The Secret Recruiting Strategy

I spoke with a successful sales leader recently who made an interesting point about recruiters.

This sales leader, let’s call him Taylor, has managed a large region and has always met or exceeded goals with his sales team. He has hired everyone from rookies outside of the business, to highly experienced and proven salespeople. He’s a grinder. I don’t know how he’s had the energy to train and develop so many people over such a long period of time.

He is currently looking for another opportunity for a couple of reasons, but what is interesting is what he said regarding a new employer. That is, he would lose significant interest in a company that wouldn’t allow him to use recruiting agencies to help him recruit sales talent. Boom!

Permitting a sales leader to use an outside agency is a recruiting tool that helps recruit said leader! This is a concept that hadn’t occurred to me before, but now it seems patently obvious.

Of course, there are many variables to consider in a sales leadership role. The culture, the vision, the products, the boss, the goals, the base pay, the incentive compensation, and even the benefits.  

But had you ever considered that allowing a manager to use an outside recruiting agency is a recruiting tool?

“But we have internal recruiters!“, you say. So did Taylor. It’s not the same. The internal recruiters have too many open requisitions on their desk to build relationships and to get on the phone and have 50+ conversations with potential candidates. They are also an agent of one company. They can’t be unbiased career counselors. For these and other reasons, most of the hiring managers I speak with do not get the results they need from internal recruiters. 

“A good leader should know their marketplace, and make time to reach out to talent at their competitors!” Yes. They do, and the better the job they’ve done at that, the more people they need to reach out to when the need arises. However, all of those people are not marching in place in a broom closet waiting to hear from that manager again. It’s all about timing and if the manager doesn’t get lucky on timing with one of them, the long slog begins. Calling, emailing, phone tag, LinkedIn... It’s a full-time job. But it’s not their full-time job. Allow them to outsource that to credible industry recruiters. 

You might find it’s the secret, additional, ingredient that helps you to recruit and retain great sales leadership.