Keys To Sales Success: Writing Effective Employment Ads

When your company is ready to begin building its sales force, you will naturally assume the most important first step is to hire quality sales professionals. However, there is a critical step before you can hire that can make or break your attempts to find the best candidates – writing the employment ad.

You will need to hire all kinds of qualified people, so there exists a challenge for you to write the right kind of ads for a variety of employment opportunities. Two of the more common categories of staff you will hire as you grow involve technical and sales talent. Each group will be motivated differently when choosing their next employer. Here is a brief overview of what influences each group when seeking an employment opportunity . Notice how each group differs in priority.

Technical Staff Motivators

1. Challenging technical work
2. On-going training opportunities
3. Problem-solving and solution delivery based on teamwork
4. Appreciation for work contributions
5. Monetary incentives

Sales Staff Motivators

1. Monetary incentives
2. Utilization of sales abilities
3. Being of service to others

When creating your employment ads, you must convey the right message to reach to best potential candidates. If your company is looking to hire competent sales staff, it is critical that the advertisements for employment state job specifications that appeal specifically to sales staff, and in the right order. Money is usually the primary motivator for a seasoned sales professional, and rarely do they need to understand every specific detail about the products or services your company sells in order to be motivated to contact you to follow up on an employment opportunity. Unlike technical staff, sales staff do not see the company in black and white terms, and are generally prepared to jump right in and get to work. The best will understand that relationship-building rapport with clients and customers is imperative and they are not intimidated by not knowing every detail of your business before beginning sales activity.

There are other more basic components of successful ads for sales staff. Here is an outline of the additional sections that should be covered in all employment ads, as well as requirements that are staff-specific.

• Company Name and Location
• Job Status (Full time/Part time)
• Relevant Work Experience (5+ years experience)
• Job Category (Sales)
• Career Level (Experienced)
• Job Description (Several short paragraphs on abilities, qualities, responsibilities, duties in priority of the target group)
• Minimum Skills Required (Short, bulleted list)
• Benefits (Include salary range, commissions, bonuses, and other benefits)
• Method of Contact Preferred (list company name, department, email address, fax or phone number)
• List of Application Requirements (resume, references, company application)

By covering all of the basic components of the ad in addition to the candidate-specific areas, your employment ads will help attract the right people for available opportunities. Creating an effective ad will encourage the most qualified candidates to seek out your company's opportunities and enable your human resource department to have access to the right people to continue building the optimum sales team and staff.

For more on creating effective employment ads for sales staff, compensation plans, and the interview questions to ask to make sure you hire the right sales professional, along with a solid HR hiring process, download some sample chapters from our best-selling The Best I.T. Sales & Marketing BOOK EVER!

Erick Simpson
MSP University
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Comments

[Ralph]

Great post Erick.

I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to writing effective sales employment ads. As sales managers, we aren't interested in applicants motivated by monetary compensation alone. We want applicants who wish to expand their horizons, applicants who are looking to improve themselves from sales person to future sales managers.

But good screening is a two-way process. After sending out the employment ad, you need to be able to distinguish which resumes are worth following. I wrote an article about it in my blog entitled "Five Proven Tips To Get Good Sales Resumes".

Come visit my website for more tips on hiring great sales reps to your team - Top Sales Manager Blog: http://www.topsalesmanagerblog.com/

Ralph