Recruiting Is the Starting Point#

Building a superior sales team begins with recruitment. Most problems sales managers experience later — turnover, missed targets, motivation issues — trace back to recruiting the wrong people from the start.

Up to 90 percent of your sales organization’s success is determined by whom you select. Recruiting is not an HR formality — it is one of the highest-leverage activities a sales manager performs.

Recruit Slowly#

Peter Drucker’s warning sets the tone for the entire process:

“Fast people decisions are almost invariably wrong people decisions.”

If you select in haste, you will repent at leisure. The cost of poor selection is high:

  • Wasted time training someone who will not succeed.
  • Direct hiring and onboarding expenses.
  • Lost sales the wrong hire never produced.
  • Aggravation, low morale, and rework for the rest of the team.

Take the time required. Go slowly.

Define the Job on Paper Before You Recruit#

Many recruiting failures are caused not by bad candidates, but by a fuzzy job definition. Before opening any req:

  • Write down what the salesperson will be expected to do, day in and day out.
  • Specify the sales results expected, and by when.
  • Note whether the role generates leads independently or works inbound leads.
  • Describe the personality, energy, and experience needed to thrive.

A real-life cautionary tale: a personnel firm hired an experienced saleswoman who passed every personality test except one — she scored low on personal initiative. They hired her anyway, but neglected to mention she would have to generate her own leads. Her first morning she asked, “Where are my leads?” By the end of the week, she was let go.

The mismatch was not in the candidate, but in the unstated job definition.

Treat the Job Definition as an “Order Form”#

Take a sheet of paper and describe the perfect salesperson for your business as if you were filling out an order form to a “Perfect Salesperson Factory.” When you walk into interviews, this written profile becomes your filter.

The order form should capture:

  • Concrete deliverables (e.g., 20 qualified meetings/week, $1.2M annual quota).
  • Required prior experience (industry, sales cycle length, average deal size).
  • Personality and energy attributes.
  • Cultural fit and team dynamics.

Past Performance Predicts Future Performance#

The single greatest predictor of how a candidate will perform for you is how they performed in similar roles before. When evaluating candidates, probe:

  • What sales jobs have they held, and how well did they do?
  • Was the prior environment tough and competitive — or a boom market with more buyers than sellers?
  • Did they generate their own leads, or work inbound only?
  • What were their actual numbers, rankings, and quota attainment?

A track record built in a soft market may not transfer to a hard one. Always understand the context behind a candidate’s past success — not just the headline numbers.

Hire for Personality and Attitude#

A famous executive summed it up perfectly:

“We don’t hire people and train them to be nice; we just hire nice people.”

People do not fundamentally change. What you see is what you get. Hire on the basis of attitude and personality:

  • Aptitude — sales technique, product knowledge, closing skill — can be developed with good training and coaching.
  • Attitude, energy, and ambition must already be present. You cannot install them.
  • Warmth and likability are not optional extras. They are the foundation of customer relationships.

Only hire people you personally like and enjoy. Only hire people who have positive, warm personalities and who are generally cheerful and happy.

Time Up Front Saves Time Later#

The more time you put in at the beginning, the more time you save in teaching, training, managing, motivating, and coaching after the salesperson begins working for you.

A disciplined recruiting process — slow, written, and centered on attitude — is the highest-leverage investment a sales manager can make. The actual screening mechanics that turn a candidate pool into a confident hire are covered in the next chapter.

Action Exercises#

  1. Draft your own “order form” describing the ideal salesperson, and use it to evaluate every new candidate.
  2. For your next role, list the specific results the new hire must deliver, and the environment context that shaped any candidate’s past success.
Backward Define The Ideal Salesperson Screen And Select Candidates Forward