Tips for hiring your sales team

We’re going to be talking about how to hire your team.

We’re going to go through job descriptions. It’s not a big, big piece. We just want to talk a little bit about the job descriptions. We’ve got plenty of resources for you there.

And then when it comes to sourcing your candidates, what are the best places to source them and how can you look for good folks?

And then I really want to focus a lot of time on the interview process, because when it comes to interviewing salespeople, that’s difficult because they’re really good at telling you exactly what you want to hear.

Job descriptions: Let’s talk a little bit about that there. Basically, the thing I wanted to touch on is the best practices for building out your job description. A lot of companies, when they’re building out their job description, they kind of start with, here’s all about the company and not necessarily about the role.

And so it is really important to document really what you’re looking for in that role right off the bat.So talk about the title. Some people debate whether or not they should be putting income in there or the salary in there, but when it comes to a sales role, I would always put the salary in there and okay, that’s a, there’s a good differentiator. There’s salary, and then there’s on target earnings. When it comes to salespeople, they want to know how much they possibly can make. And so the important number to be putting in there is what the potential is for that role. Don’t go outrageous. Don’t go crazy. Put something realistic that you expect them to be able to make if they hit a hundred percent of their quota. Okay? So put that full amount, the bigger number always attracts the, the better people to this role.

Okay? So put those numbers in, but leave the content about the company to the bottom of it, okay? Get through your requirements and your, your responsibilities and all the detail you want to put in there about the job description at the top. And if they like all of that stuff, then they’ll move to the company information and learn about you and see if the culture is right and the company is right. Okay? So focus on the job title and what, who they report to and all that stuff at the top. And then move the company information down to the bottom. We’ve got several examples of job, job descriptions for SDRs, for AEs, for sales managers, for VPs, things of that nature. So they’re all available in your resource center, they’re on the community. So go in there and jump in and take a look at what you, whatever you need, you can pull down and download.

Okay? Alright, let’s talk about sourcing your candidates. Where do we find these folks? Right? Where, where do we put our job descriptions out? So putting them out online on your website is always a must. You’ve gotta have it in the career section on your website, but then using places like LinkedIn or Indeed or places like that are going to be helpful to drive volume for you. It’s just the first place I would always source candidates is by networking. Okay? I would look at the people you already have in your company and share with them that you’re trying to find these roles. Tell ’em exactly what you’re looking for. Offer up a referral bonus or something to that effect, because your network is always going to drive more quality, strong candidates than trying to dig through a pile of folks that come from an interview. I mean, sorry, from a job board.

So a lot of times what you’re seeing with an indeed is people just clicking buttons and saying, Hey, I need to inter, I need to interview. I need a job, I need a job, I need a job. They’re not digging through what you’re looking, what you’ve put out there as the in, as the job description and really going, this is exactly right for me, right? But if you put it out into the network, you know, talk about it on LinkedIn, share it with your friends, tell ’em that you’re looking for these specific types of people that hopefully your network will start feeding. And again, when it comes to sourcing candidates like this too, it is something you want to be doing all the time. If the job is not available, still get out there and network, still talk to people, still engage in doing coffees and things like that, always with the mind of potentially recruiting for an open position later on down the road.

Okay? So, so we’re seeing candidates keep within your network as much as you possibly can. The other source is through actual recruiters, headhunters, right? So when it comes to hiring folks at the earliest level, sometimes that’s effective, sometimes that’s not. I would always recommend going to a recruiter or a high level executive recruiter when it comes to higher level positions. But when it comes to the lower level positions, obviously us at fuel sales, we have a training program where we’re teaching SDRs and having the opportunity for people to hire directly from us. But if you’re just going to look for a recruiter for an SS d r, that’s someone doing your job, basically sourcing for you and, and presenting you candidates, not necessarily doing the work that we’re doing of training. So you can look at camps such as ours that would be helpful in that area.

I just don’t recommend the recruiter at that, at that stage. Just wait till it gets a little bit higher in the role, okay? Alright. If you have any questions about any of this stuff, feel free to reach out to me in more detail about your specific roles you’re hiring for, okay? Alright. Now let’s talk about interviewing those candidates. Okay? We’ve already got the job description figured out. We’re starting to source candidates now they’re pouring in the door, right? They’re pouring in the door. And what do we do? How do we take the next steps with it? So what I’d like to do is really kind of walk through a pattern that would be beneficial for you as you go through interviewing folks, right? So the, the first, it’s almost like a funnel of these candidates that are coming in, right? And when I was talking about using Indeed or these job boards that are out there, you in, depending on the market time that, that you’re watching this, there could be a lot of people on the market wanting or interested in the job that you’re posting, right?

So you post that thing out there and two days later you get 200 resumes. How do you know which ones are the best? How do you know? Do you have to take it? It’s all about you taking time and looking through every single resume and looking at the piece of paper that they presented you, that that’s very difficult to judge somebody just on the resume that they gave you, right? So what I would recommend, number one thing to do, the first thing to do is, is email them a list of questions, email them a list of questions, not a list of 50 questions, just three questions. Just say, I appreciate you applying for this job. We’re looking to kind of weeded down or whittle down the group, basically. So what I’m asking is, can you please complete these three quick questions for me? And make one of the questions a little bit more of a, a longer response, more of a, what you feel like an essay would look like to you.

Okay? So what you’re hoping to get out of these questions are really their ability to actually understand what you’re asking for and their written communication skills, okay? You’d be surprised at how many people when you ask a complex question that they have no idea what you’re asking, and the answers don’t even relate to the question, as well as the people that have a good understanding of what you’re asking, but can’t formulate a sentence very well <laugh> and can’t, and, and don’t pay attention to the details around grammar and things of that nature. Okay? So it’s a great way to weeded out folks in the beginning and whittle that down to a smaller amount. You’re going to have almost 50% of those people not even reply to your email asking for the, for the response with questions, right? I mean, the response to the questions. So it’s a great way to whittle down a, a large group if you get it right off the bat.

And, and a great question to ask in that is, I always say, tell me about a time when you set a goal for yourself. How did you set the goal? And then what did you do about achieving that goal? How did you go about achieving that goal? Okay? That helps you to understand a lot about one person. You know, the way they respond to that, if they tell you in detail the re the way they set the goal and the stepped process that they took to achieve the goal, that tells you a lot about that person. If they just say, well, I wanted to graduate college and I did <laugh>, it’s like that’s not what I was looking for in any way. Okay? And it helps you again, weed it out, weeded out candidates and, and only focus on the people that you’d be more interested in. Okay? So then the next step in the process, you’ve sent ’em an email list of questions. They responded to you, you got a smaller group of people, now let’s bring ’em in for the first interview. And when it’s remote like this, in a lot of cases you’re looking at remote candidates. That’s something you can do on Zoom as well. So it’s basically our first face-to-face interview, okay? So number two is a face to face interview.

You want to be able to read body language, you want to understand the way they connect with somebody, the rapport they build, things of that nature During this interview process, make it 30 minutes, 45 minutes tops and go into this interview with a plan. Okay? Don’t walk in there just saying, I think I’m going to go just have a conversation with them. Write down the five questions you want to ask each and every person, okay? Make it consistent across the board. Every interview that you do, you want to ask the same questions and see how people respond. So you can compare apples to apples. It’s not just about going, Hey, I had fun during that call. I like that person. It’s one of the biggest mistakes I see early stage founders do when they’re interviewing people is just to be like, I had a good time in that call. I think they’re going to do great. Well, do you understand the skills that they have? Do you understand their capability along this level? Were you able to kind of flush that out? Or are they just really good at building rapport? Right? Are they just really good at taking the conversation down a unique tangent and talking about their, their favorite sports team or something to that nature? Okay? Walk in there with a plan, okay? Have a plan,

Okay? Alright. You’re going to narrow the field down a little bit further from this. And after this one is over, there’s, if you are interviewing an S D r, you’re getting close to the end of your interview process. There’s not a lot left in this. The last thing you’re going to do, I’ll skip down here, is you’re going to do what I would call a culture fit. Now, a culture fit is saying I want you to meet with other people within the organization and take an opportunity to learn whether or not our company is a good fit for you. Okay? This is them basically interviewing your company, but in the same ch in the same sense, the people that are going to be part of this are interviewing them to see if they’re a good fit for the company as well. And you get great feedback from people who are not going to be managing this person because they actually open up a little bit more and share.

So the more your team grows, the more you can have peer interactions with them and have other SDRs, other customer success people, other folks at the same level, interviewing that person in a really relaxed, casual environment. Okay? If you are going to be interviewing an AE or someone above the S D R function, you’re going to want to do one more step in the process where you’re going to do a, what I would call like the a presentation meeting. So what I like to do in this one is I like, I like to have ’em do a presentation for us. And the way that I break it down is I say it’s a 1515, I call it my 1515. I’m just saying I want you to do a presentation for 15 minutes on our company. What did you learn on the web from the conversations you’ve had with me with other people?

I want you to tell me what you are. I mean, just how you would present our company. What do you know about us, right? And then the other 15 minutes I want you to present about something you passionate about. Okay? Share with me anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s your dog, it’s a soccer team, it is anything because what you’re trying to gain in this is for the first 15 minutes, how well did they do their research? What do they know about you and the company and how do they kind of present that back to you? How do they, how do they talk about the company in order to get you engaged with them? And then the other 15 minutes is about passion. It really is about if they became excited and passionate about your product, how are they evoking emotion in the prospect? If they’re going to come to the table with something that they’re really passionate and excited about and they don’t create any emotion in you, that’s telling you a lot about whether or not this is going to be a good fit or not for this role.

Okay? And that’s a big part of the AE process is to kind of generate that excitement around what they’re passionate about. Hopefully they become passionate about your product and can do the same thing, right? Same thing. Alright? So we did the email of questions. We went through the face-to-face interview, we walked in with a plan, then we made ’em present for us. Then we did a culture fit interview. Sometimes when we get down to the bottom three and we’re like, okay, this is it. We have to pick one of those, we’ll do a final interview at the bottom, final face-to-face and finish it off with that interview. Nothing too special about that one. It’s just saying, let’s get to the bottom of the questions that we need to know in order to move forward with one of these good candidates. Okay? The S D R function, don’t make ’em do too much because they are typically very earlier in their stage, right?

And so we don’t necessarily need a presentation. We learned a lot about the email from the email questions, right? That’s their written skills during this one. This is their verbal skills. We’re going to get a good sense. We moved down to the culture fit and did they build good rapport with the people that they engaged with in this? Are they a good fit for us? And if you have to, if you still have a good list of people that you need to weeded out, you can have that final interview for them. Okay? But that’s the basic process. I think the big thing for me when it comes to this side of it is that when you’re interviewing candidates in this position, you can’t take it lightly. Salespeople have the ability to just tell you exactly what you want to hear, and it’s incredibly hard to find the best fit. Okay? A bad decision at the front end of where you’re generating revenue for this company can take a lot, can cost the company a lot of opportunity, okay? So it’s important to come with a really strong plan. If you have any questions, need any additional resources, jump into the community, you’ll find much more there or reach out to me directly. Happy to help.

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