Recruiting Top Performing Sales Executives – Headhunting Tips

Recruiting is one of the key roles of an organization, and every position should be carefully filled. However, some positions demand more attention due to their importance, for example, salespeople; an organization’s revenue is dependent on the salespeople. The hiring process is even more important when you are looking to recruit a sales executive. Due to the importance of sales executives, you should always use the best recruitment resources at your disposal. And where executives are concerned, headhunters are the best.

However, simply hiring a headhunter will not guarantee you the best hire. Instead, there are some things that you should do to ensure that you get the best employee. As Stone Executive Recruitment recommend, If you are in the process of recruiting a sales executive for your organization, below is a look at some top headhunting tips that will help you get the best talent.

1. Understand Your Organization Needs

When looking to hire a sales executive, the first thing you need to do is understand your organization needs. To do this, you need to ask yourself important questions such as Why do I need to hire a sales executive? What contributions am I looking for? What are the organization’s goals and objectives (especially with regards to sales)? Can the organization sustain the new hire(s)? And so on. Once you understand and identify the hiring needs of your organization, you will be able to recognize the right type of person you need to fill the position.

2. Research Your Competitors

Competitor research is a common practice in the business world. However, most businesses only research competition to understand the threat they pose. But this is not the only benefit that competitor research can offer you. Researching your competitors, especially the top ones, will tell you what they are doing right, and help you learn some of the things you can change about your organization. This can come in handy when you are looking to recruit top executives.

By researching your competitors, you can be able to find out who are the best sales executives in the market, which will give you an idea of what to look for. In the process of doing so, you might even identify possible talent that your headhunters can recruit.

3. Create the Right Job Description

Creating a job description might seem like a small task in the hiring process, but it is very vital, especially where headhunters are involved. A poor and/or vague description can cause a lot of problems, from bad hires to a long and expensive recruitment process. The damage can be especially extensive where executives, and more particularly, sales executives are concerned; a bad hire in the position of sales executive can mean poor sales performance.

Therefore, when looking to use headhunters to recruit a sales executive, one of the most fundamental things you need to do is ensure that you create the right job description. Make sure that describe exactly the type of employee you are looking, their experience, required knowledge of brand and products, whether or not they will undergo training, their expected responsibilities, additional skills that are required, and so on. The more detailed the description, the easy it will be for a headhunter to find you the best talent.

4. Hire A Reliable Executive Search Firm

Why there are a lot of people in the job market with good sales skills, finding the best top performer salespeople is not an easy task, due to the fierce talent competition. Therefore, if you are looking to nab the best talent you need to have an edge over other employers. This is where a good executive recruitment comes in handy.

You should thus make sure that you have the services of good headhunters on retainer. If you don’t, you should proceed to choose a good firm that you can use for the current and future recruitment process. Some of the things to look for when hiring an executive recruitment firm include:

• A reputation of good hires – you need to hire a headhunter who you can rely on to find you the best talent
• Experience working in your organization’s field of operation – a headhunter must understand the industry they are recruiting in in order to find the best talent
• Access to talent – the headhunter you choose must have wide access to the talent on the market – both active and passive job seekers
• Guarantees – a good headhunting firm should be able to offer guarantees to ensure that you only get a good hire

Once you find the right executive search firm, you can leave the process of finding the talent to them, and await the recommendation of a candidate.

5. Make Sure Your Company is Reputable and Desirable

When the headhunters you have hired approach candidates, they must be able to sell your company to them, especially if they (candidates) are not actively searching for a job. Unfortunately, they cannot be able to do this if your organization is not desirable. Therefore, you should make sure that your company is desirable to potential candidates by:

• Making your brand visible – candidates will be more likely to accept recruitment into recognized brands
• Having a great organization culture – candidates will be more agreeable to recruitment if they are being offered a position in an organization that has a good workplace culture
• Offering good benefits – the employee benefits offered by your organization must be great if you want to grab the best talent. Therefore, you must make offer favorable salaries, bonuses, and commissions, insurance, paid time off, wellness programs, career progression programs, and other benefits.

6. Be Ready to Interview Candidates Immediately

Headhunters do not hire employees for you; they find the best talent, recruit by informing (and selling to them) the vacant position in your organization. Once they are agreeable, they will recommend the candidate, and leave you to do the rest of the work – hire. Therefore, after acquiring the services of a headhunting firm, you must be ready to interview and (if right fit) hire a candidate after they are recommended. The talent can be found almost immediately, and sometimes, the process can take longer. Your in-house hiring team must be thus ready to go at all times, as soon as a possible candidate is found.

Hiring executives, especially sales executives is not an easy task. However, using a headhunting firm can help to simplify the process. If you are looking to recruit a sales executive for your organization, the above headhunting tips will help to improve the chances of finding the best talent in the market.