The difference between hiring the best sales talent and coming second best is your willingness to take ownership of the process.

Job boards, recruitment agencies and referrals are all tools that can help you find potential candidates; but committing to developing a recruitment strategy that encompasses a range of techniques for sourcing and retaining staff will make each element significantly more effective.

Here's what savvy sales managers and recruiters are doing now to attract and retain top-performing salespeople.

Employer Image

How do you stack up against the competition? Do you pay more, less or about the same? How good are your products? What's the company culture like - is there a good social scene? Do you offer ongoing training?

Your potential employees are considering the answers to all these questions and you can be sure that if you can't answer them, there's another employer competing for salespeople that can.

Start by considering how your current employees would answer these questions, and if you're serious about competing, don't just guess - ask them.

The best way to recruit for senior positions is to develop your own staff and promote from within. Do you have a career development plan for each member of your sales team? What do you spend more money and time on - training or recruiting?

Last year a study by Capital Consulting found that companies are failing to handle the actual recruitment process as well as they should, with one in four job seekers saying they have been badly treated when applying for a job.

Poor recruitment practices not only alienate the individual job seeker, a third of people will also tell up to five other people about their bad experience, and a quarter will spread the bad news to more than 6 others.

A very vocal 10% tell more than ten other people how bad you are and as many as 1 in 100 will go as far as venting their spleen on the internet by blogging about how bad you were.

According to the Capital Consulting Survey the main complaints from jobseekers are:

• 53% of people were aggrieved that no reason was given for not being offered the job
• 51% said the lack of feedback following an interview was their main irritation
• 49% of all job seekers are annoyed by not receiving an acknowledgement of their application
• 34% say they are asked irrelevant or stupid questions at interview
• 30% are asked to do irrelevant tests
• 26% of job seekers don't like dealing with third parties and recruitment agencies - men (30%) dislike this more than women (20%)
• 32% of people say they are sent details for jobs that do not meet their skills or salary expectations

How do you stack up?

Recruitment consultants

Specialist recruitment consultants can save a lot of time spent reviewing initial applications and, with a commitment from both sides, recruiters can develop a good understanding of your business and streamline this process even further.

Again, don't sit back and expect your recruitment consultant to work magic without any effort on your part. An efficient and effective relationship with your agency comes from understanding each party's expectations from the outset and clear communication throughout the process.

Recruitment Consultancy Checklist:

• When a new vacancy comes up do you just email the details to your consultants, or take the time to run them through the brief over the phone or face to face?
• Have you met your recruitment consultants? Have they been to your offices? Are they equipped to present your company in a really positive light to their candidates?
• Do the individual consultants you work with have a background in sales or managing sales teams themselves?
• Do you have a preferred suppliers list? Do the agencies on your PSL advertise their company/current positions to potential candidates?
• Do your consultants want to place candidates in your sales team? Or have you made them accept such a low fee to get on your PSL that they'll make a lot more money placing their candidates with your competitors?
• Have you asked your recruitment consultants what you could do to help them make more placements in your sales team?

Advertising

There's an ever-increasing range of media and every one of them will tell you they can deliver the right applicants for your vacancy.

As with most media there has been a significant shift away from targeting mass audiences towards advertising vacancies to a niche audience of relevant job seekers.

Recruitment advertising for specific vacancies is all about response - don't part with your ad budget on the basis of traffic figures alone as this is no indication of the quality of response you can expect. Instead make sure your chosen jobsites or publications can provide testimonials from advertisers in your sector that have filled similar positions through their job board or magazine.

Word of mouth & referrals

Salespeople are motivated by money and often know other salespeople they've worked with at previous companies or socialise with. Do you offer a cash incentive to encourage referrals?

If you already do this but aren't generating many applicants, it's probably worth considering why before writing it off as an ineffective technique.

Schemes at companies we've worked for have paid bounties of between £200 - £500, which are often only paid after the new recruit stays for a certain time period.

This isn't much of an incentive. It's common knowledge that an agency fee would be nearer £4,000-£5000 for the same introduction, and unless the referrer is responsible for the new recruit's performance they should be rewarded when they join the company, not a number of months afterwards.

Networking

Do you talk to people about vacancies in your team? Do you go out of your way to meet people that might be a good fit?

We often look at our competition with such disdain we can miss opportunities to recruit talented salespeople from them - candidates that are familiar with the industry and client base, and may be looking for a new job for any number of reasons.

Keep this in mind when you're at the awards night, or attending the exhibition, and ask as many salespeople as you can if they're happy with where they are. You may be surprised at how many aren't...

Existing Communications - email

How many emails does your company send out each week? Have you considered using the email footers to promote your vacancies?

Not only does this reach a large audience it also presents your company in a positive light - a growing and successful business. (Perhaps avoid sending details of your 50% commission scheme to your clients though or they may start asking for a better deal!).

New media - Video

Video recruitment has been a lot slower to take off than many expected, making now the perfect time to start.

Being an early adopter of new recruiting tools such as video brands your company as a desirable and aspirational place to work. Be warned though, if your offices look like they've been hit by a bomb or you can only afford to film it on your phone this may not be the right option for you...

Again, if you're not using any of these techniques to attract salespeople you can be sure that some of your competitors are - check out:

Incisive Media Recruitment Video

Want know what it's like at Google?

Looking at other industries and professions

Whilst broadcasting to a mass audience may be about as effective as shouting about your vacancies outside Tesco, our last tip is to not look too narrowly.

There's a shortage of top quality experienced media salespeople out there so why not think laterally and see if there are other sources of sales staff that could fill the gap?

If you sell regional advertising, a field sales rep from pharma or the FMCG sectors may well make the grade - used to high activity face to face sales and probably very well trained.

Or perhaps you could plug that gap in your exhibitions sales team by poaching an AV or stand design salesperson?

---------------------------------

Lee Branch is the co-founder of MediaSalesJobs.co.uk, TheFridayPint.com and the AD:SAUCE series of events helping media companies improve their employer image and recruit talented and experienced media salespeople direct.

For additional articles on sales techniques and strategy, sales management and career development visit www.MediaSalesJobs.co.uk