Identify the portrait of ideal sales managers for your business
For different companies, different sets of skills are crucial for sales managers, so identify what set of skills you need and which ones are essential. Rely on your business goals and targets. Analyzing portraits of your best performing sales managers may be of help here.
Make sure you provide the pay that is within the local market values
If you want to get the best staff, you have to provide them with good conditions. This is the rule of the market. So be sure that the conditions you provide are within the local market values. This is applicable not only to salary but to the package of benefits, as what is optional in one country may be a very standard thing in another.
Offer an attractive role title
While a company is still a start up it may be challenging to provide top levels of salary, however, there is something else you can use to attract top candidates from competitors to your team. Offer them a role that is higher than their current position, so that this career move will still be attractive for them. For sales managers it could be such titles as Sales Director or Regional Sales Director or Head of business development, etc.
Identify your value proposition
What are the points that should attract your star candidates to your offer? You should find something that stands out from other similar proposals on the market. It may be your corporate culture, or great professional team or unique projects you are working on. All these things matter to candidates, so make sure your key advantages will be noticeable for them.
Rely on actual figures and cases in the candidate evaluation process
To understand how well a particular sales manager performs, ask them what their quota was and whether they met it, what amount of calls or emails they made, what was the average deal size, how many deals they had per year, what products they had worked with, what were the industries, the regions and size of their clients, the level of decision makers they communicated with, the products they sold. All this would help you understand how well the candidate’s experience alligns with your product.
Explore candidate’s motivation
Make sure that your proposition aligns well with what the candidate is looking for. Ask the candidate about their plans for the future, their idea of a perfect job and their top three criteria for decision making. This might help you explore their motivation deeper and understand whether they have the right motivation to join your team.
After finding your ideal candidate request references from their previous employers
Previous leaders, colleagues and employers may tell you a lot of interesting things about the person you plan to hire. You can use this information to confirm that you are making the right choice, but also identify any potential problems in future or even to save you from making a mistake by hiring the wrong person.
Move fast
In competitive markets candidates are flooded with interesting opportunities, especially when we talk about star candidates and top-performers, so make each stage of your hiring process as short as you can.
Provide full information about your company and the role for the candidate
Don’t forget to mention all the crucial points including advantages and challenges of the role and ensure that the candidate does not have any unanswered questions.
Find who your competitors are on the market and try to reach candidates that work or used to work for those companies
Candidates from those companies should have the most relevant experience, and may be interested in considering a role in a similar company that gives them more opportunities for personal and professional growth.