Repeatable and scalable sales success is one of the most significant challenges a company has to tackle. To do so, they often analyze the elements that seem to have made the success of some representatives and try to replicate them with others, with the hope of achieving the same result.

The approach itself isn't wrong. By analyzing successes, our partner Objective Management Group defined Sales DNA -- the elements that make a sales representative effective in sales. These elements allow companies to recruit a specific type of individual, but also to train their sales force to develop or sharpen particular skills.

How you onboard your recruits and has an undeniable impact on the salespeople's future "career" within your company.

Sales onboarding is a critical step of sales recruitment. Incomplete, botched or even non-existent integration ensures that there will be a lack of alignment between the salesperson and management.

Do you know how to recruit a salesperson with LinkedIn? LinkedIn is an essential sales recruitment tool, but you have to understand how to use it.

The network has evolved a lot in recent years. It refined its functionality to support a proactive approach strategy and is an excellent way to identify candidates. Indeed, using filters allows you to improve your search results. It's, therefore, possible to obtain the list of employees within a specific company or those of related persons according to different degrees of connection.

You don't recruit a salesperson the same way you hire other employees.

There are 2 distinct variants - the sales environment is very different from that of other departments, and the candidate is by nature a "good salesperson" who will easily navigate your traditional recruitment process.

The primary purpose of the tests used during the recruitment process is to determine whether candidates fit a pre-defined profile, but why should the usefulness of these tools stop after the candidate is hired?

There is a multitude of tests available on the market to help recruit for many professions. The majority of them are personality and behaviour tests, and they're also often used to recruit salespeople. What they analyze however aren't predictive of sales success and don't improve sales-specific competencies after the hire.

I recently had a meeting with an executive who asked himself the following question: how do I recruit the ideal salesperson?

As our discussion progressed, the conversation drifted on to the criteria required to be an ideal candidate. Often to find the perfect salesperson, one thinks of the following criteria: "a representative must have a lot of interpersonal skills because he or she must build friendly relationships with the potential customers he or she meets!" In fact, this was one of the points that the executive enthusiastically shared with me.

Hiring salespeople is often a source of frustration for business leaders and executives for several reasons: lack of quality candidates, candidates make a strong impression during the interview but are unable to sell after six months on the job and generally poor experiences with salespeople.

The root of these problems isn't human (although it is becoming human), but rather a process problem. Here are eight things to avoid when recruiting for a sales position.