Recruitment of Salesforce: Definition and Steps [Explained]

Hiring, Recruitment, and Selection of Salesforce/Sales Personnel

Hiring, recruiting, and selecting are all terms that are used interchangeably. Hiring refers to the process of locating, evaluating, and forming a working relationship with potential salespeople. However, salesforce recruitment is the process of identifying possible applicants and motivating them to apply for a current or anticipated position in a sales organization, whereas salesforce selection is the process of selecting the appropriate salesforce from a shortlist of candidates.

Many businesses use these terms interchangeably, despite the fact that they are viewed differently. Some businesses refer to the recruiting and selection process as “hiring.” Others refer to the process as “recruitment and selection.”

In fact, hiring is concerned with locating needed salespeople, whereas recruitment is concerned with encouraging these salespeople to apply for open positions in a company. However, the selection process continues after the candidate has applied, until the final selection of salespeople is made from the merit list and they are given their appointments.

Recruitment of Salesforce/Salesperson

As discussed, recruitment is motivating potential salespeople to apply for the vacant post, for the successful recruitment of salesforce it is necessary to pass it through some significant activities/steps. These activities are discussed below:

Salesforce Requirement Analysis

It is the prime responsibility of the sales manager to implement a personal selling strategy in terms of both the kind and number of sales personnel needed to service the company’s customers and prospects. Here, how to determine the required number of sales personnel is covered in the discussion. For it, the sales manager does these activities.

• He/She obtains records of total sales personnel and of those who left the company from different territories/ sales organization units. Those who left being retired or some other personal causes create a real vacancy.
• He/she aggregates all such vacant posts obtained and finds the total number of salesforce to be hired.
• Then these numbers are separately totaled on the basis of level and position assignments attached to them.

The next step in determining the required number of salespeople is to look at the company’s future expansion plans: will it increase its sales territories? If this is the case, the recruitment department must acquire information from the general manager on how many territories are required, as well as how many individuals of each level and post.

This is accomplished using a variety of research methodologies. As a result, the recruitment department must maintain contact with both the GM and the research department.

Determining Recruitment Budget and Amount of Time

The sales manager must establish the recruitment budget and amount of time to spend on attracting and hiring excellent individual salesforce in collaboration with the recruitment department. The recruitment budget should be set aside to search for, discover, and interview candidates for the job.

The type of sales position, the company’s image, and compensation all influence applicant attraction. Sufficient money is required to talk about these issues. A significant budget is also required for preparing job descriptions and job satisfaction for analyzing occupations for the required salesforce. Specifically, the recruitment budget includes the following:

• Sales personnel need analysis/ Turnover Analysis cost
• Cost of searching sales personnel
• Using different stimuli to attract sales personnel searching for sales jobs (mass media, word of mouth, social media, etc)
• Job analysis cost
• Interview cost
• Cost of orientating newly recruiting sales personnel.

Analysis of Factors Affecting Recruitment Efforts

There are some specific factors that affect salesforce recruitment of the company, which are as follow,

• Size of the company (In terms of the salesforce)
• Lower wages paying firms/companies
• Employment condition of the local community
• The effectiveness of past recruiting efforts
• Working conditions and environment
• The total package of salary benefits (if permanent recruitment)
• Slow growing companies, downsizing problems, and lay-off problems facing companies.

Job Analysis

Job Analysis is an activity that the sales manager does to develop a statement that includes the job description and sales personnel’s specifications. This means the sales manager has to prepare two separate statements that will help to analyze jobs that recruitees will have to perform with their knowledge, skills, and experiences if they are selected later on.

Preparing Job Description:

While preparing an accurate job description, the sales manager uses his/her knowledge, skills, experiences, etc. Generally, a job description consists of the following factors:

• Title of the job.
• Job position.
• Location and territory to be covered.
• Duties and responsibilities.
• Degree of autonomy.
• Accountability to whom report.
• Salary and compensation.
• Facilities and equipment to use.

Preparing Salesforce/Personnel Specification:

Salespersons/salesforce/ sales personnel job specification is the statement that determines the qualities looked for in the new person to perform and discharge in accordance with the job description. Basically, this statement contains the following:

• Education
• Sales training (both technical and non-technical)
• Sales experience
• Communication skills
• Honesty and integrity on the job
• Willingness to work with spirit
• Business sense
• Confidence in making sales
• Product knowledge
• Intelligence while encountering
• Self-determination
• Motivation
• Appearance
• Politeness, and others.

Preparing job descriptions and job specifications for salespeople is a very much challenging task because these two statements highly depend on

• Nature of the job.
• The personal prejudices of the sales manager.
• More objective research was conducted into the attributes of successful salespeople.

Therefore, those involved in preparing these two statements must be competent enough in the judgment process of deciding items for job description and sales personnel specification.

Identification of Sources of Recruitment

There are mainly two sources of recruitment-internal and external. However, the external sources are a lot. In totality, there are basically eight sources of salesforce recruitment-two from inside and the other six from outside. They are:

• From Inside:
  • The company’s own sales staff
  • Employee referral and recommendation
• From Outside:
  • Advertisements
  • Recruitment agencies
  • Educational establishments
  • Competing companies/firms
  • Unsolicited applicants
  • Websites

Announcing Vacancy

Once all the above all important activities are performed, at the last step the vacancy of recruitment of the required salesforce is announced.

The above-mentioned five activities – determining sales personnel requirement, determining recruitment budget and time, analysis of factors affecting, job analysis, and identification of recruitment sources are important to complete for successful announcing the vacancy.

Once the vacancy is announced, the shortlisting of potential sales personnel and their selection and appointment process are carried out.

Learn More: Steps in Salesforce Selection Process