How to Find a Top Sales Representative Using Your Job Description

Finding and hiring a top sales representative can be one of the most challenging tasks small and medium sized businesses face as they begin to build out their sales team.

One bad hire early on can rapidly increase the burn rate and potentially devastate company culture. A great hire on the other hand, can be the injection of life your business needs to help your company build a strong foundation and overachieve those aggressive revenue targets most early stage companies have set.

Below I’m going to outline some tips on writing a killer sales representative job description to help you attract some of these top performers.

Picking the Right Job Title for Your Role is Crucial

As you begin to craft your sales representative job description you’re probably having trouble picking the right job title for the role you’re trying to fill.

A quick search on Google or Indeed, will leave you with endless combinations of - Sales Associate, Sales Executive, Account Manager, Account Executive, Business Development Manager, Business Development Consultant, Sales Consultant, etc… and the list goes on.

Picking the right job title for your sales representative role is crucial, because top performers pay close attention to this title in their job search.

To ensure you pick the right one you first have to determine if the sales role is primarily focused on Hunting or Farming sales activities.

If you’re looking for a hunter to do a lot of cold outreach, book meetings, run product demos and increase the number of qualified leads going into you’re sales funnel I’d recommend using Business Development Manager.

Smaller companies will likely have Business Development Managers handling the full sales funnel themselves, so you’ll want to make sure you hire a sales representative who isn’t afraid of reaching out to prospects cold, asking for business and have at least 3-4 years of experience.

When your team is big enough and you have the resources, you’ll want to segment this role and hire a sales representative focused primarily on setting up product demos for your Business Development Manager to convert.

This role is usually called a Sales Development Representative and is ideal for fresh grads who are hungry, humble, coachable and excited to help your company grow.

Alternatively, if your company has a steady flow of inbound leads converting or an existing book of clients, you’re going to want to use Account Manager in your job title to focus on attracting a representative who specialize in farming.

Account managers will increase the revenue from your current client base by upselling their current point of contact, limiting churn and/or selling into other departments within the same company. This type of sales representative can be hesitant to make cold calls, but excel at strengthening relationships when one already exists with your company..

Finally, if you’re a software company and simply looking for a sales representative to limit churn and help your clients learn how to use your product I’d recommend using the title Customer Success Manager. These sales-people will often be excellent relationship builders and enjoy keeping your clients happy.

Selecting the correct job title for your sales representative role is crucial, because hiring a Farmer when you actually need a Hunter and vice versa, will cause you problems right away. Finding a sales representative who is equally strong in both areas is tough to do and a top sales representative will likely target the roles that match their strengths.

Why Do You Need Them?

I’ve seen a lot of sales representative job descriptions over the years and roughly 80% of them don’t explain why the companies need them. Most explain why their company is great, but often forget to explain why they need a top sales representative.

Top sales representatives  avoid applying to boring job descriptions that simply talk about “Responsibilities” and “Requirements” of a role. They’re on the hunt for a place where their hard work will make an impact and somewhere they’ll be acknowledged.

Make your sales representative job description stands out, by telling them why you need them, why they’ll be valued and what they will specifically working on.

Example for a Food Delivery App:

“After making strides in the Canadian market, we’re now looking to add a Business Development Manager to help us break into the US market. Your role is to work closely with the Director of Sales and Business Development team to help ensure every American can access great food, when they need it.”

A couple sentences near the beginning of your job description, highlighting why you need this role filled and what your mission is as a company, will completely change how a top sales representative perceives the rest of your job description.

Offer Flexibility

This one is very important.

Outside of all the cool perks, competitive compensation and great culture your company offers, nothing makes a top sales representative more excited than reading the line:

“Flexible vacation schedule”  or “Flexible time-off.”

Sales is hard and a top sales representative understands the importance of maintaining good mental health to ensure they consistently hit targets and don’t burn out. By about year 4 or 5 in their sales career, a sale rep knows how to close a deal from start to finish and they’re looking for some autonomy when it comes to work life balance.

Provided they are pacing and hitting the targets that have been set for them, give your top sales representative the opportunity to take vacation when they need it and not feel guilty when they take time off to recharge.

You’ll attract the best talent and keep your team fresh.

Selecting the Right Person

Implementing the tips above will certainly help you attract a top sales representative in your city, however there is still lots you can do.

Sales Knowledge Institute is currently working with clients to help them further improve their job descriptions, screen talent and ask the right interview questions to ensure you land the right person for their sale rep role.

If you’re interested in further leveraging our expertise, you can schedule a call here for 1 hour of free consulting help.