How to Recruit and Retain Best Performing Sales Employees

Know how to retain best performing sales employees

Retaining employees is an important factor for every employer as it ensures consistency and provides job security for existing employees. Whenever there is a high employee turnover, which is very common with best performing sales employees, heads start to turn and employees become jumpy. This then means that your employees will begin searching for a way out of the organization, leading to a negative impact on the company’s productivity.

So, how can you recruit and retain best performing sales employees?

While we have covered how employers can retain best performing sales employees in this article here, we thought it best to share on the recruitment process too. Recruiting sales employees should not follow the exact procedure as is used in the general hiring process. Why? Because the best performing sales employees you hire will determine if your company grows in profits or experiences losses.

To ensure you hire the best sales employees, you need to put your focus on the traits that make top performing sales employees. In this case, you will be looking at motivation for the job, reception to rejection, customer empathy, people who are goal oriented, ability to talk to strangers and those ready to accept responsibility whether positive or negative.

But a job description and an interview will not be enough to get a person with all these traits. Follow these steps to recruit the best performing sales employees.

Steps to recruiting the best performing Sales Employees

1. Look beyond experience when shortlisting candidates

Most employers want to hire candidates based on their experience so they can save costs on training. But just because a candidate has the experience you are looking for does not mean they will be your best performing sales employees. In any case, you want an employee who can easily adapt to the environment you are providing, understand your products and services, then get to work.

If you only focus on experience when hiring top sales employees, you will end up with qualified sales personnel who are not motivated to stay in the job. This will then have a negative impact on your company’s productivity and take you back to the hiring process. To avoid this, focus beyond the experience and take the candidate’s motivation, competencies and skills into consideration.

2. Know where to look 

When job seekers get frustrated, they start seeking out sales positions as most employers in Kenya have lowered their standards when hiring sales employees. This is part of the reason most organizations have constant openings for sales positions.

To hire and retain the best performing sales employees, you must be willing to look on the right platforms and sources. Your best bet here would mean referrals from your networks, an existing sales personnel database with a list of potential employees and consulting with recruitment agencies. These are the three places you are guaranteed to get best performing employees to choose from.

3. Use training as part of your recruitment process

Most employers in Kenya prefer to avoid training expenses when hiring, which is why you find most positions demanding for only experienced candidates. When it comes to sales employees though, training is inevitable as you require your employees to understand the products and services you offer in and out.

So, if you are looking to hire the best performing sales employees, you must include training as part of your recruitment process rather than as a post-hiring process. What does this mean? It means that before making the final hiring decision on your next best performing sales employees, take your best candidates through a training session first, and then decide on your best hire based on results from the training. How long the training will take is up to you.

4. Focus on motivation to retain best performing sales employees

Once you have made your hiring decision and have the best performing sales employees as part of your workforce, the next step is to make sure you retain them. According to research, top performing sales employees leave their employers due to lack of motivation and appreciation. As an employer you must be willing to deliver on these two.

Also, sales employees contribute to about 80% of your company profits and therefore deserve fair compensation for their efforts. If you assume that your best performing sales employees are happy based their output, then you might be on the road to losing them. The only way to retain best performing sales employees is by keeping them motivated.  You can read more about retaining your sales employees here.

Recruiting and retaining best performing sales employees is no rocket science, it only requires your time, dedication and understanding what sales employees require to perform in their roles. Got any questions on sales employees? Leave a comment below.

Want to recruit best performing sales employees? Get in touch through recruitment@corporatestaffing.co.ke and we will be happy to help.

One Comment

  1. am currently working as a tour and safari guide.am surely looking
    for a more challenging job more with n.g.os,or other non profit making organizations..my names are douglas mwangi.have already
    subscribe with you.thanks.

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