The success of your business depends on great sales reps with solid sales skills. But top performers won’t just show up at the front door of your business. You have to know how to find them. This guide covers how to find high-quality sales reps to take your company to the next level.

3 Ways to Find High Performing Sales Reps 

There are three tried-and-true ways to find good sales reps:

1. Employee referrals. This method is especially effective if you have an existing sales team. Ask team members if they’d be willing to reach out to their network to see if anyone is looking for a new opportunity.
2. Internal hires. If someone in another department wants to move into sales, they’ll benefit from knowing the product on their first day. If they’re already in a customer-facing role (e.g., a customer service rep), their manager should have a pretty good idea of whether they’d be a good fit in a sales role.
3. The old-fashioned way. You know the drill: job description, job post, resume evaluation, interviews, etc.

If you use these three methods well, you’ll have plenty of candidates from which to choose.

Implement an Employee Referral Program

Implementing an employee referral program will help you hire better salespeople who stick around longer. That’s because your employees know your company, your offering, and your culture better than anyone. So their recommendations should carry a lot of weight. 

In some cases, you may find that you save time and money as well by not having to post the job at all.

If you don’t already have an employee referral program in place, here’s how to start one:

1. Develop a system to notify your employees when you have a vacancy. This can be as simple as a company-wide email.
2. Offer rewards for good referrals to incentivize participation. For example, you could offer paid time off, a spa day, a gift card, or good old cash money.
3. Create a great candidate experience. Your employees won’t want to recommend your company to people they know if they are worried that they’ll hate the hiring process. Hopefully, you’ve checked this box and your current employees enjoyed the time they spent getting to know your company before you hired them.
4. Maintain a strong employer brand. Similarly, your employees won’t want to recommend your company if they’re embarrassed to work there themselves. So work to develop a good employer brand image that makes your employees proud of where they work.

Develop an Internal Hiring Process

Internal hiring is a great way to keep top talent in your company. So if you’ve got someone great at your company who isn’t satisfied with their current role and wants to move into sales, you should give them a look.

Internal hires already know your company, and you know they’re a culture fit and someone you want to work at your company—otherwise, they wouldn’t be working there, right?

And, since they’re familiar with the company, the onboarding process will be shorter. Furthermore, since you’re familiar with them, the hiring process will be faster as well.

Hiring for internal roles is similar to hiring for any other position, except you’ll generally share the opportunity with your employees first, and you may abbreviate the hiring process.

The Best Places to Recruit Salespeople

If you haven’t found the right salesperson within your company or your employees’ networks, it’s time to look elsewhere. Lucky for you, there have never been more great places to find candidates for your sales opening.

Here are three of the best places to look:

1. Career Fairs. If you’re looking for an entry-level sales rep, career fairs at local colleges are a great place to look. All you have to do is send someone to sit at a table, and the candidates will come to you. You can find job fairs near you at Job Fair Directory.
2. LinkedIn. Is there anyone on LinkedIn besides salespeople? Maybe. But LinkedIn is a great place to post your job. You can pay to promote your job opening or just post a status update with hashtags like #nowhiring and #hiringnow to increase visibility.
3. AngelList. If you’re a startup, AngelList is a great place to find sales professionals who want to work with new companies.

There are also several sales-specific job boards. Here are three to check out:

1. Sales Jobs is the self=proclaimed “World’s Largest Sales Employment Site.” They have multiple pricing options but expect to pay at least $199 for one job post. 
2. SalesHeads is run by Nexxt, a recruitment media company. Their pricing is similar to Sales Jobs’. You can post one job for $199/mo, five jobs for $299/mo, or ten jobs for $499/mo.
3. TheLions is a jobs marketplace that matches startups with sales talent on a success fee (20% of base salary).

Find Sales Reps to Help Your Company Grow

Recruiting salespeople can be challenging. And it can take a lot of time and money if you don’t have a clear plan in place. Now that you know where to look, you should be knee-deep in resumes in no time. Now all you need to do is make sure they have rock-solid sales skills with sales assessment testing.