This morning, I ran a LinkedIn search for open SDR, AE, and Customer Success jobs in greater Boston. I found 1,506 active job posts—with 600+ posted within the last week alone. With every social post, in every recruiter InMail, and on every career page, companies are screaming for sales talent.

There are two problems though. One, the unemployment rate (for the typical candidate profile) is nearing a natural floor.

Two, the era of sloppy growth is coming to an end (see here, here, and here). When times are fat, companies can ignore slack in their hiring process. Heads for headsets, paying signing bonuses, and “hire-fast + fire-fast” mentalities will put butts in seats when growth trumps profitability.

As the pendulum swings toward efficient growth, hiring momentum becomes what matters. And for high-growth companies, it becomes a strategic competitive advantage.

What is hiring momentum?

According to my good friend Google, momentum is the quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as a product of its mass and velocity. In sales, you can increase hiring momentum in three ways:

Read More

For New Englanders like me, Spring means three things - golf, despair over the Red Sox’s starting rotation, and college graduation season.

A new crop of sales talent is readying to enter the market and nearly all of my clients have open headcount for Sales Development Reps. And, I can assure you, most are facing a very competitive hiring market. If you’re looking to attract the class of 2016, you have to be creative. It should come as no surprise that 90% of those under the age of 30 use social media. What you may not know is that Instagram’s usage has surpassed Twitter’s – registering 400M monthly active users.

A new channel for recruiting

If you are looking to drive candidates to your positions, you need to fish where your potential candidates swim.

Read More

"The corporate SDR is accountable for booking sales demos across all verticals for the closing representative. They will be responsible for proactive calling and lead activity management owning the prospecting stage from . . ." Zzzzzzzzz.

Sorry. Nodded off there.

After a scan of more sales development job descriptions than I can count, I can tell you that’s how the vast majority sound. In a word: dreary. They are about as captivating and inspiring as the operating manual for my toaster. Most of us were taught that a job description should, well, describe the job. But that’s totally backwards.

A job description should sell the job. If you can’t capture attention and interest, who the hell cares about the fine print.

Your job descriptions are content assets that should be attracting top talent. If done well, you’ll be selling the sizzle, while every other hiring manager will be documenting the chemical makeup of the steak.

Read More

It’s a tough hiring market -- especially for SDR and AE roles. In some locations (San Francisco, New York, and Boston), it has become almost impossible.

I know from speaking with Sales Leaders (and from our research) that companies are being forced to hire younger and less experienced reps. It seems “straight out of college” has become the new “1-2 years of experience” and that “minimum of 1 year of selling” has replaced “3+ years in a sales capacity.”

By this point, if you don’t have a healthy number of “Millennials” on your team, you’re in the minority. Despite the stereotypes (social media-obsessed, marriage-delaying, selfie-addicts), Millennials actually stay longer with their employers than the previous generation.

Read More