Page 22 – Peak Sales Recruiting

14 Sales Recruiting Strategies You Need to Build a Top Performing Team

To execute your hiring strategy and achieve your sales targets, you need the right sales talent. Here are 14 strategies you can use to ensure you hire the right salespeople for your company.

There is a robust business need for objective sales hiring. Creating strategies to hire salespeople who will hit quota and deliver revenue is critical. Simply put, you need to build a team that will help you reach your sales goals.

Here are 14 sales recruiting strategies to make your hiring process more effective:

1. Build Ideal Candidate Profiles to Match the Requirements of Your Sales Strategy

One of the biggest issues in the hiring process arises when leaders haven’t defined what they need from their salespeople. Do you need a hunter who can penetrate the market and close net-new business? Or a lead nurturer who can close warm leads? Or how about someone to overtake and farm existing accounts?

Create a clear outline of the ideal candidate’s skills, experience, and DNA. Your job description and recruitment efforts can be built around this outline.

Key traits of your ideal candidate can include:

Behaviors required to sell to your client

Attitudes required for best fit for role and best cultural fit

Skill set necessary to excel in your selling environment

Personality characteristics like competitiveness, resilience, conscientiousness, persistence, or drive

2. Showcase Your Company as an Employer of Choice

Top performing sales professionals are picky when it comes to choosing who they work for. And they should be: they have the luxury of working for the best because they are the best at what they do.

Some tactics for attracting the right candidates to your company include:

Online – this is likely the first place that potential candidates will look, so make sure your website is professional and the content is up to date.

Offices – make sure your offices look like a place where success is celebrated and sales results are expected. If your company is remote, make sure your virtual presence is equally as professional.

Interactions – when speaking with candidates, discuss marquee customers you’ve done business with. This demonstrates the value of your customer relationships which top sellers want to see.

Reputation – Hire the best and your company will become known for attracting high performers.

3. Stop Relying on Job Boards

Top performing salespeople are too busy closing deals to browse job boards. Active candidates on job boards are ones who are out of work or at risk of being laid off for poor performance.

Using a job board can increase your time-to-hire and average annual turnover. Instead, leverage your employee’s existing networks.

4. Use Cash to Attract Top Candidates

A secret in talent acquisition is that great salespeople know other great salespeople. It is because networking and relationship building are critical for success in sales. Existing reps with the right expertise will likely know other strong candidates.

To leverage your sales force’s personal network, create an internal referral program. Make this program lucrative. Offer crash rewards when an employee’s referral is hired and hits their sales quota.

Salespeople are motivated by money. Incentivize them to bring the talented people they know to you. This is a great way to foster top performance and a thriving team environment.

5. Build a Strong Employer Brand

Potential employees assess the brand of a company before applying for or accepting a job. They will research you as much as you’re researching them. Ensure they are wowed while they are researching your company online.

To attract top performing salespeople, there are several things you can do. When it comes to your online employer brand, be sure to position your company as a market leader. Top salespeople are always interested in working for industry leaders or high-growth companies. Feature key client logos in the recruiting process to show your legitimacy. By emphasizing your reputation and resources, you gain the attention of top talent.

Understanding employee branding and sales culture is where employee engagement begins. Engage talent on your website from the first point of contact. Do this by showcasing:

Core company values

Testimonials of how your all-star sales team is living your values

Success stories of personal growth, promotion, or role expansion

Stories of your current team’s capabilities

Employee awards and recognition

Blogs written by employees about their professional engagement

Make potential candidates feel like they know you by personalizing your company brand. This is a crucial first step to creating a connection with your target candidate pool.

6. Attract Top Performers With Your Company

If you must publish an online job ad, be strategic about what it is you’re actually selling. Many job descriptions are identical, yet some companies receive hundreds of resumes while others get none.

If you focus on what a candidate has to gain by working at your company, not what they will do, you won’t have to rely on the job description for candidate flow. The best job descriptions include compelling stories about client relationships and key accounts. Or, include personal stories about the beginnings of your sales force and how it has grown and evolved the company. The best salespeople seek challenging and innovative sales environments. Showcase how your company creates this in your job descriptions.

7. Interview for Sales DNA

Don’t interview based on generic hiring criteria. Instead, include the Sales DNA of candidates from the first point of contact. Peak’s research has found that knowing how to interview for sales DNA is one of the keys to successful sales hiring.

Sales DNA refers to the traits a candidate possesses that will make them successful. Sales DNA is different from sales skills. You can test candidates during the interview process by asking specific questions once this DNA is identified.

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8. Introduce Science To Your Recruitment Process

Effective hiring leverages the power of science. One way to introduce science into your sales hiring process is by using psychometric testing to assess sales candidates. This tool helps you objectively assess candidates’ communication and behavioral style. Its purpose is to predict the behavior, performance, and motivating factors of an individual in a specific context.

Typically, psychometric assessments measure:

Aptitude

Mental cognition capabilities

Behavioral skill sets

Motivating factors

The results will help you decide which candidate will fit into your team culture best. It will also give insight into how they will respond to customer needs.

Psychometric testing is key to understanding if someone has the persistence to sell. It’s an objective tool that can be an important part of hiring the right people.

9. Don’t Overvalue the Resume

Resumes are not the best source of information about how a candidate might perform in a given role. They should not play a large part in any hiring decision. Resumes can confirm factual information but fail to provide more insight. Resume contents do not directly correlate with strong performance. Hiring managers should review other sources of information, in addition to a resume, when making a hiring decision.

10. Assess for Criteria Other Than Experience

Many managers will prioritize experience within the industry as a key criteria when hiring. However, according to a Harvard Business Review study there is “zero evidence that applicants with more industry experience will be better employees” (HBR, Alison Beard, 2019). Particular industry experience can be important, but evaluating only on experience is a mistake. In the context of selling, experience is a multidimensional attribute. It may refer to:

Customer group
Technology
Territory
Division of the selling organization

Your selling model, sales environment, and company culture aren’t transferable from a previous role. Experience selling a similar product also doesn’t guarantee success. Don’t simply rely on experience in your assessment process – have a process for how to hire the best salespeople. There are other important factors that shouldn’t be overlooked.

11. Start Conducting Exit Interviews

Creating effective exit interviews can help create lifelong advocates for an organization. They provide invaluable information about your sales leadership’s effectiveness. Exit interviews can help you:

Lower turnover rates
Understand leadership gaps
Reduce the cost of sales turnover

Creating ambassadors can come from effective exit interviews to understand employee experiences. Employees regularly leave company reviews on sites like Glassdoor.com after their tenure at a company. When they feel heard and understood, they are more likely to give approving reviews. When past employees leave positive reviews of your company, you end up with a channel of organic online content about your company.

12. Get HR the Sales Tools They Need

HR Should be a key player in executing your hiring strategy. But for HR to help you find your new salesperson, it’s up to the VP of Sales to communicate their needs. What type of seller do they need (hunter/farmer)? What type of selling experience is necessary for the role? The cultural fit required for success in the selling organization?

You can provide further guidance for recruiters about how the sales organization functions. Especially in the areas of:

Team performance
Culture
Hiring timelines and ideal profiles
Compensation plans
Individual development plans

Foster your relationship with HR and help them understand your needs to grow a strong team. This way HR can more effectively do their job.

13. Make Your Compensation Plan the Best in the Industry

Salespeople generally have a larger appetite for risk than other workers. A pay plan that offers rewards based on risk appeals to most salespeople. Make the rewards you give for sales performance a clear part of your sales hiring strategy.

The best compensation plans are simple. They provide above market pay and reward the high achievers. They align with sales cycle predictability. The less predictable the sales cycle, the lower commission is and higher base. To attract high-quality candidates, you need to provide a high quality compensation package. As well, new reps should be aware of the potential for internal promotions to become future leaders.

“Sales reps work harder for the chance to earn a reward than they do after receiving one.”

– Doug J. Chung, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School

14. Make Retention Efforts Proactive

World-class sales organizations don’t think of retention efforts in “one size fits all” terms. Instead, they make retention strategies personal. It’s as simple as asking, “what motivates you?” to your new sellers.

It is a given that your reps are motivated by money. However, understanding how to motivate them in other ways can be a huge differentiator in your employee value proposition. Additional motivational factors include:

Challenging accounts
Larger/less developed territories
Personal and professional growth opportunities
More vacation time
Workplace flexibility

The first step in retaining your top performers is knowing exactly what will keep them working for you.

Building a Top Performing Sales Team Starts with Your Sales Hiring Strategy

Your sales hiring strategy is the key to building a better sales team. However, poor implementation can result in failure. You can have an excellent strategy, but you need the right people to execute that strategy. If you lack these people then you have a failing business model.

The battle for perfect candidates isn’t ending anytime soon. Increase your odds of winning by using our tips above. With the right hiring strategies, you have all the tools you need to build a top performing sales force.

How to Solve the Challenges of Managing a Remote B2B Sales Team

Managing a Remote B2B Sales Team
Last year’s Global Leadership Summit predicted that more than half of all employees will work remotely by 2020. For companies used to having a centralized sales force, the move to a remote structure and organizational design has presented sales leaders and their front-line managers unique challenges. Here, we discuss the key challenges of managing a remote sales team and provide actionable solutions to overcome them.

Research has shown that employees and business leaders adapt differently to remote work. Because of this difference in perspective, challenges inevitably arise. As a sales leader, your ability to manage and solve the problems of a remote team can be the difference between a cohesive team that consistently makes their numbers, and one that is isolated and disjointed.

This article breaks down the most common challenges that emerge when managing a remote sales team – and provides solutions on how to solve them.

Challenge: Lack of Face-to-Face Communication

When you have a remote team, the critical processes of trust and rapport building can be weakened or not developed at all. Because the primary mode of communication in a remote sales team isn’t face to face, you need to plan ahead to develop trust and rapport. Ideally, this will happen early in the relationship with your sales team – whether or not you’ve inherited a remote sales team, or are in the process of building one.

Solution 1: Make distance a chance to prove you trust your team

Forum’s recent Global Leadership Pulse survey revealed that trust has a direct impact on the engagement levels of remote teams. Great sales managers turn the autonomy that flexible, remote work has to offer into a chance to show your team you trust them with certain responsibilities and tasks. This leaves your sales reps feeling empowered, engaged and connected – despite the distance.

Solution 2: Learn how to read between the lines

Great remote sales leaders need to be highly perceptive and attuned to the emotional cues you receive from your remote reps. This means you need to learn how to spot potential or existing problems from a distance.

Rely on effective questioning techniques, such as:

Open ended questions (require elaboration and cannot be answered yes or no)
Funnel questions (begin general and ask for more specific detail with each answer)
Probing questions (asking for examples, asking why, asking for clarification)

You will also need to rely on active listening skills, and look for any change in pitch, tone, or pace of exchange in your conversations to identify possible issues.

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Challenge: Employee Isolation

Research from the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management explains that workplace isolation is one of the most critical issues facing remote employees. The results of the study suggest that perceptions of workplace isolation negatively effect trust in supervisors and coworkers for employees.

Solution 1: Make check-ins informal

A practical way to make remote salespeople feel engaged with you as their manager is to eliminate the formality of weekly or daily updates and reviews. Rely on video and teleconferencing, or even text messaging to communicate with your team. The more frequent and less formal, the better.

While it’s still important to schedule formal one on one meetings to review results, pipeline, and activity if necessary, having frequent, less formal check ins in addition to formal meetings is a key way to prevent employee isolation.

Solution 2: Focus more on each individual

With remote employees, trust replaces the traditional structures of hierarchy and control in a physical workplace setting. Build trust with your team, and facilitate trust building between your team members. To do this, you need to connect more on an individual level with each member of your team. Find a commonality or shared interest.

You can’t always talk about work with remote team. Spend some time focusing on the individual to keep them feeling connected and engaged.

Solution 3: Prioritize in-person interactions

The most successful managers of remote sales teams report that face-to-face forums, conferences, workshops and get-togethers are planned well in advance, and happen regularly. Such in person meetings provide opportunities for remote employees to interact professionally and socially with the people they work with. This creates a foundation in the team dynamic that facilitates trust and team rapport.

You can start with an annual meeting at the headquarters of your company, and have the meeting structured well in advance. Use the time to provide in-person coaching and guidance, and allot enough time for socializing and developing personal rapport.

You are the best judge for how often your team needs to be together in person. If you want to meet more frequently, choose a sales conference to attend together. Plan this into your budget so it’s feasible for your team to attend.

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Challenge: Sustaining Employee Engagement

In the same study conducted by the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, organizational commitment and employee engagement is shown to be positively correlated to salesperson job performance. Measuring employee engagement can be a challenge with remote employees. This is because you lack the face-to-face interaction that traditionally allows managers to assess employee commitment to their roles and the organization. According to a report by Gallup, there are three ways to accelerate employee engagement:

Employees who are engaged in their jobs are generally in better health and have healthier habits than employees who are not engaged or are actively disengaged.

-Gallup Report on Employee Engagement

Solution 1: Select the right people

The first line of defense in keeping remote employees engaged is to prevent the problem from arising in the first place.

As much as possible, ensure you are hiring individuals who are enterprising, driven, and able to work independently. While any sales role will require these characteristics to a degree, the amount of independent work required by a remote employee makes possessing these traits significantly more important.

Solution 2: Develop Employee Strengths

HBR reports that developing employee strengths is far more effective to boosting both sales and overall job performance than trying to improve weaknesses. Have your team take the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment, and develop the strengths of your team based on their results. When your sales reps feel empowered, confident in their ability to perform, and supported in their roles, their engagement levels will remain buoyant, even as they face adversity.

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Solution 3: Elevate Employee Well-Being

Gallup research found that when an organization increases employee engagement and well-being, it pays off in terms of lowering medical costs and accelerating important performance outcomes.

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As a sales leader, you need to be highly proactive when managing engagement levels of remote reps. Work with HR to improve employee engagement that is specific to a remote work environment. One way to do this is to actually ask your remote employees what would increase their sense of well-being. This emphasizes your proactive leadership style and you learn what well-being means to your team.

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Challenge: Employees Feel Invisible

The best sales leaders recognize that they are working with an array of personality types. Salespeople who have high needs for recognition may struggle more as remote workers. This is because they may feel they have to do more work to get recognized compared to in-office reps. For reps with high needs for recognition, a lack of acknowledgement can make them feel invisible.

Solution 1: Be vocal about individual and team contributions

As a remote manager, actively and consistently vocalize team wins and individual performances during team meetings and teleconferencing. This is a crucial way to make remote reps feel seen by their team and recognized by leadership.

Take the time to mention when team members upsell an existing account, close a sale, or hit their quarterly targets. For reps who thrive off recognition, these simple acknowledgements lead to higher rates of employee engagement, which leads to higher job productivity and performance, according to this research.

Solution 2: Advertise your accessibility

Make it clear to your team via a shared calendar or team project management board when you are available. This sets clear guidelines for how and when you will respond to phone calls, e-mails, or texts. Suzanne La Forgia, VP of Ad Sales for Captivate, explains that when you are managing a remote team, having reps who feel like they can reach out to you in any given circumstance is crucial for leading a top producing team.

“Across time zones, you can’t operate in a 9-5”

-Suzanne La Forgia, VP Ad Sales, Captivate

Solution 3: Be a supportive leader

Remote managers need to do better than traditional managers at demonstrating supportive leadership. This is because how leaders handle remote employees has been shown to be a good predictor of employee job satisfaction, commitment level, performance, and turnover intentions.

Supportive leadership is more crucial in remote teams because so much more of your team functionality and performance relies on trust. To make your numbers with a remote team, demonstrate high levels of support in your leadership style. This goes beyond weekly check-ins, and includes encouraging your team to take risks in developing new selling approaches, allowing for failure in new prospecting or selling techniques, or supporting them in personal goals they have outside of work.

Solution 4: Create a community where your team can interact

Integrate a technology that addresses the unique challenges of remote work. Creating a communal online space for your team to gather may help eliminate the anxieties remote reps feel due to a lack of visibility. It can include:

Information on each employee that includes personal information like hobbies, favorite activities, personal goals, etc.
Areas of expertise of each employee
Common interest area: recipes, fitness plans, playlists, photo sharing, etc.
A section for frequently asked questions that addresses the issues related to remote work and how these issues can be resolved
An informal chat space (i.e. virtual water cooler)

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Remote Management Means Being a Proactive Leader

Managing your remote salesforce is not unlike managing an in-office team, but requires a heavier emphasis on trust building, creative and frequent communication, implementing team processes, and using technology to connect. As the manager of a remote sales force, be proactive and supportive in your leadership to get the best engagement and performance out of your remote reps.

Want more? Visit the Peak Sales Blog for everything you want to know about building a top performing sales team, from How to Close Your Top Sales Candidate, to conducting Faster, Better, Sales Onboarding.

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Eliot Burdett

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5 Skills Only the Best Salespeople Possess [Infographic]

Recent research from Inc. demonstrates that only 20% of salespeople consistently exceed quota. This data further emphasizes the fact that top performing salespeople are rare. As a result, they are highly sought after by recruiters and world-class employers.

The competitive edge of these top sellers lies within five unique skills.

The infographic below depicts five unique sales skills only the best salespeople possess and how these skills allow them to standout from the rest:

Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:

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Five Ways to Be a Team Player on Your Sales Team

Most people might not immediately associate the terms “team player” and “salesperson.” Salespeople are often stereotyped as lone wolves who only look out for themselves. But that isn’t the case at all – being a top performing salesperson means being a team player.

Why? According to the CEO of Sandler Training, David Mattson, sales teams that are united and work together produce greater results. As a result, being a team player can increase the chances of success for both you and your sales organization.

Research shows nearly 75 percent of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as ‘very important.’ This emphasizes that team cohesion is just as important to the leadership team as it is to you. Top sales leaders know that an aligned team mentality can be the difference between a mediocre and a top performing sales force. Even something as simple as providing the sales team with a name can help build teamwork.

So, what can you do to excel as a salesperson and make the team more effective?

Here are 5 ways to be a team player and maximize your sales performance:

1. Meet Your Targets

According to a survey of senior executives by Accountemps, the most common response to activities that make someone a team player is meeting deadlines. Meeting deadlines means meeting commitments, and the biggest commitment a salesperson can make is hitting their targets.

Meeting or exceeding targets has a positive effect on the team as a whole — it fosters healthy competition and a sense of urgency among other reps to achieve their goals. On the other hand, missing targets lowers morale of peers who are frustrated that management tolerates poor performance.

Although most salespeople are measured on individual metrics, everyone’s goals are all a part of larger team goals. A top performing salesperson understands that exceeding expectations can motivate others and is a fundamental aspect of being a team player.

2. Demonstrate Adaptability

With the introduction of social selling, advances in sales management tools, and establishment of hyper-personalized content marketing, the sales industry has dramatically changed in recent years. The influx of Millennials is also dramatically transforming the workplace.

In order to thrive in a constantly-changing environment, sales teams need to adapt to their surroundings and ensure there is alignment across all members. According to Glenn Parker, author of Team Players and Teamwork: New Strategies for Developing Successful Collaboration, in order to be successful in this age, team players need to be “complex, adaptive, creative and flexible.”

But, how do you become an adaptable team member? “Adaptability starts with maintaining an open mind,” says AJ Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Alumnify and contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine. “It is about being willing to embrace change and be open minded to new things.”

A sales rep who is flexible and adaptable to changing conditions is a strong team player and will maximize his or her performance as an individual contributor.

3. Practice Open Communication

Research shows 86 percent of employees and executives cite a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for the cause of workplace failures. A lack of communication results in inefficiency, low quality work, and frustration among team members. In fact, David Hassel, CEO of 15Five, says, “in the absence of open communication, a snowball effect of negative actions can envelop the energy of an organization.”

Consequently, David emphasizes that making open communication a part of the company culture is vital to business success and strong team players lead by example. “If it is clear that open communication is welcomed, mutual, and expected, [other team members] will proceed to operate on that basis and seek it out in others.”

To thrive as a top member of your sales team, encourage your teammates to openly discuss their goals, values, and concerns.

4. Provide Support

Perhaps one of the most obvious ways of being a strong team player is to provide support to struggling teammates. A-Players take the time to help their co-workers who aren’t meeting targets through one-on-one coaching/mentoring. Mentoring has proven results. According to a survey by Micro Mentor, “salespeople who received mentoring increased their revenue by an average of $47,000 or 106 percent.”

While it’s clear how supporting others makes you a great team member, how does it help you as an individual? According to Jill Konrath, Speaker and Author of Snap Selling, Selling to Big Companies and Agile Selling, helping struggling team members is the best way for sales reps to set themselves up for a promotion to the leadership team.

Not only does providing support improve your team, it can also play a major role in advancing your career.

5. Be Committed

Great team players are committed to achieving goals and putting in 110 percent every day. According to The Career Advancement Blog, “great team players take the time to make positive work relationships with other team members a priority and display a genuine passion and commitment toward their team.”

Demonstrating commitment establishes you as a team player and can help drive your sales success. “If you want great results, you need to be committed,” says President and CEO of Fusion Logistics, Joe Judson, “Commit to being successful or get ready to be passed by those who are.”

Despite the benefits, studies show employees who are committed to their organization are rare. A Gallup poll found that only one in eight workers are psychologically committed to their jobs and “likely to be making positive contribution to their organizations.” As a result, salespeople who are committed to their goals, team, and organization stand out to the leadership team and are more likely to be considered for promotion opportunities.

Become a team player and advance your career

While it’s easy to get lost in your individual work and goals, it should remain a priority to act as a team player on your sales force. Work to consistently meet your targets, adapt to your surroundings, practice open communication, provide support, and demonstrate your commitment to maximize your performance as a sales team and individual contributor.

Ultimately, these contributions will not only help you succeed, but will lead to improved performance for your entire sales organization.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

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Eliot Burdett

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

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3 Things You Need to Know About the Evolving Nature of B2B Sales

The evolution of B2B sales is a fascinating phenomena and one of my favourite topics. There’s a great article here by Frank Cespedes and Tiffani Bova that discusses the evolving nature of sales and the continuing importance of salespeople in the context of successful B2B companies – contrary to the popular notion that sales is a dying profession. They’ve provided some great insights, and explain that B2B selling has evolved so much that:

“it should be the end of glib generalizations about sales and selling, which remain complex, changing, and people-dependent activities in most B2B markets.”

Here are my top three takeaways on the insights shared by the authors about the evolution of B2B selling:

1. The B2B sales force is more important than ever

Data indicates that for B2B companies, salespeople are absolutely critical. Digital marketing channels, on the other hand, and particularly social media, are currently some of the least impactful on sales success. This means that investing in the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and compensation plans of your sales force is imperative for healthy business growth.

Gone are the days of simply hiring someone with sales experience and hoping you’ll find success: you need to heavily invest in the sales force of your business, and work to create a high performance sales culture. Differentiate your business by creating a pro sales culture that’s company wide: buy-in on the importance of sales from the C-Suite will have a massive impact on your sales force performance.

2. There is no silver bullet in B2B sales

There is no single perfect tactic and selling model that works today. The right selling approach is, and has always been, highly dependent on the specific selling environment of each seller. While this is something that has always been true, the rise of solution selling and a increasingly competitive and empowered customer market has changed the way B2B companies understand selling.

Today, there are numerous factors that impact your sales performance cycle and customer value proposition, including:

Sales organization (how you measure effectiveness and manage channels)
Performance management (hiring, evaluations, incentives, development)
Company environment (cross departmental functions, strategy management)

In the current world of B2B selling, there’s no formula for success, there’s just making and executing strategic choices.

3. B2B sales effectiveness isn’t a generalized trait

While it’s useful to assess the characteristics and sales DNA that will make someone great at selling, there is no “golden rule” that will lead you to a great seller. Simply put, the common stereotypes of a good seller are just that: stereotypes. The context and environment the salesperson will be working in are just as critical as sales DNA.

We have spent a lot of time understanding the role of sales DNA in a top performing salesperson, and it can be confusing to determine whether DNA or the resume is what you should hire for. While every sales situation is unique, and each sales manager will know whether their sales team really needs to have the sector experience in order to be successful, DNA typically beats out resume. The best way to accurately predict whether the sales DNA you hire for will be successful in your selling environment? Have a crystal clear definition of what and who your ideal salesperson is before making a hire.

A lot is changing, but some things remain the same

B2B sales is no doubt evolving, however it is interesting to note that the DNA of top salespeople remains consistent – even while we learn that environment plays a big role too. Having spent more than 20 years building sales teams, and the last 10 years helping B2B companies recruit top sales talent, we have observed that there are several primary traits that are common to the top performing salespeople, including:

Ambition
Self awareness
Persuasiveness
Competitiveness
Resilience
Drive

Successful experience in a similar selling environment is critical, and obviously the ability to adapt is also critical – but you’ll find this list of traits common among every successful seller you meet.

Cespedes also notes in his book, “Aligning Strategy and Sales,” that companies who try to recruit great salespeople cannot expect organizational success, since “stardom” is not easily portable. Instead, success comes from disciplined and growing from within. We would add that if time does not permit the luxury of growing from within, that success can be accelerated by targeting candidates with the requisite sales DNA, or behaviours, and success selling from within a similar sales environment, not to be confused with selling within the same industry.

B2B sales is unquestionably evolving, so if you want your sales force to remain ahead of the curve, remember: B2B sales is now more important than ever to business success, there’s no sales silver bullet in creating your selling model, and sales effectiveness depends on the selling environment as well as selling DNA.

Like what you’ve read? Get your secret weapon in making your sales hiring process more effective by downloading our eBook, Make the Right Sales Hire, Every Time.

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Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

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Three Things You are Doing That Prove You Deserve a Sales Promotion

How to Get a Sales Promotion

Think you’ve earned a sales promotion? Does your boss think you’re ready? If you’re doing these three things right now, it will be hard to deny the promotion you deserve.

You’ve been consistently hitting your sales targets, have experienced success in moving opportunities down the pipeline, and actively serve as a mentor to many of your junior team members. You’re obviously succeeding in your present role, but what’s next? Are you ready to take the next step into a management role? If so there are several things you can be doing. Or, are you looking for more recognition and responsibility? Either way, doing these three things will prove you’re ready to move up the career ladder.

Here are three things you are doing that prove you deserve a sales promotion:

1. You Go Beyond Your Individual Goals

As a salesperson who has been in your role for a significant amount of time, you have mastered the numbers aspect of selling and know how to achieve your targets. Your managers can rely on you to consistently hit your sales targets and exceed your quotas.

The value you add to your organization goes above and beyond superior results in the numbers aspect of your work. You bring insights to the team that involve work processes, market challenges, or unnoticed opportunities. For example, you are able to identify an inefficient process with your CRM. You not only provide a solution, but also share the solution with your team and incorporate the improved process into the training of junior team members. You deeply understand the market you work in and contribute to the strategy and planning in territories beyond your own. You demonstrate your aptitude and readiness for a sales promotion by providing insight and vision that goes beyond your individual goals.

2. Your Boss Relies on You

You display informal leadership by mentoring junior team members, and peers come to you for advice and guidance – a sign that you deserve a sales promotion. Not only are you meeting and exceeding all your targets, you are doing so while mentoring new trainees. You help arm them with critical insights about the market, explain what selling tasks and behaviors are most effective, and teach junior salespeople how to best prioritize their responsibilities.

You help to implement pilot projects or prospect an unassigned territory. You constantly seek out new information to deepen your knowledge base — and, to go further, you freely share this knowledge with others. You are an independent learner. You seek out training opportunities on your own accord instead of waiting for your manager’s suggestions. Finally, you are committed to honing and refining your skills, even as you excel in your sales role.

As Max De Pree, author of Leadership Jazz explains, one of the biggest indicators that you are ready for a leadership or management role is that managers are able to observe you recognizing learning opportunities for others. It’s one of the things that makes you a significant contributor to the team — you help others to achieve their objectives along with your own.

When sales managers look to identify their top performers and determine who is ready for a promotion, they heavily consider how their team members contribute as coaches and mentors to more junior salespeople. Embracing the mentorship and coaching role while delivering on your targets shows your boss you are ready for more responsibility.

3. You Understand Coachabilty

According to a study published in the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing titled Salesperson coachability: what it is and why it matters, there are several dimensions to a salesperson’s coachability. The following table depicts the dimensions of sales coachability and examples of coachable behaviours. Compare these dimensions with your own behavioral patterns to determine your own coachability:

Dimensions of Salesperson Coachability

The authors of this study describe coachability as a manifestation of the personality traits of agreeableness, achievement motivation, and conscientiousness — what we refer to as the DNA of sales excellence. While being coachable doesn’t automatically mean an individual will be great at selling, it is a necessary ingredient of a top performer seeking a sales promotion.

Because not all salespeople possess equal levels of these traits, they will naturally possess varying levels of coachability. Use the table above to measure your coachability. Consider not only how coachable you see yourself, but also how your manager assesses your coachability. (i.e. during feedback, formal performance reviews, etc.). Understanding how coachable you are allows you to objectively assess how you are perceived by your manager in a new way.

The fact that you understand coachability proves that you are ready for a promotion. This is particularly true if you are seeking to be promoted to a management role because as a manager, you need to understand how to coach. In fact, research shows that the more effective sales managers are at coaching, the better their teams perform. Those working for managers with formal coaching training, and who coach regularly, deliver revenue at four times the rate of teams working for managers who don’t coach. Understanding how to be coachable is the first step in being a great coach.

Prove You Are Ready For It

Since you are currently doing all three of these key things, you are likely ready to move up in your responsibilities. However, you need to consider what you really want. Often, top performing salespeople think they want to become managers, but eventually miss the rush of hunting, selling, and closing. Do some research and ask a manager you have a strong relationship for some insight about their role. Managing is much different than selling. What it takes to excel in management is not the same as what it takes to excel in sales. As a manager, your role is to coach rather than play, so gaining a perspective of what the performance indicators and quotas are for a management position is critical when deciding what you really want.

As a salesperson, taking your performance beyond the numbers, being your boss’s biggest asset, and understanding coachability are the most important qualifiers in determining your readiness for a promotion and aptitude for a management position. There is a lot that goes into gaining a promotion, but determining if you are ready for one is the crucial first step.

Ready to advance your career? Or, are you interested in gaining insight about current and future B2B sales openings in the technology, professional services, telecommunications, software, or manufacturing/industrial services sectors? Submit your resume to Peak Sales here.

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The 7 Biggest Mistakes Made at the Offer Stage

optimized-istock_16721780_medium According to the Boston Consulting Group, of every HR practice, recruitment processes have the most significant impact on revenue. Companies that effectively recruit the best candidates exhibit 3.5x the revenue growth of competitors that poorly manage their recruitment efforts. This article will break down the biggest mistakes hiring managers make at the offer stage – and explain best practices to avoid them.

A company’s ability to find, recruit, and hire the ideal candidate for every sales role can make or break its long-term growth prospects. For organizations that have found the ideal candidate for their unique selling environment, nothing is more important to this process than the offer stage. It’s the culmination of time, money, and resources that are allocated to finding the best possible salesperson to help execute the sales strategy.

Some organizations consistently reach this pivotal stage without successfully enticing their best recruits to sign on the dotted line. With that in mind, this article details the biggest mistakes hiring managers make during the offer stage of the recruitment process. By incorporating the accompanying suggestions, your company can greatly enhance its sales talent acquisition efforts:

1. Not Previewing an Offer

Over the course of the recruitment process, the hiring manager should have collected information on the current salary of the rep, as well as their compensation expectations for a new role. Previewing an offer — or sharing high-level elements of what an offer would look like before extending one — verifies that the hiring manager is aligned with the salesperson’s career expectations.

Specifically, previewing an offer has several benefits:

It gives candidates a sense of how serious the hiring company is about bringing the candidate onboard without the formality of a written document;
It speeds up the process, ensuring that the company is well-positioned in the case of multiple offers;
It leaves room for further negotiation for both parties. If the hiring manager shoots too low, it gives them the opportunity to reassess compensation before a formal offer.

2. Lowballing the Salary

Salary negotiations are complicated in sales, but one thing is clear: below and at-market compensation packages never incentivizes the best recruits to join your sales team. In fact, Peak’s internal figures suggest that 93% of companies who lowball a candidate during the offer stage fail to hire the candidate.

Offering a low or average salary sends the signal that the company doesn’t value the candidate or the sales function as a whole — it’s one of the most likely ways to end a negotiation before it starts. The quality of the salespeople on a team is directly correlated to the salary they are offered. Top salespeople know their value to an employer, and they expect a competitive offer that recognizes the ROI they deliver. Therefore, to recruit the best candidates and consistently grow your company’s revenue stream, sales leaders need to understand that offering compensation packages that are above market is a strategy to build a high-performance sales organization .

3. Taking Too Long

“A” players are highly sought after in the marketplace. These top performers regularly receive multiple offers from employers competing for their services. If one hiring process takes much longer than another, chances are the candidate will go with the first option. A fast offer, one that is presented within 48 hours after the final interview, demonstrates to the candidate that the company is committed to bringing the individual onboard.

Top performers want to work for companies with effective, efficient business practices that cut through the red tape rather than adhering to them. A recruitment process that places a high-emphasis on presenting offers in the ‘two day window’ shows candidates exactly who they will be working for — a driven, dynamic company that’s willing to speed things up to get them on the team.

4. Overcomplicated Compensation Plan

Some compensation plans include tiered reward levels, with multiple and varied financial incentives for different kinds of sales. Although these plans reflect the intention to motivate the salesforce to overachieve their sales targets, they can confuse, rather than clarify, the expected income. When a candidate struggles to identify what their on-target earnings will be in the first 180, 360, and 540 days, these types of plans can discourage candidates from joining your organization. In fact, our data suggests that 4 out of 5 candidates agree that overly complicated compensation formulas discourage them from accepting an offer of employment.

Instead, the best employers construct a simple compensation plan that can be built out over time and that is tailored to the individual’s motivations and needs. A compensation formula that links financial rewards to the sales activities that brings in the most profitable revenue for the company is a comp plan that both a candidate and their future employer can agree upon. This approach ensures clear alignment between the effort of salespeople and their income, which gives candidates an accurate image of their earning potential, and one that puts them in control of the value they will deliver to the company over time.

5. Small Territory

One of the biggest complaints of sales reps is that their sales territory is too small. Talented salespeople will not leave their current roles unless it’s clear to them that they’re taking on a territory that gives them the bandwidth to surpass quota, earn accelerators, and continually drive profitable revenue for their employer.

We see sales leaders frequently make the fatal mistake of not giving enough attention to this aspect of their sales force design and the impact assigning small territories has on their talent acquisition efforts. The reality is that it’s a major contributor to why companies fail to incentivize top salespeople to sign their employer offer.

To mitigate the risk of territory size becoming a point of contention during the offer stage, hiring managers need to:

Describe the size of the territory’s potential customer base and profitability,
Emphasize the company’s process for evaluating the local market potential and it’s impact on what candidates care about: earning potential, account value, and travel requirements.

6. Failing to Provide Details

When salespeople weigh a new opportunity against their current role, they don’t make the decision solely based on their salary and on-target earnings. Instead, they take a holistic approach when thinking about their choice. They want to know specific details about the comp package.

Specifically, candidates expect an offer to include the following:

Health Insurance Plan
Vacation Days
Retirement Plan
Company Car
Commission Plan with Assigned Quota
Covered Expenses
Existing Account Base

Other less tangible benefits, such as flexibility and autonomy, can make a significant difference on the decision of a candidate too. Depending on a salesperson’s priorities, these attributes can tip the scale in the direction of a new job. By giving a comprehensive picture of each aspect of employment, you can maximize your likelihood of hiring your top candidate(s).

7. Not Selling the Opportunity

High-performing salespeople are standouts at their current companies because they’re surpassing quotas, growing their market base, and cultivating strong relationships with prospects that can be leveraged in the future. To recruit these candidates, companies need to put themselves in the candidate’s shoes and sell them on why they need to join the company.

At each stage of the recruitment process, and specifically during the offer stage, you need to give ideal candidates compelling reasons to change jobs. Bestselling authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street have identified five things that candidates care about the most – the “five F’s of selling” – when considering signing on the dotted line.

The five F’s of selling a candidate to join your company include:

Fit: The alignment between the company’s vision, needs, and sales culture with the candidate’s values, goals, and selling abilities.
Family: The impact changing jobs has on the candidate and their family.
Freedom: The autonomy granted to a candidate.
Fortune: The territory, market opportunity, earning potential, and specifics on the financial standing of the company.
Fun: The sales culture, working environment, and personal relationships the candidate will make.

If your company isn’t a brand name in the market, prospective salespeople will hone in on the specifics on the financial standing of your company; they want to shift to a company that exhibits consistent growth or strong financial backing. Don’t breeze over these details — hiring managers need to provide solid evidence that by joining the team, a candidate is positioning themselves for continued growth moving forward. The most successful companies always frame a new position in this way, with clear information on the promotion track at the organization.

These seven offer-stage mistakes can damage even the most effective recruitment processes.

To ensure you don’t make these mistakes, download the comprehensive offer stage checklist by filling out Peak Sales Recruiting’s form below:

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

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.

Connect:

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How Top Salespeople Use Their Free Time [Infographic]

There are key differences between the best salespeople and the rest in how they conduct themselves. Top sales professionals have just as much discipline and commitment to achieving their goals when they’re not in the office as when they are.

While average salespeople tend to check out at 5 p.m., great salespeople don’t stop at the end of the day. They seize opportunity for success 24/7.

This infographic demonstrates 5 unique ways top performing salespeople spend their time outside of the office:

Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:

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Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management

In many companies it is commonplace to promote successful reps into sales management roles. To be fair, it is instinctive to reward your most successful and reliable reps with a promotion – who better to take on more responsibility in the sales organization than someone who understands how to sell a lot? Research shows, however, that more than 75% of reps promoted to sales manager will not last 2 years in the role and will return to a sales position.

Given the high failure rates of sales managers promoted from reps, does it really make sense?

Here are six reasons not to do it:

1. They are vastly different roles

A sales role involves hunting for opportunities, qualifying and/or developing relationships, listening, negotiating, and closing. Sales management involves activities such as interviewing, hiring, developing, training, cheerleading, managing, firing, tracking, forecasting, analyzing, and planning. An understanding of both makes someone more successful in either role, but a day spent in each seat means a day doing very different things.

2. Many aspects of managing people are more complex than selling

Great sales people have a system for dealing with the finite number of sales situations they will see. Managing a team means using an infinite number of mechanisms to hold each individual accountable, all of which can change from day to day, depending on the person.

3. Managing is not for everyone and requires specific ‘Sales DNA’

Drive, competitiveness, perseverance, optimism and flexibility are all traits one might expect to see in top reps and sales managers. The focus required by sales managers, however, is completely different and often cannot be fixed through training. Management requires patience, flexibility, tolerance and communication skills. “A-type” drivers, may be great at telling a team what to do, but may not be suited to helping them get there. Top reps who love the thrill of the kill will miss that aspect of their job if they are focused more on helping others close business. They will miss the time they spent in the field if they now spend more of their time inside overseeing the team and in meetings with their own management.

4. The best sales reps are used to flying at their own top speed

They are action oriented and used to driving results through their own direct efforts. Assuming leadership means overseeing a team where (on average) 50% of the reps are below targets, managers need to be able to gear up or down to the lowest common denominator, as the case may be. There will be a huge temptation to step in, takeover opportunities and close business for reps on the team, rather than help the reps become better closers through coaching.

5. Sales reps innately resist the things that sales managers absolutely need

In order to effectively run a team, great sales managers implement training programs, conduct in-depth sales meetings and pipeline reviews, and scrupulously document opportunities. Sales reps, on the other hand, are far more interested in going out to hunt new business opportunities, close deals, and ensure clients are happy and ready to buy again.

6. The cost of incorrectly promoting a top sales rep is massive

Poor leadership and loss of a great rep costs severely in terms of lost present and future customers, a damaged market reputation, and a drop in sales team morale.

To be a great manager you have to be an expert at management, not an exceptional sales person.

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About
Latest Posts

Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

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.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
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15 Top Cities To Advance Your Sales Career in 2017

As a salesperson looking to advance your sales career, you want to benefit from a strong sales territory, high compensation, long-term growth potential, and a thriving local economy. However, without a clear roadmap, it’s challenging to discern which cities can give you the ideal environment to capitalize on your skills and experiences.

Based on Glassdoor’s Top Cities for Sales Jobs, our own data, and 3rd party sources, we identified the top cities for sales jobs in 2017. Each of these metropolitan areas is an economic powerhouse with distinct advantages for high-performing salespeople. If you are considering making a move to a new region or are curious to know how your city ranks against other major economic centers, this guide can help to set you up for long-term success:

San Jose

More than any other city in the country, San Jose stands out as an epicenter for technology, energy, venture capital. It’s region — nicknamed Silicon Valley — was originally known for the high-tech engineering and manufacturing companies in the area. Although these industries still hold sway, Internet, software, and hardware companies now dominate the local economy.

Over 110 high-tech firms have offices in downtown San Jose including Cisco, eBay, and Adobe. Companies Facebook, Intel, Symantec, Tesla, Oracle, Netflix, Google, and Apple have their headquarters in the cities and towns surrounding San Jose. This area is also a center for venture capital funding, with more than 20 VC firms making their home along Sand Hill Road in neighboring Menlo Park.

San Jose’s dominance as an economic center cannot be overstated. In 2015, Milken Institute ranked San Jose as the #1 U.S. metropolitan area for sustaining and creating new jobs. The competition among companies for the top salespeople is intense — this demand is a reflection of the overall trajectory of the local economy.

Given the concentration of Fortune 500 companies based in Silicon Valley and the high cost of living, San Jose also has the highest paying sales opportunities. Glassdoor’s ranked San Jose #1 in its list of highest-paying cities for sales jobs. The overall average compensation for sales professionals reaches $127,500, while our research found that sales managers make an average of $165,570.

Although living in San Jose is also extremely expensive, it’s the ideal location for salespeople who want to enter a competitive, fast-changing market filled with organizations at every stage of growth.

San Francisco

San Francisco’s booming economy is only 49 miles north of San Jose. Together, these two cities create a dynamic ecosystem of thriving companies and high demand for top performers. In San Francisco, top salespeople will find the same technology industries that thrive in Silicon Valley in addition to a big financial services presence. It’s largest employers include Wells Fargo, engineering company Bechtel Corp, and professional services firm Ernst & Young.

San Francisco benefits from the highest concentration of venture capital funding of any city in the world. Over 15 percent of the world’s VC funding is invested in San Francisco, totaling close to $6.5 billion dollars. Combined with #2 San Jose, Bay Area companies account for over a quarter of the world’s VC funding at $10.5 billion dollars.

San Francisco also offers a higher level of job availability than San Jose at a lower average pay. In 2015, Glassdoor listed close to 3,000 jobs in San Francisco — almost 2,000 more jobs than in San Jose — at a median salary of $100,000. Between 2011 and 2015, requests for Peak to headhunt enterprise software sales leaders in the SF region rose by more than 15 percent, suggesting B2B companies are doubling down on their recruitment efforts in the city.

Living in the San Francisco also means that you benefit from companies and clients based in both Silicon Valley and San Francisco proper. Due to the prevalence of employer-provided transportation, salespeople can live in San Francisco while working in Silicon Valley or vice versa.

In addition to being one of the most expensive cities in the country, San Francisco has also been dubbed the city with the highest quality of living by Mercer. For sales professionals who live here, the cost is well worth the lifestyle and professional opportunities.

Boston

Situated at the head of Charles River, Boston is an iconic city with a flourishing economy. As an epicenter of higher education, healthcare, tech and biotech, Boston offers increasing opportunity for B2B salespeople.

A 2016 Wall Street Journal article described “knowledge capitals” like Boston as punching “above their weight” economically. In particular, Boston’s brainpower, rooted in over 100 colleges in the area, make this city a dynamic place to build a career. The unique combination of a talented workforce and elite research institutions ensure it’s poised to grow even more in the coming years.

GE’s recent decision to move their headquarters to Boston’s Seaport District reflects increased interest in tapping into this kind of energy. In particular, both the Seaport District and Cambridge’s Kendall Square attracting companies of every size that want to maintain a strategic edge, causing an influx of businesses to flock to the area. Boston is such a hub for emerging companies that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation declared it as the top city for start-ups.

Salespeople who want to have a material impact on a growth company or thrive in an innovation-based economy benefit from exploring Boston. Because the local economy builds on both a strong start-up culture and a long list of marquee companies, this city appeals to salespeople who want to position themselves for a promising, long-term career.

As of 2015, Glassdoor listed medium base salaries in Boston at $55,000 with an additional $33,000 in commissions. The robust economy suggests an expected growth in both B2B revenues and salaries for salespeople. For senior technology sales reps with 5+ years of experience, for example, salaries have risen 7 percent over the past three years. Territory managers in the software vertical have also experienced a 5 percent increase to $135,200.

Furthermore, Boston differentiates itself by offering residents a small-town, New England experience that accompanies the advantages of a major metropolitan area. Homes in its neighborhoods continue to grow in value as job seekers and companies flock to its brownstone-lined streets.

New York City

New York City is a hotbed of lucrative sales positions with a high level of intensity. In this city of over 8 million residents, financial services reign supreme, accounting for 15 percent of the economy. JPMorgan Chase is the city’s largest private-sector employer, followed by Citigroup.

The New York area includes a seizable portion of the country’s B2B professional and scientific services headquarters, which have consistently rebounded from the recession. For this reason, New York City boasts over 5,000 open sales jobs according to Glassdoor — the highest number on their list of top cities.

The big apple has also seen significant growth in the technology industry. According to the Partnership for New York City, the area’s tech sector has expanded by 29 percent in the past five years. In 2016, there were 75 percent more unicorn companies based in New York City than in 2014, including Buzzfeed and Oscar Health. CEO Kevin Rose even noted that people in New York’s start-up scene exhibit more “hustle” than its West-Coast counterparts. Therefore, salespeople who want a high-intensity work environment thrive in the fast-paced NYC economy.

With over 100,000 salespeople working in New York City with less than 50 percent of them consistently hitting quota, A-players can stand out among their sales peers. New York City sales candidates will find a medium base salary of $60,000 with a bonus of $30,000 for junior sales positions.

Although New York City is the most expensive city in the world, most New Yorkers couldn’t imagine an alternative. With an exceptional client base, unmatched opportunities to climb the corporate ladder, and the city’s cultural experiences at your fingertips, New York offers an amazing opportunity for top performers to advance their career.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles is known for the entertainment industry, but it’s also an ideal environment for continuing a career in sales. In addition to being a creative capital, it’s the largest center for manufacturing in the United States, which offers opportunities for salespeople who work in industrial B2B sectors. Los Angeles-based companies create everything from computer and electronic products to automobiles. Plus, it’s location on the coast mean that $1 billion of products move through the port every day.

In addition to trade, LA has seen significant growth in the aerospace industry and specialized manufacturers, once a stagnant industry in Southern California. Clear skies and an abundance of space make Los Angeles an ideal environment for testing drones and satellite technology. For that reason, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Rocket Lab all chose LA for their headquarters.

Salespeople in this sunny city make an average of $55,000 in base pay with $30,000 in commissions. Meanwhile, B2B regional sales managers make an average of $97,484, which is slightly above the national average. Although this compensation is not at the level of the cities like San Francisco and New York, cost of living is lower. In New York City, for example, cost of living is 21 percent higher than Los Angeles.

According to our data, Los Angeles Area based employers have increased the number of sales positions they are recruiting for over the last 24 months by ~5 percent. Combined with amazing weather and a distinct quality of life, Los Angeles offers a breadth of opportunities for B2B salespeople interested in the aerospace, defense or manufacturing industries.

Washington, DC

Government, education, and tourism may be the largest industries in Washington. DC, but the private sector is on the rise. According to Business Insider, Washington DC is the seventh best economy in the nation. Stephen Fuller, an academic specializing in Washington’s economy, believes that professional and business services are the fastest growing industries in DC. Fuller argues that the next thirty years will add 800,000 private-sector positions in the metropolitan area.

Salespeople in DC benefit from the proximity to government — contractors, think tanks, and consultants drive innovation and policy in the public sector, contributing to long-term growth in the private sector. In particular, salespeople with experience working in the consulting industry will see plentiful opportunities in DC.

The largest private-sector employers include Clark Enterprises, Tasc, and Alion Science and Technology. According to DC Inno, the Washington start-up scene is also thriving. Over 400 local companies made Inc.’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies, including technology consultants ByteCubed and Oasys.

With a median base salary of $55,000 and $30,000 in commissions, salespeople in Washington, DC are setting themselves up for short-term and long-term success in a robust job market. For salespeople who want to work in a thriving city rooted in government and culture — and don’t mind a high cost of living — DC is the perfect metropolitan area.

Houston

Although people associate Houston with the oil industry, its job market offers other diversified options for sales candidates. The city provides a large B2B customer base in energy sector, space science, biotechnology, and technology. Top employers include Chevron, but also Deloitte and health-care company Kelsey-Seybold Clinic. Houston also stands out as the top exporting metropolitan region in the United States, which supports economic growth in this region.

The median age in this Texas city is 33 and is becoming younger every year, as a growing population of young professionals make their home in Houston. The city is seeing changes that accompany the influx of millennials. This year, two big downtown coworking spaces are under construction, one operated by TechSpace. These coworking spaces signal that companies are investing in this region as an entrepreneurial and technology center.

Houston stands out from other cities on this list by offering the highest compensation for salespeople outside of the Northeast and California. Total compensation averages at $85,000 in Houston. With 1,775 sales positions available, it also surpasses San Jose for opportunities in the job market.

Bridgeport

Once a thriving industrial center, Bridgeport, Connecticut is in the process of reinventing itself after years of economic hardship. The biggest city in the state, it’s home to nine of the top employers in Connecticut, with dozens more in surrounding communities.

Manufacturing still drives the economy here despite a significant drop in available factory jobs. Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation employs 8,300 people right outside of Bridgeport’s downtown. Neighboring cities Stamford and New Haven also provide opportunities. In fact, our research shows that there was a 13 percent increase in requests for senior account executives in the Bridgeport area over the last 24 months.

Non-profits are in the process of rejuvenating Bridgeport’s ailing downtown with the hopes of sparking creative and tech industries. This September, the city hosted its first hackathon. By working with the neighboring Stamford Innovation Center and a grant from Connecticut Main Street Center, the city intends to shift in a renewed direction.

Bridgeport offers a slightly lower median income than Houston at $85,000. Its cost of living is 34 percent lower than New York City, despite the short distance between the two commercial centers. By train, it’s only an hour and a half ride to midtown Manhattan from downtown Bridgeport. B2B salespeople looking to work and live in the Northeast in an area with a lower cost of living should definitely explore the opportunities in Bridgeport.

Boulder

Boulder is a city teeming with entrepreneurs. In 2013, the Kaufmann Foundation reported that it has the highest density of tech start-ups in the country, with twice the number of start-ups per capita as San Jose. In the first three quarters of 2015, $150 million of venture capital funding went to Boulder-based companies, with 41.5 percent supporting software companies and 39.3 percent allocated to biotech companies.
Tech firms employ the greatest percentage of Boulder residents with large employers like IBM and the aerospace contractor Ball Corporations anchoring the economy. However, according to University of Colorado Boulder, the strongest job growth will occur in professional and business services. Their research also suggests that the state’s concentration of professional, scientific, and technical services are 33 percent higher than the U.S. as a whole. These statistics signal that Boulder-based firms rely on talented salespeople to close deals, outperforming the country in its concentration of sales employers.

Like Boston, Boulder is home to many higher education institutions and research organizations. Residents are well-educated and technically skilled, which makes it a competitive hiring environment. Although this city offers a booming tech scene, available jobs hover around 108 because qualified young professionals who flood the market. It may take extensive networking and an aggressive job search to find the ideal sales role.

The median pay for salespeople in Boulder is strong, at $85,000. Because of a moderate cost of living, 300 days of sunshine a year, and a mountain environment, sales roles in Boulder are coveted positions.

Dallas-Fort Worth

Dallas-Fort Worth is the economic epicenter in North Texas. Home to 21 companies on the Fortune 500 list, this region has a gross metropolitan product, or GMP, of $504.36 billion. If this region were its own state, it would be the ninth biggest economy in the United States after North Carolina. Top employers include American Airlines, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, and Alcon Laboratories.

With a thriving, diversified economy, Dallas-Fort Worth offers B2B salespeople opportunities in defense contracting, professional services, aviation, financial sectors, and information technology. As with the other cities on this list, Dallas has benefited from strong ties to the technology sector. Known as Texas’ “Silicon Prairie,” it is gaining traction as a great ecosystem for entrepreneurs.

Salespeople who choose to build a career in Dallas make an average of $84,000. They benefit from a strong job market with 252 jobs available per 100,000 residents — a ratio that’s higher than New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Combined with the affordability of homes and low cost of living, Dallas’s hot job market and thriving economy make it a great place to be.

Seattle

Situated alongside Puget Sound, Seattle is home to marquee companies Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon, and Nordstrom. Some of its top industries — technology, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, green technology, and information communication technology — are ideal for B2B salespeople.

Most notably, 238,900 people in Washington state work in tech. Recruiters can attest that it’s a job candidate’s market, especially for technical sales roles. It’s rated the third-best city in the nation for job growth, with over 100,000 available jobs. Seattle’s also boasts strong salaries with compensation for sales roles averaging at $84,000. Salespeople can find even higher salaries at big tech companies.

Start-ups that can’t compete with Seattle’s biggest companies on compensation incentivize job candidates with a culture-first approach. With a supportive sales culture, extra flexibility, and significant perks, these start-ups offer their sales reps additional ownership over their work and an exemplary experience. If a salesperson values a fun, dynamic environment, there’s bound to find an abundance of options here.

Raleigh-Durham

Known as the Research Triangle, this part of North Carolina includes Raleigh and Durham, as well as Chapel Hill. Thanks to significant investments in the private sector and numerous universities, the Research Triangle is a center for aerospace and aviation, automotive, biotech and pharmaceuticals, energy, information, and communications technology.

Raleigh-Durham’s hiring landscape offers a full range of options for salespeople. Mid-size companies and start-ups in R&D’s emerging tech scene both offer sizable opportunities to salespeople who want to be a part of a growing firm. A large pool of multinational corporations that include GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer Crop Science offer corporate opportunities for salespeople who are interested in pursuing a career in a large organization.

Peak Sales has seen an increase in requests for senior salespeople both from Raleigh-Durham’s technology and professional services organizations. Specifically, the Research Triangle has seen a 12 percent increase in sales job growth in technology and science sectors over the last five years. Companies in this booming area need B2B salespeople with in-depth industry knowledge and the ambition to grow their careers.

Our research found that the average income for sales managers in Durham and Chapel Hill is $142,320 and $130,800 respectively. Glassdoor reports that the median income for non-managerial sales jobs is $84,000 total, including commissions. This area also offers affordable housing, a thriving sense of community, and access to three of North Carolina’s best cities.

Atlanta

Atlanta is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Southeast, second only to Miami-Dade County. An affordable cost of living, low housing costs, and state and local incentives have helped drive Atlanta’s economic boom. For every new job created, the state of Georgia gives the employer a $2,500 to $5,000 tax credit.

Atlanta remains firmly rooted as a key area for pharmaceuticals and life science industries while making gains in technology, transportation services, and professional services. Specifically, the region’s professional and business services sector has outpaced the U.S. economy at 5.3 percent job growth.

The tech scene in Atlanta also continues to gain traction. DataFox named it one of the best places to create a start-up outside of Silicon Valley and New York. The city also recently benefited from the opening of a $100 million venture capital fund Leaders Fund that will further support the city’s SaaS companies.

Atlanta’s thriving economy is ideal for salespeople in every stage of their career. In particular, Peak has seen requests for senior salespeople in Atlanta grow by 24 percent since 2014. Salaries for sales professionals in this region are above the country’s average. Glassdoor reports that the average salesperson makes $82,500 while our data suggests that sales engineers make a median wage of $106,700 and managers make an average of $117,160.

Although Atlanta offers lower salaries than the other cities on the list, as in Raleigh-Durham and Dallas, its low cost of living make this region an ideal place to put down roots. With an average home cost of $178,900 compared to $809,400 in San Francisco, your salary provides much greater buying power.

Sacramento

Sacramento is often overlooked when compared to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but it’s still a top city for sales jobs. This region is the seat of state government, but it also built a varied economy, with thriving clean technology, life sciences, transportation, and aerospace industries.

This year, The Sacramento Bee reported that the region’s economy has grown at the fastest pace in 10 years, reaching a 3.5 percent growth in GDP. Household incomes also grew by 5 percent between 2014-2015, showing promise for continued prosperity.

According to Glassdoor, Sacramento-based salespeople make a median income of $82,000. Although this salary is significantly lower than sales positions in other commercial centers in Northern California, Sacramento offers much lower housing costs. Rent prices are 227.84 percent less expensive than in neighboring San Francisco.

Sacramento companies also exhibit an increased need for talented sales reps. Peak Sales has seen a 10 percent increase in the number of requests for enterprise reps selling complex, multi-stakeholder solutions in the Sacramento area.

Hartford

Hartford is home to seven major insurance companies: Aetna Inc., Travelers Property Casualty Corp., MassMutual, The Hartford Financial Services Group, CIGNA, The Phoenix Companies, and The United Healthcare Company. As the epicenter for the insurance industry, it offers the best opportunities for B2B salespeople who specialize in this sector.

Hartford’s appeal doesn’t stop there. In addition to a strong presence in the insurance and financial services industries, Hartford benefits from a thriving manufacturing sector led by Fortune-500 companies United Technologies Inc. and Stanley Black & Decker

This year, Hartford is poised to make significant investments in creating a local tech hub.

CTNext, which offers state-funded grants for entrepreneurs, set aside $90 million to boost entrepreneurialism in Connecticut. Their goal is to turn Hartford, and other cities in the state, into centers for innovation. As Connecticut makes significant investments in the technology sector, salespeople can expect a growing need for their talents moving forward.

Hartford-based salespeople also benefit from a 120-mile radius that includes Boston, New York, New Haven, Springfield, and Albany. In other words, they have access to clients in the Northeast’s biggest economies, all within a day’s drive. With salaries at a median of $82,000, sales professionals in Hartford make a good living in a city that offers long-term career potential.

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Ryan Thornton

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Here are 14 sales recruiting strategies to make your hiring process more effective:

1. Build Ideal Candidate Profiles to Match the Requirements of Your Sales Strategy

2. Showcase Your Company as an Employer of Choice

3. Stop Relying on Job Boards

4. Use Cash to Attract Top Candidates

5. Build a Strong Employer Brand

6. Attract Top Performers With Your Company

7. Interview for Sales DNA

8. Introduce Science To Your Recruitment Process

9. Don’t Overvalue the Resume

10. Assess for Criteria Other Than Experience

11. Start Conducting Exit Interviews

12. Get HR the Sales Tools They Need

13. Make Your Compensation Plan the Best in the Industry

14. Make Retention Efforts Proactive

Building a Top Performing Sales Team Starts with Your Sales Hiring Strategy

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This article breaks down the most common challenges that emerge when managing a remote sales team – and provides solutions on how to solve them.

Challenge: Lack of Face-to-Face Communication

Challenge: Employee Isolation

Challenge: Sustaining Employee Engagement

Challenge: Employees Feel Invisible

Remote Management Means Being a Proactive Leader

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The infographic below depicts five unique sales skills only the best salespeople possess and how these skills allow them to standout from the rest:

Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:

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Here are 5 ways to be a team player and maximize your sales performance:

1. Meet Your Targets

2. Demonstrate Adaptability

3. Practice Open Communication

4. Provide Support

5. Be Committed

Become a team player and advance your career

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1. The B2B sales force is more important than ever

2. There is no silver bullet in B2B sales

3. B2B sales effectiveness isn’t a generalized trait

A lot is changing, but some things remain the same

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Here are three things you are doing that prove you deserve a sales promotion:

1. You Go Beyond Your Individual Goals

2. Your Boss Relies on You

3. You Understand Coachabilty

Prove You Are Ready For It

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1. Not Previewing an Offer

2. Lowballing the Salary

3. Taking Too Long

4. Overcomplicated Compensation Plan

5. Small Territory

6. Failing to Provide Details

7. Not Selling the Opportunity

To ensure you don’t make these mistakes, download the comprehensive offer stage checklist by filling out Peak Sales Recruiting’s form below:

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This infographic demonstrates 5 unique ways top performing salespeople spend their time outside of the office:

Want to save this infographic? Fill out the form below to download a PDF version:

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Here are six reasons not to do it:

1. They are vastly different roles

2. Many aspects of managing people are more complex than selling

3. Managing is not for everyone and requires specific ‘Sales DNA’

4. The best sales reps are used to flying at their own top speed

5. Sales reps innately resist the things that sales managers absolutely need

6. The cost of incorrectly promoting a top sales rep is massive

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