5 Simple Steps For How to Attract Sales Talent

Knowing how to attract sales talent has never been easy, especially in a post-pandemic world where top salespeople are in high demand. Additionally, with the average job role receiving more and more applicants due to the impacts of Covid, it can be hard to attract top sales talent for your business. As a result, we thought it would be helpful to detail our simple five-step guide on how to attract sales talent for your business.

“Some employers can search endlessly for exactly the right person for the job. Instead, they should try looking for a young person with potential, who has the right skills and motivation – they should develop them. You need to be a bit inventive, and it pays off."

- Chief executive of CV-Library, Lee Biggins

1) Determine the Sales Skills and People You Need

As a sales manager or talent acquisition manager, knowing how to find good talent is only half the battle. First, you need to know who you're looking for and what sales skills you want to bring into your business. Ultimately, your hires need to possess the attributes that can impact your sales team and the company. 

Without a doubt, you cannot expect to find the 'right' sales professional if there is no collective understanding of who it is you need. Additionally, taking the time to establish the specific people you need will make your sales recruitment process much quicker and less stressful. 

Defining this for yourself and your hiring managers can help streamline your sales recruitment process as you make your ideal candidate known. Furthermore, this can also be helpful for active and passive job searching candidates as they can easily see if they are the correct fit for your advertised role. 

What should you include in the job description to help attract top sales talent?

• Required skills
• Expectations of the daily role
• Personality types that would suit the role
• Length of position (seasonal, temporary, permanent)

2) Sales Apprenticeships and Graduate Schemes

"The job market has done a complete 180; while companies may have struggled to recruit before the pandemic, they're now being bombarded with applications. Of course, this is good news for companies that are recruiting. But it does mean you need a robust hiring process which enables you to easily monitor applications, screen applicants and make the right hires, quickly and effectively."

- Apprenticeship Manager at Microsoft, Dominic Gil

When looking at how to attract sales talent, apprenticeships and graduate schemes are excellent options for bringing passionate people into your business. 

Of course, you want to ensure the people you onboard are a cultural fit and have the attitude and character to be successfully embedded into your sales team. But, most young talent already has these traits and are motivated and hungry for an opportunity to kickstart their sales career. When it comes to learning sales skills, these can be taught from a combination of on and off-the-job training. 

Sales managers need to attract talent with the ability to adapt to the industry and grow within the organisation. Consider your apprentices and graduates as clean slates that you can mould into the sales professionals you want them to be. By focusing your recruitment search on apprentices and graduate candidates over experienced hires, you are more likely to find candidates who are willing to learn and innovate.

There are significant benefits to hiring less experienced employees, such as:

• A fresh approach and ideas
• Improve company culture and diversity
• Build your company’s talent pipeline, providing long-term security
• Enable you to grow and nurture talent, so you don’t have to spend so much attracting the very best in sales
• Cost-effective solution compared to experienced hires

At Pareto, we can empower your business through our apprenticeships and graduate training, helping top talent and businesses realise their potential.  

3) Turn to Digital Recruitment

LinkedIn says passive applicants account for 70% of the recruitment market. But how do you reach these people if they're not actively looking for a job? Well, by turning to digital recruitment.

Register accounts across platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram to show the world how good your business is and why it's such a great place to work. Create content to support your culture and employer brand and share this across your socials to attract active and passive sales talent.

Over the last decade, there has been a massive transformation in what we would consider typical businesses, especially regarding sales. For example, the retail industry has transformed through more engaging online content and seamless customer experiences. A similar transformation is happening in the automotive sector, too, requiring managers to hire top talent who will deliver a new approach by harnessing the power of digital. Sales recruitment can undoubtedly take a page out of the digital recruitment handbook. 

4) Introduce Incentive Packages

When recruiting top sales talent, it is essential to have advertised benefits that a sales candidate can expect to receive and enjoy when working for your company. For example, flexible working options include working from home, discounted gym memberships, private health care, free parking, Friday beers and many other incentives and rewards for hard work.

In today's climate, a flexible work-life balance and excellent company culture are a high priority for many high-performance candidates. Therefore, it's worth offering this lifestyle to employees. In addition, a company that provides a great working space, remote working, training and other incentives will undoubtedly attract sales talent. Promoting an employee-focused culture is necessary for attracting potential talent to your team.

Incentives are a great way to enrich your employer's brand, as prospective talent can see that staff members are valued and rewarded for their dedication. Introducing incentives will not only attract fresh faces, but it will also increase your staff retention rates.

Here are some great incentives you should consider using to attract sales talent.

5) Get Help From Sales Recruitment Experts

With so many things to consider when figuring out how to attract sales talent, it could be worthwhile enlisting the help of an experienced recruitment consultant. For example, maybe you don't have the time to promote your company digitally, or you may not yet have the resources or processes to train fresh talent. If this is the case, our established recruitment process can help.

We've been securing the best sales talent for over 25 years, and our results speak for themselves, with over 2,000 graduates placed annually. Find out why we're the UK's number one choice for graduate sales recruitment solutions, and get in touch to learn more about our offering. With our support, you will realise your potential and discover how to attract sales talent.