5 sales hiring
bottlenecks(and how to avoid them)Introduction

Hiring for sales positions
is a lot like closing anyother sale at yourorganization

After becoming aware that you have a need for new talent, you’ll
probably start prospecting and contacting candidates that may be
a good fit . From there, it’s time to qualify the best of these leadsand “nurture” them via the hiring process. After a unique offer ismade and any objections are talked through, the hope is that you’ll
be able to “close the sale” by adding a new member to your team. 

Just like any sales cycle, you’re likely to run into bottlenecks
throughout the sales hiring cycle that result in lost time andproductivity. But there are ways to take back your wasted time andenergy. 

Here are the top five sales hiring bottlenecks and strategies foravoiding each.

Contents
1. Poor job descriptions 2. Hiring managers that are too busy 3. Complex interview processes 4. Not-so-enticing offers 5. Closing the hire on the right note1

Poor job descriptions
attract poor candidates
You may not have considered this, but your first point of contact withpotential talent is your job description. Having an attractive job
description ensures you’ll have a healthy pipeline of qualified
candidates applying for your open sales roles, resulting in morecandidates to choose from and hiring better people, faster.

Are your job descriptions

How will you know when

making a good firstyou’ve created a top-notch

impression?

job description?

At their core, your job descriptions must communicate why a job

Your job description should tick all of these boxes:

exists and the tasks that will accomplish that “why.” 

Before recruitment even begins, a recruiter should ask the hiring
manager as well as an employee currently in the same or a similarrole (if there is one) to review the job description.

Where the bottleneck often occurs is when a generic or inaccurate
job description is used in the recruitment stage—therefore
attracting generic and inaccurate candidates.

Start with an informative, creative paragraph or two that sells
your company and the importance of this particular sales rolein achieving its overall mission

Use short, prioritized, and scannable lists to lay out thespecific sales responsibilities and qualifications for the role

Avoid jargon and biased or gendered language

Optimize to attract qualified sales candidates via searchengineUse plain language (no “ninjas” or “gurus”)

Highlight the title of the sales role and location

Include links to relevant, valuable websites

Be mobile-friendly

Emphasize quality and readability

2
Sales hiring managers
that are always crunched
for time
Any director of sales or sales hiring manager knows the feeling—
you’re expected to keep up with your daily responsibilities, continue
driving sales results, and remain engaged with your business
partners all while finding the time to thoroughly interview, hire, andstart onboarding great new salespeople. 

Having too much to do in too little time is a notorious bottleneck forsales hiring managers. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in all themanual tasks that go into managing lots of moving people andpaperwork. To bust through this blocker, sales hiring managers needsoftware that can provide support throughout the hiring process. 

The right eSignature software, for example, can help streamline anddigitize the creation, sending, signing, and storage of paperwork—
even automatically sending reminders to late signers so that sales
hiring managers can get back to what they need to do without
wasting any extra time on administrative tasks.

Sales hiring managers need software that canprovide support throughout the hiring process.

3Three People Who ShouldInterview a Qualified Candidate:

An interview processthat manages to be bothcomplex andThe candidate’s prospective manager

unproductive
You’ve overcome several bottlenecks to get a great candidate in thedoor. Now is not the time to blow it by conducting a bad interview. 

The first step is to simplify where you can. An unnecessarily complex
process is a sign of a poor process. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to simplify
interviews during the sales hiring cycle—just involve fewer people!

That person’s manager
Having too many folks involved in the interview process not only
slows your momentum, but can confuse the candidate and damage
their impression of your organization. 

Instead, you should be extremely selective in identifying the key
people who should be involved—and let the candidate know exactly
who they’ll be meeting and when.

Sr. HR person or recruiter

Let’s talk about theinterview itself
Ideally, the candidate has already been thoroughly vetted to ensure
you’re not wasting your time. The longer in-person interview should
go a step further to challenge the candidate. Now is the time toconfirm that they are indeed qualified, to ensure that they will be agreat fit for your sales team, and to find out more about theirdecision-making skills, personality, emotional intelligence,
persuasiveness, and so on.

Each question should be tailored so that it’s relevant to the role andaligns with any objectives you wanted to achieve during theinterview. The quality of your questions will dictate the quality of
information you obtain to make a decision about an applicant.

Open-ended interview questions: 

(The kind you can’t answer by reading a resume
What interests you most about this sales role and thiscompany
What do you think our sales organization could be doing better?
Sell me on one of our company’s products/services right now.
What is a deficit you’ve had to improve upon in your career?
How did you improve?
Explain the steps you take in the sales process, from beginningto end.
Tell me about a time you had a difficult working relationshipwith a colleague.
What was the challenge, how did you address it, and what did
you learn?
Have you ever turned a prospect away, and why?
Who are you most comfortable selling to?
How do you handle objections from leads?
How do you research specific prospects?
How do you stay up to date on your target market
Tell me about one or more especially satisfying
accomplishments in your career
Do you have any questions?

4
Offers that just aren’t
enticing enough
Remember that parallel we drew between the sales cycle and thesales hiring cycle? It may never be as apparent as when it comestime to extend an offer to a candidate. 

You can think of offering a job to someone much the same as
offering them a product or service. 

Just like during a normal sale, you’ll run into competition, questions,and objections.

Go above and beyond withyour offer
If you want to do everything you can to entice a certain candidate,here are a few ways to go above and beyond with your offer
The minute you’re ready to make an offer, act on it—even if it’s thesame day as their interview.
Call instead of email.
Be prepared to talk pay, benefits, and perks immediately—
remembering that most candidates expect a pay bump of at least
10% when switching jobs.
Ask for a commitment and take the opportunity to address
objections.
Follow your call with an email that puts everything into writing.
Send your offer in a format that’s easily accessible and signablefrom the candidate’s mobile phone.

Have you done the research and put in the time to create an offer

We recommend using mobile/email-friendly eSignature softwarethat beats the competition, addresses key questions, overcomesthat makes it as simple as possible to sign.

objections, and is almost certain to be accepted?

25x

faster returnon job offers using
eSignatures vs.
traditional signatures5
Not closing a hire likeyou’d close a sale—on ahigh note

While this is where many organizations call it a day, how you
complete the hiring process with onboarding is extremely
important in solidifying how that new hire will perform during thecourse of their employment.

Congrats! Making your offer ridiculously easy to complete via
eSignature helped you “close the sale” and get your job offer
accepted!

So new hire onboarding is one of the most impactful times inwhich to instill your company culture and ensure alignment. 

The disorientation that comes with a new job tends to make people
more willing to accept new roles and goals.

If you chose a complete eSignature workflow solution like Dropbox
Sign to send your offer, now is the time to take advantage of thetemplates feature so HR can eliminate redundant document
formatting and quickly send out key onboarding paperwork. Not
only will this save time, but your new hire can complete these
documents digitally before they start.

In addition to “boring stuff” like paperwork, make sure your newsalesperson is set up for success by getting sales call shadowing
sessions and important sales meetings added to their calendar.
After all, a strong onboarding program can get new hires to
productivity in just two-thirds the time that it would typically take.

Instill company culture in
onboarding
If this process is fraught with inefficiencies and poor communication,a new employee may internalize bad habits that can hurt theirperformance and your culture. But if you use this time todemonstrate how efficiently your company delivers professional
documentation and coordinates important tasks, you’ll exemplify aculture that values technology and employees’ time. 

It’s simple to instill company culture in your onboarding processes.
You can streamline all your documents into a single, automatedworkflow that includes eSignature software so employment
contracts, non-disclosure agreements, employee handbooks,authorization forms, salary and benefits packages, and all otherimportant documentation can be sent, signed, received, and stored
without any time wasted on trivial, manual tasks.

Get FAQ answers here.

Impact of company onboardingwith a focus on company culture

25%

Increase retention

11%

Increase productivity

About Dropbox Sign
If you’re interested in reading more about the benefits ofeSignatures beyond HR, recruiting, and onboarding (like how you
can use eSignatures to get contracts signed 80% faster), check out
the 5 amazing business benefits of implementing eSignatures into
your sales ops

Dropbox Sign simplifies work for millions of individuals. Industry
leading companies world-wide trust the Dropbox Sign platform—
which includes eSignature, digital workflow and electronic fax
solutions—to automate and manage their most important business
transactions. For more information, visit the Dropbox Sign website.