more practiced approach than consumer oriented sales. An uneducated or underwhelming b2b sales professional is often shown the door by a customer base that demands professionalism, integrity and value.
The best b2b salespeople tend to excel in areas such as relationship development, account management and pipeline development, as b2b sales jobs often involve sales cycles much longer than their consumer counterparts. Most interact with the same customers on a revolving basis, enjoying repeat business and the fruits of those labors in the form of handsome commissions or bonuses. However, b2b sales jobs also incur the wrath of high-pressure sales environments and aggressive quotas.
Some of the most highly sought after sales jobs are found in the b2b world. Some popular examples:
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Medical and Pharmaceutical. Involving the sale of both medical equipment and various treatments or drugs, these sales professions are amongst the highest paying and most competitive.
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Office Supplies and Equipment. Anything from copiers to pens and paper can be found in this space. Residual sales are the key to office supply success.
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Telecom and Information Technology. Voice Over I.P. services were relatively unknown just a few years ago but are growing in popularity. IT security and the affiliated services have become integral with many office businesses.
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Advertising and Marketing. Formerly a hard copy, old school business, advertising and marketing sales have made the jump into the electronic age with hugely popular web-based formats that are integral to business growth. Think banners, pop-up ad's, and search engine optimization.
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Manufacturing. The rebounding economy has seen growth in manufacturing and increased demand for b2b sales jobs for those experienced in various technical trades.
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Construction. Numerous b2b sales jobs are found within then many construction trades. Hardware and tools are among the higher volume products where construction materials and heavy equipment are found to be the most profitable (and highest paying).
B2b sales professionals enjoy the availability of numerous niches within their respective sales environments and are found to earn some of the highest pay in non-executive positions. Demand, as well as competition, can be high and the duties demanding. In most b2b sales jobs you'll be expected to do at least some traveling and the hours can be long. But some of the best and most popular sales careers are found in b2b sales and the benefits can be quite good.
SalesForce Search specializes exclusively in sales recruiting across Canada and serves small, medium and Fortune 500 companies. SalesForce Search helps companies find qualified sales people who will have an immediate impact on their sales targets.
Posted by
Matt Cook on Fri, Mar 09, 2012 @ 12:24 PM
The US Labor Department released it’s employment report this morning and showed employers are still hiring. 227,000 jobs were added in February which was a bit lower than the 284,000 jobs added in January but still ahead of where we were this time last year and better than expected. Economists had been expecting the economy to add 210,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate remained at 8.3% which is in line with expectations.
Private businesses were the main driver of job growth, and have been adding jobs consistently since March 2010. In February, they added 233,000 jobs. Professional and business services added 82,000 jobs, but more than half of those were at temp agencies. The manufacturing sector added 31,000 jobs, health care added 49,000 jobs and restaurants and bars added 41,000 jobs.
For sales people, the numbers continue to be strong. 186,000 new sales jobs were created since February 2011. Unemployment rates among those in sales and related occupations is now at 7.9% compared to the overall unemployment rate of 8.3%. This makes sense because if you are generating revenue, your job should be secure. Great sales people are always in high demand in good times and bad. If continually sharpen your selling skills, improve your negotiation abilities and hit your sales quotas, you should never be out of a job.
While the economy is not out of the woods in the US, sales people are still in high demand and the market for new sales jobs is and should continue to be strong.
Sales people earn their wages by knowing the right thing to say and having the ability to steer conversations, which is why interviewing them can be so difficult. A good sales professional will answer most interview questions the way they think you want them to, not really the kind of answer an interviewer can use to make a decision on hiring a salesperson. Part of the interview process is for candidates to sell themselves but meandering through the salesmanship to get real responses and important details is the tricky part. Digging deep and asking thoughtful questions is a necessity when hiring a salesperson. With that said, there are key questions that can aid in determining the correct choice when hiring a salesperson.
Is cold calling dead? Why?
The answer, of course, is no. But it is the "Why" you need to listen to. Cold calling is one of the most hated components in any sales professional's career and, yet, one of the most important. A good candidate will explain their own methodology in cold calling, telling you why it is so important and how good effort and follow through lead to increased production.
What motivates you?
This is the kind of open-ended questions that a good candidate will run with. There are a lot of good answers but one of them should definitely be money. Hiring a salesperson that just wants to make people happy will not make your business grow. Someone that is motivated by the thrill of closing a sale and the commissions earned when doing so will generally be the person that exceeds quotas and regularly produces at high levels.
What is the ideal relationship between sales and marketing?
Many sales professionals don't have a clue what marketing is and how it relates to them. A demonstrated knowledge of the relationship between sales and marketing will indicate good business acumen and a thorough understanding of the customer experience. Hiring a salesperson that provides a well thought out response relating to the sales and marketing relationship will tend to work in your favor as they will have the insight and business know-how to succeed where less knowledgeable candidates might fail.
What are your favorite closing questions?
Closing is key in any sales environment. Any good salesperson will dazzle you with good closing questions, going into detail on how they present them and follow up on prescribed responses. This a good opportunity to delve into a candidate's selling practices and find out what makes them tick. Hiring a salesperson requires finding out if they have the skills required to close deals.
What is your process for developing a pipeline?
This is where you can determine the level of organizational skills and sales acumen. A short response will tell you this isn't the candidate for you. The salesperson you want to hire is the one that gives a thorough answer, detailing the key aspects of pipeline development, documentation, and customer follow-up.
SalesForce Search specializes exclusively in sales recruiting across Canada and serves small, medium and Fortune 500 companies. SalesForce Search helps companies find qualified sales people who will have an immediate impact on their sales targets.