January 2021
Article
Top Sales Magazine

Sales Hiring Is Hard to Do (Don't Make It Harder)

Format:Electronic

Abstract

In the aggregate, hiring in sales is more expensive than many companies’ cap-ex decisions. But it rarely gets the same attention and companies fail to deal with challenges inherent in sales hiring. Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified resource pool or educational priors for sales positions. If you’re looking for an engineer, accountant, finance person or software developer, you can find majors in those subjects. But few colleges and universities have sales programs or even a sales course. Meanwhile, more than 50% of U.S. college graduates, regardless of their majors, will work in sales at some point in their careers. This article discusses how to avoid two common mistakes in sales hiring and why, in recovering from the pandemic’s economic impact, there are few things more worthy of senior management attention than their companies’ sales hiring practices.