In today’s workplace, remote and hybrid working have become a long term norm for many businesses. While this offers flexibility and access to wider talent pools, it also creates new challenges for recruiters, founders, and HR teams who need to hire high performing people without relying on in office supervision.

When employees are working remotely, the challenge for hiring businesses is identifying candidates who can thrive under their own initiative, stay consistent without daily oversight, and deliver results in an autonomous environment.

This becomes even more apparent when it comes to hiring remote salespeople, who must possess the necessary discipline and drive to succeed outside the office. Sales is already a role full of rejection, setbacks, and momentum swings, and working remotely only amplifies the need for resilience and self motivation.

In this article we discuss how to hire a remote salesperson.

The Most Important Trait for a Remote Salesperson

The “Need for Achievement” is one’s desire to pursue excellence for the sake of achieving. Someone who possesses this trait sets themselves challenging goals, works to reach them, and then pushes further to achieve more.

In a 1961 book, The Achieving Society, psychologist David McClelland first highlighted the correlation between the Need for Achievement and a career in sales.

McClelland notes that highly driven people are drawn to sales because of the opportunity to control several responsibilities, such as:

• Taking risks
• Choosing who their prospects will be
• Finding creative ways to persuade
• Tracking and moderating their own success

This onus on personal responsibility in the pursuit of excellence is precisely what makes the Need for Achievement so critical to remote salespeople.

Any salesperson working from home must be a self starter who will perform even when they are not being monitored.

The Risks of Hiring the Wrong Person

On the other end of the spectrum, salespeople lacking in the Need for Achievement may be attracted only to the lifestyle benefits of remote work.

Someone like this may see a home based sales role as an opportunity to sit back and relax, revelling in the fact that there is little to no supervision to worry about.

This lack of drive and productivity can be absolutely devastating to a business. In fact, according to Closeriq, the cost of hiring an underperforming sales professional could be anywhere between 50 to 75 percent of their annual salary.

When you consider that the average base wage of a salesperson in the UK is almost £33,000 per annum, the consequence of hiring poorly could cost somewhere in the region of £16,500 to £24,750 once replacement and disruption are accounted for.

When hiring for a remote sales role, it is tempting to focus on those who can talk the talk and appear to be a real go getter during interview.

However, just because candidates can sell themselves confidently does not mean they will deliver consistent sales outcomes once hired.

• The question is not, “can they sell?”
• But rather, “will they sell?”

Steps to Hiring the Right Candidate

Now that you know precisely what kind of personality you’re after, you should take structured steps to fill the role effectively.

While many aspects of hiring are now conducted via video interviewing and digital assessment, the principles of a strong recruitment process remain the same.

To find your ideal remote salesperson, follow the steps below.

Step #1: CV Review

Once you post your job listing and start receiving CVs, the first task is to identify those candidates who are most likely to be the high achievers you need. Given how competitive the job market has become in recent years, you may find that you receive a high volume of CVs, many of which may not be relevant.

When reviewing a CV, there are a few indicators that highlight those with, or without, the Need for Achievement:

• The candidate is passive rather than active. If someone has been out of work for a while, there may be a reason behind it. Of course there are valid explanations, but it is worth exploring.
• The candidate has held steady positions with some longevity and is not hopping from role to role
• The candidate can provide concrete stats and metrics to evidence performance

If you are looking for someone to hit the ground running, narrow your search criteria to those with 2 to 3 years of experience in a similar sized operation. It is tempting to see an outstanding candidate from a major brand and assume they will replicate that success anywhere. However, sales success at a large, established organisation is often supported by strong brand recognition, marketing resource, and inbound opportunity.

You need to clarify whether their success was driven by personal effort or by the environment around them.

For example, if you are a start up training company and you hire a salesperson from Nike, the results may not translate in the same way.

Step #2: Start a Sales Assessment

As mentioned already, candidates who do not meet the Need for Achievement criteria can still present exceptionally well in interview. This means that before interviewing any candidate, it is crucial to ensure they are genuinely suited to what you are offering.

A highly effective way to screen candidates early is to undertake a sales assessment that measures:

• Need for Achievement
• Competitiveness
• Optimism

These are three largely non teachable characteristics that are essential in high performing salespeople. Using this kind of assessment helps eliminate poor fit candidates while bringing the strongest to the forefront.

Step #3: Behavioural Interviews

Candidates who progress past assessment should earn the opportunity for a behavioural interview. Although behavioural interviews sound intimidating, they are simply a way of exploring how someone has operated in previous roles, allowing you to understand their mindset, habits, and working style. As the saying goes, the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Key questions to explore may revolve around:

• Goals, achievements, and planning
• The sacrifices they have made in pursuit of success
• Challenges of working remotely and without direct supervision

Interviewing guides such as this one on Etsy provide an excellent resource for creating structured and clear interviewing processes.

Takeaways

Bringing on board a salesperson to work remotely without direct supervision is a huge challenge, but it is one that must be met if businesses want to continue to grow in these puzzling times.

Above all else, it’s absolutely crucial to evaluate a potential candidate’s Need for Achievement throughout the recruitment process, to ensure they have the necessary discipline and focus to work on their own initiative. With the right processes, communication and the right personalities, your business will be well equipped to succeed with the best people on board.

Need to hire a salesperson? Start hiring for one here.