Sales Team Hiring

• 1. PROFILE TYPES
• 2. INTERVIEWING CANDIDATES
• 3. ONBOARDING

Talk led by Marie-Christine, XAnge Sales Expert :

DOs:

• Define the profile required before recruiting: seniority, knowledge of the sector, previous team management experience or not, etc.
• To ease the shortlisting, favour profiles in line with your sales process (there are differences between a key account salesperson, a B2B sales and a B2C sales).
• Proactively hunt for profiles in your field to facilitate product uptake and key account knowledge.
• In many cases, the sales team grows every year (+4/5 people), you should always specify that search perimeters are going to evolve to avoid conflicts. Be precise about those territories in the job description.

DON'Ts:

• Avoid extensive lists of functions / responsabilities trying to cover all your acquisition channels.
• Not tailoring your recruitment process according to the characteristics of each geographical area for international recruitment. (different commercial and cultural customs).
• Recruiting junior profiles while the company is starting up and doing complex sales (less than 2 years experience).
• Recruiting people who have only worked in large companies (the candidate would not have the notion of autonomy in the complete sales cycle, as startups generally have little support staff)

DOs:

• Test the autonomy of the candidate: Ability to develop his hunting territory, his missions in autonomy according to the environment and the evolution of the issues.
• Impact & Metrics : Ask the candidate about the value he/she generated in his/her previous position versus the company's global KPIs (sales generated versus company sales, no. of sales/quarter versus no. of total company sales, etc.).
• Ability to say no: Some "buyers" can strongly negotiate your prices. It is necessary that a salesperson knows how to say "no" if necessary. Check this ability by asking the candidate a question to which he will have to answer negatively and which he assumes will not suit you. If he answers positively, you know he will have difficulty saying no to his clients as well. (e.g.: Would you be ready to move to Germany in 12 months (when he has just told you that his wife has taken a great job in Paris). Objective: Analyze the candidate's ability to say no and to see how he justifies the decision he makes, possibly contrary to the interests of the person in front of him.
• Ability to learn from his mistakes: Ask the candidate to recount the worst and best business experience (in that order) Objective: See how the candidate reacts, justifies himself and what he has learned from this experience. For junior profiles, focus these questions on experiences related to internships or education.

DON'Ts:

• Forget to sell the company: An interview is a two-way street! Don't forget to give the candidate a more global vision of the company's ambitions to make him/her want to join.
• Use business cases as free consulting: If used, the business case must be short and operational without being academic. It must also be in line with the type of profile you are recruiting.
• Recruit by "feeling": Did the interview went really well? Did the candidate convinced you? Confirm your feeling by checking his references and his business sense with a practical case.
• Do not validate the quality of writing and spelling: Validate the ability to interact with a prospect (writing, spelling, telephone exchange) especially for junior candidates.
• Take a local profile in an international team: Check the open-mindedness and the level of English of the candidates to ensure a good team cohesion.

DOs:

• Sales Playbook: Provide a complete sales playbook describing the offer (especially when it is technical, as well as the business model), the sales method related to the product (specific tips to facilitate the sale, sales "secrets"), the sales tools and reporting (CRM, recording, dashboards, ...) and responses to the most common questions (structure of the responses).

• Onboarding course & training: Over a period of 2 to 4 weeks, schedule different sessions to discover the company and the sales team. To ensure a good understanding of the sales pitch, you can use :
• Recordings of sales exchanges: Allow you to listen to calls to discover how more senior profiles behave (e.g.: Modjo, bonjour.io.), or on the contrary decipher calls made by the newcomer to help him/her articulate the offer and the value proposition.
• Role-playing exchanges with a prospect (first presentation, answers to the most common objections): to verify that the sales playbook has been digested before the first client meeting.
• Prospection plan: Ask for a 3-month prospection plan (e.g.). Objective: Understand if the person has understood how to mobilize their ecosystem, the number of prospects to be integrated into the pipe…

DON'Ts:

• Let the new hire on his own: During the first month, you must:
• Assist the new profiles in the entire sales cycle (calls, demos, meetings ...).
• Do daily check-ins (morning and end of day) to make sure the person is not lost and is taking charge of their role.

• Not planning coffee breaks with the employee: This would allow the new hire to create a network within the company and make him discover the other teams. Set up "Team Building" activities: drinks, escape games, only informal activities…

• Not tailoring the onboarding process to be done remotely if necessary: Convert the entire physical process into a digital one if necessary and make sure that the person does it (video calls with clients, with the team, etc.).