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12 Important Recruitment Strategies to Build a Strong Sales and Marketing Team

12 Important Recruitment Strategies to Build a Strong Sales and Marketing Team

December 30, 2021

A strong sales and marketing team can transform your business. These creative and analytical members of your team can help to increase awareness, drive sales and push for greater innovation.

A good sales and marketing team doesn’t happen by accident. It takes strong recruitment strategies to build a team that works well together and can achieve the best possible results. Since marketing is often a collaborative endeavour, your team will need to be able to work well together to achieve the best possible results.

Before starting the process of hiring your next sales and marketing professional, consider these important strategies.

Identify missing skills

When building your teams, think about specific skills you need to be able to achieve your marketing and sales objectives. Perhaps you are lacking design skills, or you need a talented copywriter. Think about the tasks that often fall through the cracks, are completed poorly, or you have to outsource.

By understanding what skills you are missing from your team, you can begin to think about the kind of candidate you need to hire. And remember, the candidate doesn’t have to have all of the skills you need. Sometimes it is better to find someone interested in gaining new skills and creating the framework for them to develop in their career.

Create a comprehensive candidate profile

You can’t advertise a role until you know what job is on offer. Being vague in the job description will not cast a wider net and could actually put some individuals off applying to work for you. Once you know what skills you are looking for, you can begin to create a candidate profile to match. Think about the specific skills and experience level you want, but also the type of individual that will be a good culture fit.

Culture fit is equally important as it will determine how well employees get along. While different personalities are not necessarily a bad thing and can help to drive creative teams forward, stark differences in working style can spell trouble. For example, someone who thrives in an independent setting might not fit well into a well-established team that loves to collaborate.

Determine your company culture

While you’re trying to determine the right culture fit for employees, it’s a great time to consider your company culture. These are the values that sit at the core of your company and can help individuals to decide if they want to be part of your journey. It’s no longer enough to offer a salary and a job description, prospective employees want to know what you stand for, what you’re doing to change the world, and how working for you can help to further their careers.

12 Important Recruitment Strategies to Build a Strong Sales and Marketing Team CMD Recruitment

Offer benefits that employees want

Alongside a competitive salary, many candidates will also want to see some impressive benefits. But before you start building the benefits package, speak to your employees about what they want. Some are more motivated by money and would respond well to a bonus incentive, while others value their free time and would appreciate a four-day working week, flexible hours, or the option to work from home.

Instead of building an inflated package of benefits that aren’t of interest to your employees, do your research to determine what individuals expect from their employer. This will help you to become a desirable employer.

Lean into the science

Making the most of psychometric and aptitude testing can help you to gain more insight into your candidates. You’ll be able to get a better idea of where an individual’s strengths lie, and you’ll be able to see through the white lies on their CV and cover letter.

Working with a specialist recruitment agency can help you to set up a pre-interview screening process that will enable you to quickly narrow down the candidates you want to interview. If you aren’t sure how to get started with aptitude or psychometric testing, working with a recruitment agency is a great place to start.

Streamline the recruitment process

The best candidates won’t stick around for long, so don’t keep them waiting with slow recruitment processes. If you need to arrange a second round of interviews to further narrow down the candidates, make sure you keep everyone updated and try to schedule it as soon as possible.

If you hit pause in the recruitment process at any point, you can’t expect the same candidates to still be available when you’re ready to start it up again. Set a timeline for the interview process, make candidates aware of this, and then stick to it. Slow recruitment processes increase the chances that the best candidates will be snapped up while you’re trying to make a decision.

12 Important Recruitment Strategies to Build a Strong Sales and Marketing Team CMD Recruitment

Make it a two-way conversation

When the time comes to meet candidates, don’t allow it to become a grilling. Instead, set the interview up as a two-way conversation. The candidate should feel involved in the recruitment process and be able to ask questions about if this role is right for them. 

The best candidates won’t respond well to an interview that doesn’t give them time to ask questions and receive honest and considered responses. If you want to build the best sales and marketing team possible, you need to be able to attract the right candidates. 

Offer cash for referrals

Your own staff might have potential leads on talented sales and marketing professionals that are looking for their next challenge. Hiring from referrals may also open the door to hiring people who aren’t actively looking for work. These are great candidates as they aren’t motivated by the need to find a job. They already have a job, so if they are interviewing with you, it’s because they are curious to learn more about what you can offer.

Your employees might know individuals from university, previous roles or from their friendship groups who aren’t actively looking for work but could be tempted if a better offer comes along.

Attract graduate talent

Hiring individuals with work experience and all of the right skills under their belt might seem like the obvious choice. But what if you want to be able to shape their learning? Once an individual has learnt how to do something, asking them to do it a different way might be tough. The solution? Hire graduates who are willing to learn how you want things done from the start.

Offering a graduate training scheme is a great way to attract new talent and also keep recruitment costs down. If you have good connections with universities and can maintain a presence at key job fairs, you could have a steady stream of graduates every year.

12 Important Recruitment Strategies to Build a Strong Sales and Marketing Team CMD Recruitment

Make your company the selling point, not the job

When you sell your company instead of just a single job, you will encourage individuals to declare their interest, even when you aren’t actively hiring for a role. This will give you the pick of the best candidates, all year round. Your recruitment pages should not only list vacancies but also give candidates an idea about why they would want to work for you.

You can highlight your company culture, career development opportunities and employee benefits. This will help candidates to understand that they are applying to be part of this team, and not simply applying to fill a single role. 

Offer a creative test

If you’re looking for a marketing professional with creative flair, don’t be afraid to make part of the interview a short assignment or test. Asking interviewees to complete unpaid work outside of an interview setting might be frowned upon, but asking them to create something on the day of the interview is a great way to see how individuals think of their feet.

The purpose of this exercise is not to find someone who can create a polished marketing idea in a short space of time, but rather see how individuals react under pressure. Do they remain positive or does their performance suffer because of the task? Sales and marketing can be a fast-paced industry, and you need to know that your team will be able to respond well to high-pressure situations.

Think about more than just experience

There’s more to a person than the ability to tick boxes against your job description. By looking beyond a candidate’s experience and hiring based on their aptitude and attitude, you’ll find it easier to fill vacancies within your team. Learning to read between the lines of a CV, cover letter and interview is not a simple task, but it does come with more experience. 

By including multiple people on the hiring panel, you will have the benefit of multiple perspectives on the candidates. By including individuals from different departments, you will be able to ensure that the candidate you select has met the requirements for everyone involved. 

By working these steps into your recruitment process, you will make it more sustainable and cost-effective. When you establish yourself as an employer that values its workers, you’ll become a top priority for the best talent, not just those looking for any job.

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