Jon Eyers’ Post

Sales Leaders > I don't post very often. As someone who refuses to waste your time, a post must bring value or I don't post. I'm going to address a problem we are beginning to see and a solution which may prevent headaches for you if you are a Sales team leader tasked with bringing in revenues. As a 20+ year headhunter focused on building Sales and GTM support teams for technology and cyber security companies, I have spent the past year fielding calls, emails and LinkedIn communications and having daily discussions with absolute deal closing masters. Most are employed, but looking to make a move. These are the top 1- 5 sellers in the company they work for. Companies you compete with or are familiar with. Most calls end with: "Call me if you see anything I should know about" The thing that concerns me is this trend is slowing. The candidate market is returning to the patterns seen from 2009 - 2022 and soon, companies will again struggle to attract and hire the best talent. If you are a hiring manager... Consider moving open demand and if needed, build a case to borrow from another budget in order to make a hire this quarter or next. The window is closing to hire the best of the best without massive competition, inflated salary ranges and dreaded sign on bonuses. 💡 Hire now: ✔ Interview passive 100 - 300+% achievers accustomed to 1- 5M$ sales targets ✔ Market average base salary + uncapped commissions ✔ Fewer competitors for top achievers, by a lot. They may earn 1-2 other offers max ✔ Experience potentially 100 - 300% achievement against a 1 - 5M$ sales target ✔ Alleviate rolling, daily cost of inaction which equates to $5,500 X 365 days incurred by leaving a 2M$ patch open OR 👎 Hire when every other company does: 👎 Your company is one of many trying to hire them 👎 Candidates are overloaded with openings and must eliminate first interviews. They do so by back channeling you personally, your company and research you in great detail for the purpose of inclusion or elimination from consideration before you even interview them 👎 This is when you will find out if the marketing, data, comp and HR teams have positioned you to attract talent 👎 Every inflated salary discussion is fairly one sided because candidates have multiple offers 👎 Time to have that sign on bonus discussion again 👎 Unless a company is at the top of every jobseeker's list they may see patches stay open for 90 - 120 days 👎 Headhunters are slammed with searches and cherry picking what they work on If we can help create the business case or brainstorm with you, please reach out.

Recruit like you're selling! it's essential to validate the notion that recruiting is, in fact, a mirrored process to sales. Let's dissect this comparison further to understand the intricate parallels that exist between the two. First off, think of your hiring process as a sales cycle. Why do we draw this parallel? Simply because recruiting is an art that involves selling, you're selling the company and the role to potential candidates, just as they sell their skills and experiences to you. In sales, the value of qualified leads is well-understood. It's the lifeblood of any robust sales funnel. The same sentiment applies to recruiting. It's vital not to get caught up in chasing unqualified candidates, no matter how many open vacancies you have or how urgently you need to fill them. Chasing unqualified candidates is as wasteful and fruitless as pitching to customers who are clearly not interested in or cannot afford your product or service. Moreover, nurturing your prospects is a crucial practice in sales. This concept holds equally true in recruiting. Building and maintaining candidate relationships is akin to fostering relationships with clients. A warm, engaging interaction can be the defining factor in closing a deal or filling a position. So, Recruit with a sales mindset—measure metrics, use data-driven approaches, and build nurturing candidate relationships as you would with clients. Just as salespeople are encouraged to 'Always Be Closing,' the same applies to recruiters. Constantly strive to edge your prospects closer to that job offer and remember that every interaction counts. In the startup ecosystem, where you're likely working, grasping this concept can truly be a game-changer. Startups often deal with limited resources and higher stakes. The right hire can make a monumental difference, so selling the vision and potential of the startup effectively becomes even more crucial. In conclusion, approaching recruiting with a sales mindset can revolutionize your process and yield more favorable outcomes. Happy selling (or should I say recruiting)!

I have conducted thousands of interviews for all sorts of roles. I have hired people who quit after Day 1, people with no experience who proved to be Rock Stars (and some who didn't) and people who have become lifelong friends. While hiring in Sales may seem like a mystery, especially without a Sales background, success is definitely achievable with the right approach. Sales hiring can be challenging, as top salespeople excel in interview settings. However, with adequate preparation and a tailored methodology, success in hiring for Sales roles is within reach. Regardless of your background, finding the right fit for your Sales team is possible with the right strategies in place. #Recruitment #SalesHiring #Interviewing #HumanResources #BusinessStrategy

I was not a natural born sales person. I had to learn. The starting point was as a rookie recruiter being a told to do stuff that made no sense.  It made no sense to take a candidate to market, when most of the roles I was picking up were hard to fill. It seemed clear that what i needed to do was pick up easier to fill roles - and that meant having my clients see me as more than a cv factory. So when i built the Resonant Outbound method (it wasn’t called that back then but it always resonanted with people who value recruitment) it had to achieve three goals: 1. it had to communicate the true value of a good recruiter - more than just filling roles 2. it had to quickly deliver enough value for employers to trust someone they’d not worked with 3. it had to deliver more placements than taking candidates to market I saw that the value i wanted from my clients was greater than they were typically willing to give: I wanted their help to make filling all their roles easy so that I made more placements and they kept using me. So it was clear the value I added had to be greater than anything they’d ever received. Thar meant finding an approach that delivered huge value as well as productising my offering so that it was a no-brainer for them. The first version of this process was built and shared with hundreds of recruiters back in 2018. Since then it’s had several major overhauls and now, 6 years on, represents a full sales operating system. it works for both new business and expanding existing clients. And I’m prepared to suggest it’s the most effective and sophisticated approach to sales being delivered in recruitment…but you’d have to check it out to be sure. What’s more, all that work has lead to it becoming a simple, scalable systematic approach. But it came from humble beginnings. just me, trying to figure out why I was slogging my guts out for 15% fees and contingent terms whilst solving my clients biggest, most valuable problems. And being certain there had to be a better way. 

Hiring Sales people to succeed is hard. Unless you are hiring superstars from a direct competitor (and sometimes even then), there is a higher element of risk than in other areas of your business. You can hire a finance professional, an HR professional or a skilled trades person and know the vast majority of their skills will transfer. You can design simple tests before hiring that work too. But Sales? For whatever reason (and some of that is on us as sales people, not us as hiring managers), it seems to be a lot murkier. A high performing SaaS CRM salesperson doesn’t crack the new SaaS ERP role they were hired for. That top-selling rep from your key vendor that you hired, moves back to the old job after 6 months of struggling with your processes and targets. We have all been there, and we know the impact to the business. There are some fundamentals that have to be in place for success before we talk about the soft skills and processes of course. An understanding of what your organisation likes in successful employees (from all areas, it’s the culture, people), a clear definition of the role and what success looks like in that role, a well-defined onboarding procedure, as examples. If these aren’t in place, you are increasing the risk of making the right hire exponentially. Assuming you have all these, things can still go wrong (even the late great Jack Welch allegedly said he only hired successfully eight out of ten times). So, what can we do to help mitigate the risks? Here are some things we at SOAR have implemented before in Sales hiring; 1.      Testing during hiring phase. Look for communications skills, ability to think outside the box and using previous experience to navigate a sales process. 2.      Look for inherent traits. Long term success in B2B sales requires intellectual curiosity, resilience and empathy. This is especially important when hiring for entry level jobs. 3.      Interview for culture. Another late great, Tony Hsieh, made sure a separate interview was conducted for culture fit, and no matter the result of the skills/experience interview, no-one was hired having failed the culture fit interview. We have a great story of Tony Hsieh out late on a vendor trip to back that up! 4.      Stop looking for purple squirrels! The likelihood that you find the absolute perfect candidate, in your budget and timeline, is extremely low. A good and well-suited B performer will do far more for you than that A-game candidate you still haven’t found. We get it. Hiring Sales people seems tougher, especially as most of them are good communicators and therefore perform well in interview scenarios. And you’ll never get it right every time. But there are systems and programs you can put in place to improve your lot! And should you ever need it, SOAR can help build a hiring program designed specifically for you and your business to succeed. Drop us a line and we can chat.

I think there is a confusion in recruitment between sales, business development and new business. Pretty much everyone I know would agree, I am a natural sales person. But with 21yrs working in R2R could I claim to be an out and out cold new business winner, or an outright BD person?! No probably not. R2R has always been and always will be candidate driven. If you have a brilliant candidate, that alone opens the doors for you. Does it mean I don't have to pick up the phone? No! Does it mean that when my clients aren't hiring, I don't have to go out and find more? No! Does that mean I haven't sold huge recruitment campaigns for companies I have worked for? No Does it mean it is always easy?! No!! But recruitment isn't about endlessly bashing in the phone, making cold calls to try and win new clients and new jobs? Recruitment is so much more than that. It's about understanding clients, candidates. The difference between wants and needs on both sides. Pitching on both sides of the fence. Building a brand, marketing, creating content, building a network and knowledge in your sector. I ultimately sell sales people, sales opportunities and sell to sales businesses and so I am not sure my job could get anymore sales focused if I tried. But sometimes it is about seeing beyond outbound sales calls and only the new business wins. Surely it isn't just me that is walking proof that our job, is so much more than winning new business endlessly?

Role plays in sales recruitment... We recently had a candidate withdraw from process for a VP of Sales role with a Series A backed SaaS company. Why you ask? He felt insulted that he was asked to do a role play by a CEO/Founder with zero sales experience. How was this doode supposed to benchmark sales ability with no experience of his own to go on? Was the impeccable CV - with career revenues of plus £400Mn and 2 successful exits not enough? Role plays for junior telesales people - to some degree I get it. Roles where you know you will need to coach your front line staff - I get it. But some companies also use the role plays to fuel their own laziness. For example - they'll take a candidate few severals rounds of interviews - to then ask the candidate to do a role play. Now for whatever reason, the candidates role play doesn't meet the clients expectations (bare in mind - they are offering just £40k base lol) they just bin the candidate off and say 'Sorry - not for us!' It's wank behaviour by the client - let's be honest. So I ask the question - do you still back role plays? If so, why? And at what stage of a sales persons career does it become offensive to ask them to do a role play? SDR -> AE -> EAE -> VP Sales? What do you think?

A strategic approach to sales recruitment is vital for business expansion and stability. Yet, many businesses opt to DIY their sales recruitment. If that sounds familiar, beware of these pitfalls. #hiringerrors #hiringmistakes #salesrecruitment #hiring #headhunters

A strategic approach to sales recruitment is vital for business expansion and stability. Yet, many businesses opt to DIY their sales recruitment. If that sounds familiar, beware of these pitfalls. #hiringerrors #hiringmistakes #salesrecruitment #hiring #headhunters

A strategic approach to sales recruitment is vital for business expansion and stability. Yet, many businesses opt to DIY their sales recruitment. If that sounds familiar, beware of these pitfalls. #hiringerrors #hiringmistakes #salesrecruitment #hiring #headhunters