What are some good ways to recruit in-home sales reps?
We have highly competitive compensation plans (including commissions plus monthly and quarterly bonuses) and a well-established system of continuous training for our in-home sales reps. However, we are currently having poor results in conventional recruiting channels and job boards. I would to get some words on advice on where to look for new candidates.
Expert Answers
Sort by Date
Sort by Votes
Apr 25, 2014
Zach - I would recommend looking at channel targeting, audience targeting and/or geo fencing. As all of these offer interactive ads, consider more than just a traditional ad, but one that asks the candidate to get involved (answer a sales/industry related quiz, play a game, etc.).
Channel targeting simply means something like a Business website or websites. I've seen interactive digital display ads on startribune.com/business deliver twice the sales candidates as a job posting in a quarter of the time. Sports channels might be other good places to find sales candidates.
Audience targeting is even more specific. That can deliver your ad/message only to people who fit your profile on whatever website they go to. i.e. people matching: Bachelors degree, HHI, $75k+, entrepreneurial, commission-based job. You can target them if they are on nytimes.com, forbes.com, espn.com, weatherchannel.com, glassdoor.com and many other sites.
Geo fencing targets a specific location (offices where the candidates you seek may currently be employed at for example) and delivers your message to smart phones in that "fence."
Hope that helps.
Apr 25, 2014
My advice to you on how to recruit the right in home sales reps is, you have to create them. You have to find creative way to turn your current sell force around that will become rock star sell people. You have to help them to believe in themselves and in the product or services that they are selling. And the only way to get your sells force to see the value in what they are selling. is for you to show them that you believe and care about them and are willing to help them to improve upon the way they sell the product or service to the customer.
Apr 25, 2014
Do you have a strong online community, Zach? Most, if not all, of my team members came from our community - they believe in what we do and have a passion for our work. Those are two pretty key ingredients ;) Posting your job openings to those groups (or targeting conversations with specific individuals might be a good way to go.
Good luck with i
Apr 26, 2014
It's a daunting task. I agree that you should try recruitment through www.indeed.com, www.timetohire.com and www.replocate.com, as well as running a quick Google search of "recruit in-home sales reps"[without the quotation marks]. I agree that the conventional approaches are ineffective. I have a very good outlet for promoting your opportunity (via my blog and twitter), and I would be glad to get your opportunity to more than 800,000 people at no cost -- all you need to do is provide me with the copy. My name is Douglas Castle, and you can email me directly at douglas.castle@yahoo.com. I hope that this helps.
Apr 27, 2014
Zach, I created a robust Reseller package that and targeted a certain criteria of sales professional that this would be a good supplement to their household income. I marketed it through networking and online and it has been beneficial in our efforts to expand our sales team.
Apr 27, 2014
Try going to Yahoo groups https://groups.yahoo.com and
type in city + (keyword)
The keywords I used were:
sales exchange
sales professional
sales practitioners
sales recruiter
You will have to read the terms of each group but I found several that you could use to promote this.
Apr 24, 2014
ou can also have a firsthand experience with live demos of various component of RecruitPlus Talent Management Suite at http://recruitplus.in.
a. Applicant Tracking System
Application for recruitment team where job can be assigned to recruiters, vendors(recruitment consultancies) and can also be posted directly to your careers page & several other jobsites. Profiles can be tracked very easily against every position and certain appropriate actions can be taken accordingly process, short-list, select, reject, line-up etc. There is proper MIS reporting system to track down each & every activity happening in the application.
http://recruitplus.in/rplusats
b. Resource Management System
Application for Candidates where they can see the current opening and directly apply from a single button of ‘Apply’. By only browsing CV from desktop will fill the complete application form automatically and will create his registration on your careers section. They can also track their application status they applied for and even edit their profile in future.
http://recruitplus.in/rplusrms
c. Line Manager System
Application for Line/Functional Managers where they can post their requirement and can check the profiles against every position coming from various recruiters. Can also see reports for various activities like candidates status report, job status report etc.
http://recruitplus.in/rpluscms
d. Employee Referral System
Application for employees where they can also upload CV’s of their friends and relatives and can apply against positions available. They will also be able to track the status of the same. http://recruitplus.in/rplusers
e. Vendor Management System
Application for Vendors(recruitment consultancies) where they can upload and process resumes of candidates against the positions assigned to them and can also track the status of the same.
http://recruitplus.in/rplusvms
f. Resume Parser
RecruitPlus Resume Parser is a software solution which automatically extract the candidate information, be it personal, professional, experience or education details from an unstructured CV of the candidate in English language. The CV can be in .doc, .docx, .html, .pdf, .rtf, .txt format. The parser also helps saving the extracted information into a database in a searchable format.
http://onlineresumeparser.com/
RecruitPlus Parser is available in the following variants:
RecruitPlus Resume Parser Windows Application[http://rplusresumeparser.recruitplus.co.in/]: for bulk parsing from File folder/ Outlook/ web page along with facility of duplication check using Click one deployment.
RecruitPlus Resume Parser Web API [http://recruitplushrxmlapidemo.onlineresumeparser.com/] : We provide .XML output of the CV; We give sample API integration code and help you integrating the same with your website career section; just in less than 30 mins you are ready to use. The API is platform independent and can be used for any application developed using any programming language like.net/.php/java etc.
RecruitPlus JD Parser Web API [http://rplusjdparserxmldemo.onlineresumeparser.com/]: We provide .XML output of the JD; We give sample API integration code and help you integrating the same with your application in less than 30 mins. The API is platform independent and can be used for any application developed using any programming language like.net/.php/ java etc.
Apr 25, 2014
Hi Zac......are they full-time or part-time roles? When you say "in-home" sales roles, would they be an independent agent selling a product?
Apr 25, 2014
"In-Home" and "BtoB" sales professionals are usually not typical employees. Security is important, but they are more focused on independence and respect from their employer and for their intelligence and skills to work with people and make a sale. Personally, professionals hate to be "trained" unless they are brand new and not yet professionals. "In-home" sales are also usually considered the bottom feeders. If you do not come across as seeking truly independent professionals who, although they must provide core communications, are still respected as individuals with skills that most don't have, then, in most cases you will get the desperate who are emotionally and financially drained. You will spend a lot of time taking care of them and they will not likely produce, especially if you feed them what they are supposed to say, what they are supposed to do, and how you want them to do it. If you want to spend that much time and effort, you may get a fantastic group of clones spreading your message, but in the end, they will not be professionals. Just saying. I do appreciate that you say you have some skin in the game. That says a lot, but spend time getting to know who your candidates are, see what they know, see if they are at all professionals, then provide support through good training that does not sound like you are interested in puppets. Look for those already doing similar sales on linked in and see if you can woo them over to what you want to sell. If you can't convince them that you are genuine and you want them to sell something they can believe in, then you get what you get. . . just saying.
May 4, 2014
Zach,
You should look at the principals of network marketing and encourage your existing distributors to recruit others. If like network marketing you pay based upon performance rather than just a single payment you'll probably be surprised at how effective this can be.
If you need any further help, let me know.
Jason Rainbird - www.rainbirds.co
Apr 25, 2014
If the work is net based, then you use the net. Give enough information to allow your target worker to weed through the scams, and understand who you are looking to attract. There are a plethora of posting sites available and if you put sufficient information in you post, from title to industry and description, someone can find a mutual interest or focus.
Apr 30, 2014
What type of product/service are you selling? I am an Independent Sales Rep. and I have many contacts.
May 4, 2014
Hi Zach,
I would recommend you my own process that I call "lean recruitment" (inspired by lean startup). As I don't have time to process all the CVs, tests and interviews and I need to be sure that the respective candidate is able to do his future job (guarantee that no recruitment company will give us) I invented this fast procedure. It can be used for internal and external recruitment also.
Practically you announce the job with details on what they have to do and then, when you get people interested, give them a real task from what they will have to do and ask them to send you the result in a form that they consider the most useful. For example if you hire a sales rep you may ask him "find all information about company x (real targets from your pipeline) necessary for a succesful sale and send me the report in y days in any form you consider useful". Then in y days you will recognize in a sec the real sales guy. Did he got the right info, did he make any call to fin it, did he used his contacts, did he find relevant info, did he present info clear and focused, did he has a strategy, did he proposed any actions etc. Next you meet the people that impressed you and see if you like him also in person not only through his actions. If in doubt you can give him also any other suplementary task:
- send me a list with 10 new leads that you consider you have a 50% chance win and why
- prepare an offer for the customer z
- obtain a meeting with 1 CEO from a prospect company
I use real business cases and sometimes I give the same task to several people in order to be able to compar and evaluate them better. For me this is the process with less failures than anything else I've used until now.
May 8, 2014
I am a big fan of Linked-In. It allows you to see the person's experience and message them directly with your "sales pitch". Linked-In Recruiter is a great tool for recruiters to use, but is very costly. You can upgrade your Linked-In account to premium to get some inmails or you can ask your contacts for an introduction.