State of Sales Hiring Survey Benchmarks Time to Fill Open Sales Positions

Open positions and bad hires and are the death knell of any sales leader. They place important deals and accounts you need to make quota at risk while sapping the life out of your sales managers, who you need coaching deals to close this quarter. You must hire fast but also hire well. 

A recent joint survey we conducted with SellingPower® to identify challenges and best practices in sales hiring found that filling a business-to-business sales position will take on average 60 days and probably longer. 

What do sales hiring managers and recruiters think?

This was one of several questions we asked in our survey, and we will continue to share them in the coming weeks. To gain the most comprehensive insight possible, we surveyed sales leaders, recruiters, and sales reps to better understand their unique — and at times opposing — perceptions, expectations, and preferences.

As you can see from the chart, there is decent alignment between sales hiring managers and recruiters related to time to fill open sales positions, with recruiters being slightly more optimistic in their estimates. That said, it is possible that sales managers know the roles they need to fill, and there is a lag between this and when the recruiter gets the actual requisition to fill the role.

Clearly, this is a long time for territories and accounts to be uncovered, and filling these roles is essential to overall goal achievement and quota attainment of sales leaders. 

For this reason, it is important to anticipate recruiting needs and proactively build a pipeline of qualified candidates, even when there are not immediate jobs to fill. If you wait until someone quits, then you’re scrambling. And when there’s pressure to fill an open position, chances are higher that you’ll fill it with an inferior candidate.

Please check back with us as we share more about this insightful survey. Download the full survey report here!

What are you doing to improve your sales hiring process?

Sciolytix Sales Performance Predictor (S2P2) is an award-winning candidate assessment tool that utilizes 3D avatar-based simulations to measure and predict a candidate’s performance in an unbiased manner. Think of it as a video game — sales candidates play a video game that reflects the real-world selling situations they will face in their new sales role and, through artificial intelligence, predict their effectiveness. This groundbreaking technology helps sales leaders:

1. Hire top-performing reps quickly
2. Minimize the risk of bad hires
3. Position themselves as an employer of choice with applicants 

Bottom line, we are revolutionizing the way organizations hire, onboard, develop talent, and create a fair hiring process for all. Predictive simulations are the latest enhancement we’re adding to that arsenal of products.