Location:
Miami, FL
Industry:
Manufacturing and Distribution
Position Title:
Inside Sales Rep
Client Testimonial
“Easy to work with. Good communication. And he performed. That’s honestly what I want from a recruiting partner.”
Challenge:
A long-established company selling specialized electrical products, including batteries, fuses, and related components, needed an onsite Inside Sales Representative in Miami.
When we first discussed the position, we were hesitant to take the search. On the surface, the role sounded closer to customer service than the type of sales position we typically recruit for.
Once we spent more time understanding the position, our view changed considerably.
Customers included contractors, distributors, utilities, municipalities, commercial facilities, industrial operations, service companies, maintenance departments, and other organizations trying to solve specific product needs. They did not always know exactly what they needed when they called. The sales representative had to ask enough questions to understand the application, work through a broad technical product offering, and guide the customer toward the right solution.
The company had also invested heavily in software, technology, product training, and a training program leadership was particularly proud of. The compensation was strong, with a high base salary plus commissions tied to gross revenue.
The difficult part was defining the candidate. Employee tenure was unusually strong, so the company had very few recent examples of successful and unsuccessful hires to help identify which backgrounds were most predictive.
Solution:
We advertised the position heavily and generated a broad applicant pool from technical sales, distribution, inside sales, customer-facing technical roles, and other adjacent backgrounds.
Several members of our recruiting team helped interview a large number of candidates.
The interviews focused on technical curiosity, questioning skills, communication, and the ability to learn a broad product catalog. The company’s training program gave us confidence that they could teach the products.
Outcome
- ▸ The search required significantly more interviewing than we expected.
- ▸ Strong job advertising created a large applicant pool, and having multiple recruiters involved allowed us to work through that volume and identify the people who best fit the actual work.
