When your company engages its staffing process to find a new sales professional, a successful hiring decision remains vital. After all, any hiring effort requires a significant amount of time and resources from your HR team and managers. Choosing the wrong candidate means all those expenses become sunk costs, plus you need to repeat the entire process.
Let’s examine the costs of a bad sales hire, including those beyond the ones incurred during the staffing process. Leverage these insights to improve your candidate analysis and interviewing approach. Finally, partnering with the team at Synerfac offers the best opportunity for hiring the right salesperson.
Quantifying the Costs of Recruiting a Sales Professional
Understanding the staffing-related expenses for recruiting a salesperson provides insights into the importance of making the right hiring decision. One basic formula used for calculating these recruiting costs simply involves taking 25 percent of their first year’s salary. So, a sales professional making $100,000 per year requires $25,000 to recruit.
Also consider the time spent interviewing candidates; recruiting experts estimate this to be around $2,500 (25 hours at $100). Include $5,000 for onboarding expenses. You also need to consider their salary and benefits before they begin generating sales. If that period takes six months, that $50,000 plus $12,000 for benefits adds $62,000 to the total.
In short, you are looking at spending nearly $95,000 before your new hire starts generating sales. What if that new hire fails to make an impact or leaves for another opportunity? Your business incurs close to a six-figure sunk cost on a failed recruiting process.
Strategies for Reducing the Risk of a Staffing Process
Recruiting a sales professional requires a more discerning approach compared to other job roles. Spend significant time analyzing their experience and tangible sales history, especially in sectors related to your company’s business. In this situation, checking references becomes especially critical for vetting their work history.
Leverage structured competency-based interviews for a deeper dive into a candidate’s expertise. Using sales simulation exercises provides a similar level of vetting as certain tech interviews for software engineering candidates. If your company serves a high-value industry, like pharmaceuticals or software, these deeper interviews remain especially important. Finally, partnering with an experienced recruitment firm, like Synerfac, greatly reduces the risks and costs of any staffing process.
Hire Top Sales Professionals Today
When searching for exceptional sales professionals, look no further than the experts at Synerfac. As one of the top staffing agencies in the country, we provide the talent to improve your company’s balance sheet. Schedule a meeting with us to discuss your hiring needs and ideal candidate profile.