How many times have you decided you needed to add sales reps to your team or make some changes and gone to your recruiting function only to find that there is no one you could hire immediately? While your company receives job applications all the time, these are usually from unemployed people who didn’t cut it elsewhere or people who have never sold much of anything and naturally, you don’t feel overly enthusiastic about pegging your hopes on them. Searching for great sales people, evaluating them and courting them to join your company takes time and meanwhile you sales goals that need to be met.
A Sales Talent Pipeline program serves to counter these problems by proactively seeking people with the right mix of skills, experience and DNA. The program operates year round and actively searches for talent even when there are no open positions, so that new hires can be made just-in-time or as open positions are identified. Various activities will be used to find and attract the right type of sales professionals and much like a sales pipeline, the sales talent pipeline will be a funnel-list of all the potentially hireable candidates at various stages of evaluation and readiness for hire.
While cost conscious companies might be weary of the extra workload of year round recruiting, the cost can be weighed against the lost opportunity of having an understaffed sales team or keeping under-performing reps on-board because there is no one available to replace them.
To learn more about how to establish a sales talent pipeline program for your company, contact us.
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Eliot Burdett
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)
- 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
- How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
- Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021