Updated September 2026
Key Takeaway: How to hire sales reps who perform: hire for skills, not the résumé. Look for the skills that separate top performers from the bottom. RevHeat’s analysis of 12,745 salespeople found big gaps in prospecting, CRM discipline and account growth. Test all 3 with work samples. Test live whether the candidate follows a clear instruction. Ask references if they ran a process. Then check the first 90 days on real calls.
Why do good-looking sales hires fail?
The candidate who crushed quota somewhere else brings that company’s way of selling with them. Different buyer, different deal size, different sales cycle. Three months in, they still run the old motion. Your pipeline becomes a mix of ten reps’ personal methods.
The résumé can’t show you whether someone will run your sales process. The interview can, if you test for it.
Step 1: What should the job description actually say?
Write the job around the motion, not the title. Answer four questions before you post:
- Where does pipeline come from? Outbound, inbound, referrals, existing accounts. The rep who lives on inbound leads is a different hire from the one who builds their own list.
- How long is the sales cycle, and how many people sign?
- What does the rep own after the first sale? Renewals and expansion, or hand-off?
- What will you check every week? Activity, stage movement, next steps logged.
Those answers become your scorecard. Every interview question after this maps to a line on it.
Step 2: How do you test prospecting, CRM discipline and account growth?
RevHeat analyzed data from Objective Management Group on 12,745 salespeople. It compared the top 10% with the bottom 10% across 30 sales skills. Three skills you can test before an offer all showed large gaps: Prospecting (219.23%), CRM Savvy (283.33%) and Farming (330.00%).
Prospecting: ask for the process, not the result
Have the candidate walk through their last prospecting block. How did they build the list? What were touches one, two and three? When did an account move to “not now”? A repeatable sequence is a good sign. “I reach out to people” is not.
CRM Savvy: ask how they run their week from it
Ask what fields they kept current at their last job and how they decided whom to call Monday morning. Strong reps use the CRM to find the next deal. Weak reps describe it as admin.
Farming: ask about the last expansion deal
If your reps own accounts after the first sale, ask how they spotted their last upsell. What triggered it? Who else in the account did they reach? “Building relationships” with no trigger, timeline or number means they wait for customers to ask.
Step 3: How do you know if a candidate will run your process?
Don’t screen for “coachable.” In the same data, being coachable showed no difference between the top 10% and the bottom 10% of salespeople. What you need to know is narrower: when you tell this person exactly how you sell, do they do it?
Test that live. Give the candidate your website and five minutes to prepare a short pitch. Let them deliver it. Then give one specific instruction (“open with a question about their current process”) and ask them to run it again.
Does the second version follow the instruction? Or do they explain why the first one was right? In Ken’s experience, the candidate who ignores a clear instruction in an interview ignores your sales process by month three.
Step 4: What should you ask a sales candidate’s references?
Skip “Were they a good employee?” Ask:
- “Did they follow your sales process, or run their own?”
- “What happened when you gave them feedback on a call?”
- “Did you have to chase them to update the pipeline?”
“Always hit quota” doesn’t tell you whether they will run your system. “Logged every call and never missed a pipeline review” does. A reference who can’t answer these questions is telling you nobody checked.
Step 5: What should the first 90 days look like?
The hire isn’t done at the offer letter. It’s done when the rep is running your process on live deals.
- Weeks 1–4: the system before the product. Pipeline stages, what gets logged and when, your prospecting sequence. Have the rep log a practice deal while you watch. The discovery call template is a good first script.
- Weeks 5–8: certify the motion. The rep runs your discovery call and first prospecting touches in a role-play. They pass or repeat before they get a quota.
- Weeks 9–12: review real calls. Listen to the first live discovery call in week nine, not month six. Check next steps and stage updates every week.
Should you hire experienced sales reps or train new ones?
Test the skill, not the tenure. Some 15-year veterans have winged discovery for a decade. They are harder to change than a newer seller with no habits to unlearn. According to US Bureau of Labor Statistics, education needs for sales reps vary with the product sold. For products that aren’t scientific or technical, a high school diploma is generally enough. Experience is an asset when it comes with discipline.
Hire for: prospecting habits, CRM discipline, account growth habits, and whether they follow a clear instruction.
Train for: your product, your market, your discovery questions and your methodology.
Why do new sales reps drift after the first 90 days?
Because the checking stops. Weeks 9 to 12 get real attention. Month five does not, because the new rep’s calls now sit in the same pile as everyone else’s. At about 3 calls a rep a week, a 20-rep team makes 728 calls a quarter. That is about 243 hours of listening. At 60 reps it is 728 hours. If your managers stopped listening to new hires’ calls, they didn’t forget. The hours were never there.
When the weekly check keeps running after onboarding, here is what changes by size:
- 5 to 10 reps: By Monday you can say why the last one died.
- 20 to 50 reps: Managers report what happened instead of what they think.
- 60 to 100+ reps: The same word means the same thing in every country, and marketing gets what the buyer said rather than a rep’s memory of it.
FAQ
How long does it take to hire a salesperson?
RevHeat recommends several weeks for the search and interviews. Then plan about 90 days before the rep runs your process alone. Rushing the interview steps is what makes the ramp longer.
What is the difference between a system skill and a selling skill?
A selling skill happens on the call: discovery, objection handling, closing. A system skill gets the call to happen and makes sure it’s recorded and followed up. Prospecting, CRM discipline and account growth are system skills.
Should I use a sales assessment when hiring?
Yes, as one input next to work samples and references. A sales ability assessment measures how someone sells. A personality test measures traits, not selling skills. See sales personality assessment vs sales ability assessment.
What if my best rep doesn’t follow the sales process?
Find out what they do that works. Record their calls, map their steps and test whether it transfers to other reps. If it does, update the process. If it doesn’t, they are an exception. Hiring more people to “figure it out the same way” won’t reproduce them.
How do you hire sales reps for a small team?
Use the same 5 steps. With fewer reps, each hire moves the number more. The live instruction test and the reference questions matter even more. For structure and hiring order as you grow, see how to build a sales team.
What red flags should I watch for in a sales interview?
No repeatable prospecting sequence. Describing the CRM as paperwork. Ignoring a clear instruction on the second pitch. References who can’t say whether the candidate followed a process.
Should I hire for culture fit?
Hire for the behaviors your sales process needs, then let culture follow. On a sales team, culture is what reps do every week. They log the call, run the sequence and show up to the pipeline review prepared.
Related Reading
- Sales Personality Assessment vs Sales Ability Assessment
- Fractional Sales Manager: Cost vs. Full-Time
- Sales Coaching Software: Recording the Call Is Not the Same as Checking
Ken Lundin is CEO of RevHeat, the Sales Enforcement company. Over 25 years he has sold, run sales teams and helped 200+ teams, including 5 unicorns, generate $1.5B in client sales, with two exits ($250M and $30M) and four appearances on the Inc. 500. He is a Forbes Business Council member and the author of Strategic Selling Unleashed, Broken Playbook and The SmartScaling Formula.