How to Source Effective Salespeople
- Matthew Ziemke
- Aug 6, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 21
Updated: December 2025
It's time to bring on another salesperson for your company and you can’t afford to ramp them up only to see them leave.
You recognize even a qualified sales hire will need ample ramp-up time but what you want to avoid is a misfire that doesn’t reveal itself for 6-12 months - after a sizable investment training them.
These risks commonly result in my small to mid-sized business clients feeling hesitant about sales hiring. Some admittedly dread it!
While a quick hire based on industry experience is tempting, this article outlines how staying true to a proven process makes the difference in securing long-term performers on your team. By focusing your energy on creating an intentional sales hiring plan, you'll be ready to generate a qualified candidate pool that pays off in the long run.
If you haven't invested time creating your hiring strategy, you may find my previous article helpful: “Unlock the Rewards of an Intentional Sales Hiring Plan”. It outlines how you can reduce costs associated with recruitment, onboarding, and training by investing effort into a strategic hiring plan before you begin taking action.
In this article I dig another layer deeper to provide key insights on generating qualified sales candidates to enter your interview process.
You’ll learn about:
Why salespeople need to be sourced and screened differently than other candidates
Proven methods to develop your sales candidate pool
How to protect your return on investment when involving a recruiter
Sourcing Sales Candidates Requires Specialized Recruiting Skills
Sourcing sales candidates requires a special set of skills that experienced human resource representatives and traditional recruiters commonly lack.
The high-performing sellers you want to attract are experts at evaluating what a good opportunity looks like. Top performers are repeatedly approached with opportunities, and they scrutinize to determine what justifies their attention. After all, their success is largely due to their time management effectiveness.
For this reason, your company needs to interact like a salesperson: convincing top performers why it's in their best interest to invest time reviewing your company and opportunity.
The way you approach top sales performers and what they glean after researching your company will prompt them to quickly decide whether they'll engage with you, no matter how tantalizing your opportunity may seem.
Once you capture a sales prospect’s attention, the recruiter needs to be effective at creating open rapport with the candidate.
A highly skilled salesperson knows how to present themselves in the best light possible and will effortlessly attempt to convince you they are exactly what you’ve been looking for. By their nature, the most capable salespeople are highly confident in their ability but often overly optimistic.
That’s why it’s essential that you have a resource who is equipped to break through the “too good to be true” sales facade so an objective qualification interview can be conducted.
The sales candidate may be a top performer, but the art of effective sales recruiting is knowing how to screen for alignment between their previous successes and what your position and sales environment requires for success.
When there is an undetected mismatch, a top performer can quickly become a non-performer – an outcome that neither you nor the candidate wants.
With the right set of skills and tools in place for sourcing and screening sales candidates, you can weigh their credentials, background, and track record against your impression of them.
This is done through masterfully engaging them throughout the courting and interview process, effectively gleaning insights from their resume and references, and conducting a diligent interview process.
Effective screening occurs when a sales savvy recruiter follows an unbiased methodology to evaluate candidates in a systematic manner.
The stakes are high in sales hiring, so protecting your return on investment by avoiding costly misfires is critical.
Developing a Robust Sales Candidate Pool
Once you understand the specialized skills required for sourcing, the next step is building a robust sales candidate pool.
A key element of your Hiring Plan is the creation of your Ideal Candidate Profile and sourcing strategy. Next comes the tactics you’ll utilize to promote your opportunity to the “right” candidates.
Different than traditional roles you advertise, top sales performers seldom enter the candidate pool by responding to job board postings.
That isn't to say you'll never capture a worthy candidate this way, but most are solicited directly or referred because they're not actively monitoring job boards.
Here's a starting list to begin your sourcing strategy by casting a broad net:
Personal Network
Business Partner Networking
Soliciting targeted candidates aligned with Ideal Candidate Profile
Networking Events
Employee Referral Programs
Company Website Position Posting
Industry specific or high traffic job boards
When Sales Recruiter Involvement Makes Sense
While these sourcing methods can yield strong candidates, there are situations when hiring a professional recruiter becomes beneficial.
As a Fractional Sales Leader, my interest is helping my clients navigate sales and sales leadership hiring in a manner that positions them to reach their short-term and long-term sales goals as productively as possible.
That said, over the past handful of years, my Fractional Sales Leader colleagues and I have placed over 500 sales candidates across the country in our client settings by leveraging specialized recruiter relationships we've developed.
Case in point: there are plenty of situations when it makes sense to get help. The key is properly navigating recruiter selection and engagement to protect your return on investment.
The most common justifications for bringing in an outside recruiter is when you have a tight staffing timeline, limited manpower on-staff for pipeline development, or require a specialized sales role that limits the candidate pool.
Even if your company has an on-staff HR professional, it’s important to evaluate if they have adequate time and background to attract the candidate profile that is identified.
The goal is that through effective sourcing and screening, a series of qualified candidates are presented to the hiring manager who leads the finalists through the remainder of the interview process.
When it makes sense to bring in a professional recruiter, I advise clients to use the following criteria to evaluate who they bring in:
Specialized in sales recruitment
Offers a retained search model with no incentive to coach or force-fit candidates
Dedicated talent manager that is assigned to “own” the search
Provides collaborative communication throughout the search process
Capable of sourcing a sizable candidate pool that aligns with defined Ideal Candidate Profile
Exceptional screening and qualification process to ensure 3 highly qualified finalists
Includes hiring guarantee
Includes replacement guarantee
Orchestrating Your Sales Hiring Success
It is hard to find sales-specialized recruiters, especially those that have the scope of winning characteristics I described above. Contact me if you’d like a referral to my source that has proven to deliver top-tier sales and sales leadership candidates.
Hiring a new salesperson comes with risks but it’s a necessary step to fuel the growth your company needs. As a Fractional Sales Leader, I take the lead in guiding my clients through the process of orchestrating internal and external resources to secure top sales talent. I also help set-up their new hires for long-term success.
If you’d like to discuss your sales staff expansion plans, I welcome you to reach out info@sxwisconsin.com or fill out our Contact Us form.
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We are part of a national group of Senior Sales Leaders who collaborate to share insights like the examples shown in this article. We formed because of our shared passion to help business leaders exponentially grow their revenue.