How to Hire a Salesperson for a Startup

When your startup is at the point of needing SDRs, it means your business is ready to grow.

That's an amazing and great moment to be in. But it's very much a make-it-or-break-it moment as well.

Because you want to hire the right people, and that can actually prove to be quite a challenge. It makes it all the more important to plan this process well in advance and to clarify important questions ahead of time.

One essential question?

Where to go look for that ideal salesperson.

The sooner you have answered this question, the less time you will spend on the actual recruitment and qualification of sales professionals.

Find out why this is so and how you can find the right sales team for your company.

The special thing about startups is that they give people with creativity and passion the opportunity to bring innovations to the market. They help make life easier for thousands of people.

So you want to attract these types of people to work for you and help you build a company.

But, as a startup and a small business, this is difficult. Many small companies lack expertise in the human resources area, so this part often falls short.

Before your company starts the hiring campaign, it needs to be planned in detail. A hiring campaign can be an absolute failure if no precise match plan has been created. With a poor plan, an HR team can and will quickly lose track or fail to focus on specific applicant characteristics.

In addition, a well-planned hiring campaign is characterized by clarity about the application process among the applicants. It will be challenging to convince top talents to work for a young company, and not having a hiring plan will be a big turn-off for your potential candidates.

You need to plan ahead and avoid rushing into recruiting to be successful.

The majority of small companies do not have the resources to support an HR department that can handle effective hiring, which is a drawback for any startup.

As the founder, you will be responsible for shouldering most of this responsibility.

Although you can choose to hire people based on suggestions and references, doing so will prevent you from having enough time to assess each candidate's aptitude before making your choice.

When your business expands, and you need one or two new hires, you won't be able to follow the same hiring process if you choose to hire someone by reference.

This is why you must have a better source to find and hire your sales team.

And once you find that source, you can jump right ahead. Because startups have one obvious advantage over established companies when it comes to hiring: you can hire people much faster.

An established business must follow a formal recruitment procedure, which can take months before an offer is finalized. A startup does not.

Because you won't have to deal with as many procedures and processes, you can decide quickly. Capitalize on your quick thinking and reaction time when recruiting to get to the cream of the crop first.

Another problem to be aware of is that if many recruiters reach out actively, people are less likely to apply for jobs. So if you're looking for the best salespeople, consider that these folks have many good job offers they can select.

Your business will have a ton of problems at the beginning, so you'll want to hire as soon as you can to solve them. However, you must also consider the original objectives and level of quality when making hiring decisions.

You cannot afford to make a mistake or hasty hire at this time. The finest applicants will have numerous offers from various companies. Therefore you will have to compete with other businesses to hire them.

Because the first employees you hire will play a key role in this process, you must take it very seriously and attempt to predict the productivity of the prospects who are accessible to you.

How can you attract top talent to your small startup among millions of other companies?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this conundrum yet.

You can find salespeople via social media, job boards, and LinkedIn platforms, to name a few.

You just need to decide which option fits your company best and would be the most cost-effective for your needs without requiring additional recruiting efforts. And the job ads can be allowed to run for long or short periods of time depending on need.

However, there is often insufficient time to run a long campaign, and any hiring process will have an interview portion. As a startup, you might run into a lack of staff to interview and evaluate a large number of applicants. Additionally, anyone can apply for the offered position on job portals, which leads to a time-consuming selection process afterward.

So where else might you look to make the hiring process a bit faster and more informed?

There are always networks to hire competent salespeople.

But they depend on the number of salespersons you need and the size and quality of your network.

A network can be an option if you want 1 or 2 good sales team members. In the long run, however, this path can turn out to be rather sobering because a network can quickly be exhausted. And it takes several months and years to build it up - you don't want to burn all those candles at once.

As such, if your startup is urgently looking for SDRs or wants to grow in the long term, a network may not be the best way.

Before actively looking for a sales team, you need to know one thing.

The requirements.

The more precisely you can define the salesperson's role in your startup, the faster you will find them.

A fatal mistake is to be careless with the job description. This can lead to you interviewing salespeople who, only after being hired, clearly show that they're not a good fit.

Here are a couple of aspects you should think about:

Make sure to define the role and make good use of the assigned salesperson.

Not all sales professionals are set up to create sales and pipelines immediately. Before spending money on marketing, some businesses employ their salespeople for an early stage to test the market and the product. There is a clear difference between an SDR and an AE, you just need to know what they bring to the table, and how to accommodate them both.

For instance, when introducing new features, a new service, or an expansion into a new area. In this situation, hiring a sales rep or SDR to conduct market research or educate your audience can save you money.

Develop your SDRs first around a capable team manager. Most businesses wait to hire a sales development manager until they have several SDRs.

Hire a senior SDR team leader with the experience to construct the team's basis before bringing on the team players. The appointed team leader will make those fundamental procedures, manuals, and other necessary arrangements.

They can serve as your first SDR, help you develop your strategy and playbook, and then work with you to find more salespeople to strengthen your team.

Besides the job role, define now which characteristics your ideal salesperson should have, how much work experience, or which skills are absolutely necessary.

If, for example, cold calling is particularly in demand or is expected in the role, then you must define this beforehand.

The more precisely the job is defined, the less time recruiting will cost you in the long run.

Neither a good network nor a well-planned recruitment campaign is the optimal method for finding and hiring a sales team for your startup in the long run.

So what can you do to boost your company's growth and build it up over the long term?

The answer is easy.

Use SalesPipe to find and hire your next SDRs.

With SalesPipe, you can easily find and hire qualified salespeople without posting job offers or asking your network.

Salespipe services are particularly suitable for small companies and startups, as they often have less time to spend on recruiting.

The platform eliminates many steps in the hiring process, improving recruiting effectiveness. It is particularly useful when sales teams are urgently needed, regular campaigns take too long, or your network is already exhausted.

Many available salespeople already have experience working for startups or larger companies in different industries.

And don't worry.

You don't lose out on valuable hires just because some steps are skipped.

SalesPipe can therefore be used by all companies, large or small, as a vetted recruitment source for high-quality salespeople, particularly sales reps or SDRs.

Salespipe gives you easy access to a large database of salespeople looking for a job. So you no longer have to create a hiring campaign.

Do you have any idea how much time is involved in a hiring campaign?

We've already saved you so much time.

This is because SalesPipe provides access to many sales professionals. You can ask by specific characteristics and find the right sales team for you. For instance, you can choose between salespeople of different nationalities and add a new language to your outreach with a simple click.

And you will also, of course, be able to see the experience level and resume of each candidate.

Save and obtain direct information on high-quality hires through SalesPipe.

Once you have set your requirements for your future sales team, active recruitment can begin.

You can search for salespeople on the platform and add them to the list of potential SDRs according to your requirements.

The Marketplace serves primarily as a trusted source of qualified and talented SDRs.

After you have found suitable talent, you can reach out to them.

Advantageously, basic facts such as skills or language are visible on the platform. During the interview process, you can focus much more on specific requirements and thus select more efficiently.

Here are questions that you can ask.

This allows you to shorten the entire recruitment campaign considerably.

If you are looking to hire your first sales team member or add more, you can use SalesPipe again. You can find and hire salespeople countless times without encountering additional costs through the platform.

So be sure to take a look around before starting your next recruitment campaign.

As you now know, hiring a salesperson for a small business can be a nerve-wracking act.

But it doesn't have to be.

You can already target and get qualified sales reps quickly and easily with SalesPipe.

The platform is especially useful for startups or smaller companies that don't have enough HR experience, don't want to waste a lot of time until the next hire, or simply want to expand their access to more salespeople.

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