Let’s be real. In SaaS sales, a slow hiring process takes money out of your pocket. Every day you take to fill an open Account Executive headcount could cost your organization thousands of dollars. The good news? Betts Recruiting has teamed up with our friends at Skaled Consulting on a new eBook, Faster Hiring Means More Sales, to provide strategies and best practices to get sales reps hired, ramped, and closing deals faster than ever.
This new guide shows you how to hire SaaS sales employees on a timeline that works for your revenue goals, so you can avoid delays that leave you behind on the quarter and the year. On the blog today, we’re sharing a preview focused on establishing the perfect candidate profile for Sales Development Representatives (SDR), Account Executives (AE), and Sales Managers.
eBook preview: Establishing the perfect profile for SaaS sales roles
What does the ideal SDR, AE, and Sales Manager look like? Here’s a sample of what to look for in these candidates – you can find a more complete list in the full guide. Establishing profiles ahead of time using these attributes will help you weed out non-viable candidates faster and accelerate your hiring process.
Sales Development Representative
- Growth mindset – Do they believe that with hard work, they can improve at anything? Promoting SDRs is an efficient way to fill AE headcount, so look for candidates who are hungry to move up.
- Process-driven – An SDR’s job can be repetitive. It largely consists of lots of calls and emails. Someone organized, who builds systems for all of their tasks, will be more likely to thrive in this role.
- Empathetic – An SDR’s success relies on their ability to put themselves in their prospect’s shoes and understand their needs and pain points.
Account Executive
- Excellent listener – The best salespeople ask great questions to understand their prospects’ needs and then help them find the right solution. They act as consultants who educate and inform their prospects rather than hard selling.
- Naturally curious – Do they stay on top of industry trends, read sales books, and run experiments? These can show expertise to prospects and help reps optimize their approaches for more success.
- Resilient – AEs inevitably encounter resistance and hear “No” a lot. They need to be able to take it in stride and keep moving forward.
Sales Manager
- Architect – Managers on sales teams are leaders of the effort to build the team. They should be able to identify the traits of strong salesperson who will be able to help hit the company’s goals.
- World-class communicator – It often falls upon sales leaders to propose strategy changes to the rest of the ELT, and to be a key player during big moments like IPOs. They need to be persuasive, confident, and cool under pressure.
- Salesforce savvy – These leaders shouldn’t just know selling – they should be skilled in sales ops as well. Today more than ever, that means being fluent in Salesforce.
What other good stuff is in the eBook?
The guide has a lot more insight into characteristics to look for in these key sales roles. It also provides insight into how to create job descriptions that are tailor-made to attract top talent for SDR, AE, and Sales Manager roles. And that’s just the first section. The rest of the eBook shows you how to compress your interview process while keeping it comprehensive, as well as how to make onboarding more efficient, so your new sales hires can start earning in a snap.
Read the eBook to see how to hire employees with the speed that the competitive world of SaaS sales demands.