You can’t scale your business without hiring the right people. As you scale up, you spend more and more time recruiting to find the right people for your team.

There’s so much weight put on making the right hire and for good reason. A good hire accelerates the team performance and improves the team culture. A bad hire can set you back months in making progress toward your goals.

This is especially true for sales teams, where the success rate for new rep hires hovers around 65%. Read that again. 1 out of 3 sales reps either quit or get fired within 12 months.

So how do you know when you have the right person? What makes a good hire?

There’s no “simple hack” for this one, and I am hardly qualified to teach you how to make the right hire every time. I have hired hundreds of sales reps over the last 10 years, but I’ve made dozens of bad hires at every level of the revenue organization.

At our absolute best, Levelset’s annual sales rep retention rate was 70%. These results are far from perfect, but we built a process that worked for our team and culture. We also learned some key lessons along the way that apply to every business that is hiring for sales talent.

‍

Who to hire

It’s often said that hiring is “part art and part science”. Well knowing who to hire is definitely the “art” part of the process. We are talking about humans, and humans are complicated. In most hiring processes you spend 2-3 hours with a prospect and you have to make a decision that impacts both your business and the candidate's life.

It’s a heavy decision to hire someone. You are taking on the responsibility of providing for them and their family. You are also responsible for giving them an opportunity to learn and grow in their career. And if it works out great, you are either going to have to give them more money and responsibility or they are going to move to another company that offers better prospects. Not exactly a simple decision.

When you are looking for the right people to join your team, there are some heuristics that help you narrow down to the best fit candidates…‍

‍

Above all, hire for character‍

High performing teams are built on trust. You want to find people that operate with high integrity. These team members are accretive to the culture because they are bought in on the mission and they are looking to bring people along with them to achieve success.

I have a simple rule on managing teams: “No Negative Nodes”. You know a negative node when you see them. Toxic, non-conforming, always complaining, often looking for shortcuts or ways to achieve personal success at the expense of others. They look at the world as a zero-sum game and they always looking for an edge. It is nearly impossible to build a strong culture with negative nodes on the team. Doesn’t matter if they are the top sales person and carry 25% of the team number. Once identified, negative nodes have to go.

Hiring for character requires going beyond just the interview and the resume. You have to talk to references: old co-workers and managers. Listen for red flags in the reference call and make sure you are evaluating a high integrity candidate.‍

‍

Beware of extroverts

While we are talking about references, it’s important to remember that sales reps are good at selling. This includes selling themselves to get the job. I have found that senior sales leaders are the best at this. But don’t be fooled. The good talkers don’t always make good salespeople or good managers.

Look for the ones who follow a sales process. The ones who operate with discipline who can speak specifically about how they were able to achieve success in their life.

Don’t let a good story and a clean haircut fool you into thinking you have a strong candidate. Let them tell you how they did it in detail. You have to really fight your instincts on this. You want to believe the candidate, but you must lean in and get the specifics.

The same is true for introverts or those who don’t like to promote themselves. Look for a track record of success, then ask direct questions about their experiences. You will quickly be able to separate those who really did the work from those who are just trying to get another job.‍

‍

A little enthusiasm goes a long way

Perhaps my favorite signal of a good sales candidate is the energy they bring into the conversation. Are they excited? Do they act like they want the job? When they talk about the team or the customer from their previous role, are they enthusiastic? Is the rep tapping their leg under the table because they have a ton of nervous energy? These are the signals of someone who is energized and motivated to do the job well.

A mentor of mine would often remind me “a little enthusiasm goes a long way”. It’s totally true for most roles and it is especially true for sales teams. Enthusiasm is contagious and it makes getting the sale a lot easier. Too much of it and it feels inauthentic. It’s hard to fake enthusiasm and most people are just born with it.

You can be successful without enthusiasm, of course, but we are trying to limit our risks in the hiring process and this is a good filter to find the best fit candidates.‍

‍

Learners are earners

Success in sales requires developing skills over a long period of time. This is uncomfortable and difficult. Most reps struggle to apply coaching and rarely search out education or skills development on their own. The exceptional reps are learners. They actively seek out coaching and feedback. They are always looking for ways to improve their skills, and a proven ability to build skills trumps intelligence every time.

Find the candidates who like to learn. Doesn’t mean that they are a bookworm, but that helps. They could be into podcasts or youtube channels, they could have a group of friends with similar jobs that they meet with to get better. The point is that they are self-aware and constantly looking to build more skills. This is the mark of ambition. You are never done learning. ‍

‍

Grit and Perseverance

Sales is tough job. Only 3% of prospective customers are actively buying at any time. You have to reach out cold to prospects and develop relationships. You get rejected regularly. You have to put your name and reputation on the line every day. To be successful you must persevere.

It’s difficult to interview for grit. Saying “I’m gritty” is like saying “I’m funny”. It’s not very believable. Instead, ask for anecdotes from the candidates life. Learn how the candidate has overcome personal or professional obstacles. Listen for the stories about when they were down and out or when they felt like they wanted to quit but decided to stick with it.

Like most things, success in sales usually goes to the people who refuse to give up. Like dog on a bone, they won’t stop until they get what they want.‍

‍

Ambitious

The sum of all other positive characteristics is ambition. The best fit candidate operates with integrity because they believe long term relationships deliver success. They can speak to the specific ways that they deliver the success because they are trying to pattern-match and create habits for themselves. They understand the energy and enthusiasm is contagious and they want to make the other people around them feel great. They want to learn and grow their skills so they can take on more responsibility and hit bigger goals. They know that success is a long road and they are undeterred by obstacles on their path.

Ambition is at the root of success in sales. Get to know the candidates goals for their life: personal, professional, and financial. The specific goals don’t really matter, they could be big or small. Goals are relative and each person has their own motivations. On the other hand, the lack of goals is a red flag. I can assure you that someone without goals is not ambitious.

You do not want sales reps or sales leaders who lack ambition.‍

‍

How to hire

Many books and articles have been written on this topic. I don’t want to belabor the point, but I will share some simple guidelines for how to run a successful hiring process:

• be clear on the job description, write it yourself. Reps can smell when the post is written by HR
• use your network, give a bounty to reps who bring their friends
• use all the recruiting apps, ziprecruiter, linkedin, etc., but the best candidates will come from your network
• build a scorecard based on the criteria you care about. Pick 3-5 characteristics that matter most to the role and have every interviewer evaluate based on these criteria
• At least 2 people from the team should interview the person. HR doesn’t count. They can filter candidates based on qualifications but they should not be influencing the hiring decision
• Be transparent about compensation, about current team performance, about the difficulty of the job, and about what it takes to be successful. Also be transparent about what success looks like.

This isn't a comprehensive list, but it is a good start for building your own hiring principles.

Simple hiring process for front line reps:

1. initial call screen: confirm background and experience, get aligned on role, responsibility, and compensation expectations, schedule hiring manager interview
2. interview #1 (30-min): meet with hiring-manager, deep dive on professional experience, grade scorecard
3. interview #2 (30-min): meet with another manager that is not directly hiring this person, assess cultural fit and grade scorecard. Schedule mock demo
4. Mock demo (or mock-call if its an SDR): send mock demo deck and script in advance. Give them the answers to the test. 3 things you want to learn: did they do their homework, can they take the coaching and apply it, do they sound natural on the demo (you can’t really teach this)
5. Reference call - back channel if you can
6. Closing Call - tell them you are going to send an offer. Tell them how excited you are to bring them into the team. Get the CEO and other execs involved to get them over the line
   ‍

Bonus: One of my favorite sales hiring resources is from The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge. This is a must read for anyone scaling up a sales team.