Unlock the Rewards of an Intentional Sales Hiring Plan
When it comes to building an effective team, taking the time to develop a sales hiring plan can seem counterproductive. Yet, the rewards are far greater than quickly bringing aboard someone who "appears" to be a good fit.
With thoughtful and strategic planning, you can reduce costs associated with recruitment, onboarding, and employee retention while avoiding costly turnover due to poor hires.
This is especially critical in sales hiring, where each team member directly interfaces with your customers and shapes your company's marketplace reputation. A poor sales hire doesn't just impact internal operations—it can damage client relationships and your brand's credibility.
The goal of this article is to help you reduce these risks by outlining what's involved in developing an intentional hiring strategy that gets the right people in the right seats and keeps them there.
Key Article Takeaways
Strategic Planning Prevents Costly Hiring Mistakes
You Don't Have to Choose Between Speed and Quality
Modern Hiring Requires Skills First Focus
Your Digital Presence is Now Part of Your Recruiting Strategy
Sales Team Design needs to come before Individual Hires
Don't Let Hiring Urgency Sabotage Your Revenue Goals
As a business owner or top executive, it's tempting to believe that a quick hire will be the fastest path to meeting revenue goals or making up for lost time.
This urgency is understandable. Every day without adequate sales coverage feels like lost opportunity. But rushing through hiring decisions can create far more damage than the temporary gap you're trying to fill.
Poor hires don't just fail to generate revenue; they actively drain resources, damage client relationships, and demoralize your existing team.
Here's the good news: developing a strategic hiring plan doesn't mean sacrificing your immediate revenue targets.
I maintain a network of vetted, high-performing contract SDRs and BDRs who can serve as stopgap resources when you can't afford to delay pipeline development activity.
This bridge solution allows you to maintain sales momentum while investing the proper time and attention into building your permanent team—the best of both worlds.
Ready to explore this approach? Let's discuss how contract resources can support your immediate needs while you execute a winning long-term hiring strategy.
Develop a Thoughtful and Effective Hiring Plan
When entering the development phase of your hiring plan, start with understanding your needs as an organization. To drive strategic growth, your sales team structure and talent needs to be aligned with your sales strategy.
Before adding additional hires, invest time in a sales function mapping exercise to determine if your current sales and support roles are designed in the right way to support scaling growth.
This is just one aspect of developing an intentional hiring plan.
Done right, your plan is designed to get the right people in the right seats and keep them there. I guide my clients through the following steps to achieve this:
Revisit Sales Team Structure
Create Detailed Position Descriptions
Define the Ideal Candidate Profile for Open Roles
Verify Sales Compensation Alignment With Market Rate
Develop a Talent Acquisition Plan
In addition, it is important to have a robust onboarding process in place to ensure that every new hire gets off to a great start. Check out a prior article I wrote that includes helpful guidance called “The Keys to Successful Sales Onboarding”.
Adapt to Major Job Market Shifts
The job market has changed drastically in recent years. Many organizations have seen a decrease in available sales talent and are having trouble recruiting new hires due to more competition amongst employers.
This has changed how companies need to attract candidates into their interview process. It is no longer enough to post ads and anticipate an influx of qualified candidate resumes.
Businesses need to attract working and winning candidates with effective outreach strategies. Focus on what candidates can actually do rather than degrees or lengthy resumes.
Hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance than hiring based on education, according to McKinsey.
Replace traditional phone screens with advanced video interview platforms that allow assessment of communication skills, professionalism, and cultural fit more effectively.
This also creates an opportunity to screen sales candidates on how they present themselves through virtual communication methods.
A study by Harvard Business Review suggested that 80% of employee churn is the result of poor hiring decisions, so it's essential to focus on hiring quality applicants.
Video interviewing helps improve your hiring outcomes by allowing you to read body language and facial cues, thus giving you access to more information than you would get on a phone screen.
Improve Your Digital Presence – Candidates Are Screening You!
Potential employees research the people they are considering working with the same way you do. Sales candidates are especially savvy in this way.
High performers go online and search for as much information as they can before deciding if they want to enter your interview process.
It is incredibly important that your company is well-represented in the digital world to support your recruiting initiatives.
If this is something you haven’t placed much focus on yet, here are a few areas to get you started…
Website & Careers Page - Have a careers page that sells the benefits of being part of your company, not just a listing of position openings. Capture employee testimonials (ideally in video format) that helps a candidate get a sense for your company culture and values, and why long-time employees have invested their careers with you.
LinkedIn Company Page – Sales candidates will find you on LinkedIn and form an opinion about your company based on how you position yourself. They’ll review the quantity and tenure of employees, how well the leadership team is represented, level and quality of your social post history, etc.
Google My Business - Google reviews are influential in a candidate's decision process, and they will likely read yours before applying. You also might have noticed that Google itself is listing job openings. Make sure you are well represented and encourage customers and colleagues to rate you.
Getting Help in Today's Competitive Talent Market
Taking a strategic approach to hiring has always made a big impact on a business. The difference today is that it is likely you need to shift your hiring methodology to capture the attention of high-quality candidates.
As a Fractional Sales Leader, I understand how important it is to make sure your sales teams have the right balance of staffing, support, and resources. I have extensive experience helping companies navigate their way through the challenges associated with recruiting, onboarding and successfully managing sales teams.
If you’d like to discuss ways you could improve attracting, securing, and managing your sales talent, contact me at (513) 399-6994, kevin@lighthousesalesadvisors.com, or book a call with me.
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I am part of a national group of Fractional Sales Leaders who collaborate to share insights like the examples shown in this article. We formed because of our shared passion to help business leaders exponentially expand their revenue.