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Hiring and Training a World-Class Inside Sales Team

Genie Parker | Articles > From the section: Sales Management

July, 2015 |

Employing and keeping top-performing sales reps is daunting. They are difficult to find, and even harder to keep. To discover what makes talented sales reps tick, your company has to get inside the mind of talent. How do you create a positive selling environment? What can you do to make them sale more, faster? Are sales reps right for the job? You want to keep the top performers on your team, rather than your competitors. To make your inside sales talent thrive, you will need to master:

Monitoring and reviewing performance
Effectively training new hires
Attracting the right talent
Hiring the right talent

Attracting Candidates

The first step in building a high performing sales team is to attract the right candidates. If you don’t attract the right sales reps, then managing them will be difficult. So how do you make high performing candidates interested in working for your company? Here are some ways to attract high-performing talent.

Search for Candidates at the Right Time and Locale

Follow the always be recruiting rule (ABC) and you’ll always have a viable pool of possible candidates to hire. The time to attract the right talent is not just when you’re in need. If you do it then, it’s too late. You’ve already lost valuable sales time waiting for candidates to contact you and then going through the hiring process.

Candidates who contacted the company previously in which you have interest are great for future hiring. You’ve already interviewed them and let them know that you weren’t ready to hire then but wanted to meet with them for future openings. So, the next time you need new sales reps, you’ll have a pool to hire from. You can almost cut the hiring time in half if you don’t have to go through the entire recruiting and interviewing process at one time.

Advertising the Position

The type of candidates you attract depends on how and where you advertise a position. This can make a big difference. Of course, all inside sales teams want the most talented reps, but attracting them is an art. Many of the most successful candidates are already working and not actively looking for a job. We call them passive candidates.

A recent study by CEB stated that 44 percent of employed workers identify themselves as passive candidates. You can attract them by letting them know that the grass is greener on your side. Stay in front and center in the minds of these sales reps so they see you in a positive light and notice your company. Later, when you can make an offer, they won’t refuse. Placing ads in the places they frequent, like industry-related groups or LinkedIn usually produces more qualified candidates than generalized job sites like Indeed and CareerBuilder. You can also use You Tube, Facebook, and Twitter. Share information about your company and the job opening. Candidates can get to know you and your company on a personal level. And don’t forget about current employees. They can be active recruiters to spread the word about your company. The bottom line is to get creative and not just rely on standard job sites to recruit the best candidates.

After you’ve found the best places to advertise, you have to ensure that your ad is attractive to candidates. How do you attract the best candidates? Write the ad as if you are speaking directly to the candidate. What would they be interested in? Besides the key requirements for the position, ensure that you address the main concerns for top performing sales reps: earning potential, opportunity, training and professional development, what the company’s culture is like, etc.

Hiring the Talent That’s Right for Your Company

Use evaluation techniques to determine if the candidate is right for the job. Evaluation is key if you want to hire candidates with a high likelihood of success. According to Hire Right, Hire Profits, 90 percent of all salespeople must be the right match for the position for high performance. This means that managers must be skilled at evaluating candidates during the hiring process. The candidate must want the job just as much as you need to hire someone. If it’s not the right match you will be back at square one looking for someone else.

Assessing the Candidate

Determine whether the candidate wants “a” job or your job. Fifty-five percent of people in sales should be doing something else, and another 20 to 25 percent should be selling something else. Many people just want to make money to make a living. They may not be interested in sales per se, but just the quick fix of having a job and the monetary rewards it brings. They may use a sales job temporarily until something better comes along. You want candidates that like selling! It will create a positive environment and be easier for them to succeed.

Here are some ways to evaluate candidates:

Give the candidate a chance to interview you to determine sincere interest. If they’re really interested, they’ll ask a questions
Use mock situations to see if the candidate will perform according to your goals
Conduct a phone interview first – This will determine the candidate’s phone skills. Do they have energy? Are you intrigued to meet them in person? Can they build a relationship with you over the phone?

Ask how the candidate prepared for the interview – Determine research skills for clients

Training New Salespeople

You’ve assessed and found the perfect candidates for your sales team. The onboarding process and first 90 days is crucial. The first 30 days are about learning. After the initial training session, set up a mentoring program. Let new sales reps shadow the mentor for observation and to ask questions. This should include practicing your company’s standard presentation, observing the mentor and other salespeople, and spending time with management and in sales meetings to review accounts.

Prior to new reps beginning the onboarding process, they need the correct tools. Having an easy-to-use and efficient sales CRM system available after training can shorten the transition on the sales floor. It’s one less thing for the new trainee to worry about. This can make a difference in sales reps’ performance. Sales CRM software like VanillaSoft lets you save time and money on training new employees because of its easy-to-use interface. Sales reps can be up and running in as little as 15 minutes when ready to sell. So, Instead of spending time learning the software, they can concentrate on selling.

Track Progress with Monitoring and Recording

After the training session and onboarding period, it is important to monitor new sales reps’ progress to ensure that they understand what was learned in training and how they’re progressing during each stage of the sales cycle. Measuring overall performance will identify the strengths and weaknesses.

Acquire New Vision with Real-time Calling Statistics and Reporting

VanillaSoft offers a call-activity dashboard so you can quickly and easily monitor a sales rep’s performance. See real-time calling statistics for each sales rep, broken down by lead source, call result, or result group. You can directly impact new customer interactions as they happen with live monitoring and eavesdrop. In addition, easily record calls for later review and to use in retraining sessions. This is a valuable tool to teach sales reps about what happened during the call. And when combined with the VanillaSoft web reports feature, you can easily see historical data broken down by sales rep, last call information and more.

Measure the Right Sales Success Indicators for High Performance

Once new sales reps are ready for the sales floor, give them reasonable goals and sales quotas to achieve. Measure their progress with indicators. An important part creating a high performance sales team from new trainees is to measure the right indicators of sales success and progress. It’s not just a numbers game: number of calls, time on the phone, etc. that drives sales. Though these are definitely important, it’s the of quality calls that make the sale. Things like making sure that sales reps call qualified leads, knowing how to overcome objections, and having engaging conversations are vital to the success of your team.

Coaching and measuring these key performance indicators without the right sales CRM software can be a daunting task. Managers can spend more time collecting data than analyzing and reviewing information. VanillaSoft offers a comprehensive suite of tools to streamline the evaluation process, to make creating a high-performance sales team easy. Its dynamic reporting wizard gives managers visibility to let them know what’s going on at each stage of the sales cycle.

Kick-Start Sales Reps to Success

So, if you want to hire and produce a high-performing sales team, start with the right candidates, train them effectively, and end with the right tools for production and evaluation to ensure they are on progressing successfully. Only then can you kick start new sales reps to the fast track of success.

Author Bio: Genie Parker

Genie brings more than 30 years of experience in sales and marketing with an emphasis on doing business on the phone. Genie comes with a broad experience reaching into hundreds of industries including technology, manufacturing, non-profits, financial services, and business services.

Prior to joining VanillaSoft, Genie Parker co-founded Parker, Murray and Associates, a remarkably successful boutique outbound call center. Genie's company consistently delivered sales, qualified leads, appointments, marketing and fund-raising services to businesses from The Fortune 500 to small businesses across the United States for 15 years.

PMA gained a reputation in the industry with companies looking to carry out highly productive calling campaigns while ensuring a quality customer experience. Her knowledge of technology and the entire phone sales process gives her the ability to bring the two together to give VanillaSoft customers the tools they want and need.

Genie has worked at such companies as L’Oréal, Monet, and 1928 Jewelry and holds a B.S. degree in Marketing from The University of Southern Mississippi.

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