Recruiting is Inside Sales: Hiring Top Inside Sales Talent

One of the biggest issues of discussion in the Inside Sales community is hiring top inside sales talent. The reason? Unemployment for college graduates is at 2.5% and recruiters are relying on inbound applications to find the strong sales reps. The problem here is that the strongest reps aren’t spending their time applying for jobs, they’re focused on hitting their number while leading the pack at their current company. In a recent installment for the AA-ISP’s Training Tuesday, memoryBlue Director of Search Justin Brown in coordination with Founder of the AA-ISP Bob Perkins, explains why hiring top inside sales talent requires your recruiters to have the same skills as your best inside sales reps. Below are 7 tweetable takeaways on the state of hiring top inside sales talent from the  AA-ISP/memoryBlue presentation:

1.  “We asked leaders of inside sales what are their most pressing issues right now and recruiting and hiring made the top two.” – Bob Perkins, Founder and Chairman of the AA-ISP (Tweet This)
2.  “In the year 2012 – 2020 we anticipate 700,000 – 800,000 net new jobs added to the inside sales profession.” – Bob Perkins, Founder and Chairman of the AA-ISP (Tweet This)
3. “We have huge inside sales job growth, higher demand on skills, our talent pool is just too small.” – Bob Perkins, Founder and Chairman of the AA-ISP (Tweet This)
4. “Work with active and passive candidates, both are critical, just like inbound sales leads.” – Justin Brown, Director of Search of memoryBlue (Tweet This)
5. “Passive candidates are the ones who have their heads down, buried in excellence.” – Justin Brown, Director of Search of memoryBlue (Tweet This)
6. “Top sales reps won’t fall into your lap, they’re employed and focused on the job at hand.” – Justin Brown, Director of Search of memoryBlue (Tweet This)
7. “If your talent acquisition team doesn’t have the same skills as your sales reps, you need to find a new solution.” – Justin Brown, Director of Search of memoryBlue (Tweet This)

In 2014, 73% of memoryBlue’s hires came through outbound prospecting efforts like picking up the phone and using the instrument that passive inside sales talent is literally paid to answer. If hiring top inside sales talent is an initiative for your firm, I’d be happy to talk strategy with you to find the people you need to fuel your company’s growth. Feel free to contact me on Twitter, by email, or as always, by phone I’m paid to answer it as well.