Finding and Hiring On-Demand Sales Teams

Hiring on-demand sales teams is challenging for many businesses, with 74% struggling to find skilled professionals.

Gartner also highlights that Chief Sales Officers face a critical hiring challenge, with only three qualified candidates available per open B2B sales position and vacancies lasting an average of two months. 

This shortage makes the onboarding process daunting, delays progress, increases costs and disrupts operations.

But how can businesses tackle these challenges without breaking the bank or losing focus on their primary business goals? 

This article delves into the challenges of building on-demand sales teams, explores their benefits, and provides actionable strategies to streamline hiring for cost-effective, long-term success.

Challenges and Solutions in Hiring On-Demand Sales Teams

Hiring on-demand sales teams presents several unique challenges that companies must navigate effectively. So, look at companies' primary bottlenecks while hiring on-demand sales teams.

1. Identifying Top-Performing Sales Professionals

One of the primary hurdles in hiring a fractional sales team is identifying top-performing sales professionals. The demand for skilled sales talent significantly exceeds the available supply, creating a highly competitive recruitment environment. 

Companies should look beyond general sales expertise, prioritizing candidates with industry-specific knowledge and skills that align with their unique business needs. 

Budget limitations add to the challenge, requiring organizations to carefully select candidates who meet sales performance expectations and fit within financial constraints. 

Solution: Several businesses turn to cost-effective solutions, such as hiring commission-based professionals or collaborating with sales experts to secure the right talent to address these hurdles.

2. Balancing Sales Team Hiring with Core Business Activities

Hiring an on-demand sales team can disrupt daily business operations if not managed properly. Extended recruitment and onboarding processes take time and resources, which can divert attention from core activities like customer service and operations. 

This can lead to gaps in sales coverage, harming customer relationships and affecting sales performance. 

Solution: To address this challenge, businesses can turn to expert hiring platforms that offer pre-vetted, on-demand sales talent. These platforms help streamline the hiring process, allowing companies to quickly fill sales roles without draining internal resources. 

By minimizing hiring time and complexity, businesses can maintain their focus on core activities while building an effective sales team.

For companies seeking a reliable and efficient way to hire sales talent, Activated Scale offers an ideal solution. With a unique "try before you hire" model, the platform connects businesses with part-time or full-time sales experts specializing in lead generation and sales cycle management.

3. Potential Use of Inefficient Recruitment Strategies

Inefficient recruitment strategies can hinder the ability to build a strong sales team. Reactive hiring, often driven by immediate needs, frequently results in subpar hires and higher costs. 

Companies risk overlooking top talent that could contribute significantly to their success without structured interviews or team collaboration. 

Solution: Employee referral programs use internal networks to attract high-quality hires that are aligned with company culture. Structured interviews, cross-functional team involvement, and tools like online assessments enhance hiring outcomes. 

Efficient onboarding and empowering new hires minimize disruptions, emphasizing the importance of a strategic, balanced approach for successful on-demand sales team hiring.

Time and Financial Commitments

Having addressed the challenges and solutions in hiring on-demand sales teams, examining the time and financial commitments involved is crucial. These factors often play a decisive role in shaping recruitment strategies and determining the overall success of the hiring process.

1. Extended Time Frame for Recruitment and Onboarding

Recruiting and onboarding a sales team requires a significant time investment. Unlike quick hires, the traditional process involves a thorough search, multiple interviews, and careful selection. 

Once hired, onboarding can be smooth, especially for higher-level roles, which can take up to a year. 

While this extended timeframe might seem excessive, it ensures new employees understand the company's culture and role, promoting better integration and long-term value. 

Companies with short onboarding programs, often lasting less than a week, need to integrate recruits fully. In contrast, extended onboarding leads to greater employee satisfaction and improved retention.

2. High Costs Associated with Traditional Hiring Processes

The financial demands of hiring are substantial. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, the average cost of hiring a new employee is $4,683. 

This figure excludes hidden costs, such as leadership time spent in interviews and missed opportunities due to unfilled positions. 

For in-house sales teams, these costs escalate further; assembling a team of three can cost over $30,000. High turnover rates intensify the issue, making traditional hiring unsustainable for many organizations. 

Replacing an employee can cost 50% to 200% of their annual salary. However, investing in structured and extended onboarding can help reduce turnover and minimize these costs over time.

3. Opportunity Costs from Delayed Recruitment

Beyond direct costs, delayed recruitment significantly impacts business performance and revenue generation. 

Every unfilled sales role represents missed opportunities to acquire new customers, nurture leads, and close deals. The longer a position remains vacant, the greater the strain on existing team members, potentially leading to burnout and reduced productivity. 

Also, companies need adequate sales coverage to catch up to competitors, especially during critical periods like product launches or peak selling seasons. 

Proactive hiring and using on-demand sales teams can help mitigate these opportunity costs by ensuring timely recruitment and maintaining momentum in sales operations.

Streamlining the Hiring Process

Given the significant time and financial commitments involved in hiring, it's crucial to find ways to streamline the process. 

By doing so, businesses can optimize efficiency and reduce costs. Here's how:

1. Using Expert Platforms for Sales Recruitment

Expert platforms for sales recruitment combine advanced technology and specialized knowledge to simplify hiring. 

Platforms like Recruiter.com OnDemand and SalesPipe enable businesses to connect with pre-vetted sales professionals quickly and efficiently. This ensures alignment with business needs for rapid onboarding. 

AI-powered tools such as Oleeo ATS and HireVue increase efficiency by automating screening processes. 

These tools predict candidate success and provide data-driven matches, significantly reducing recruiter workloads and enhancing hiring precision.

2. Reducing Complexity with Dedicated Back-Office Support

Dedicated back-office support plays a vital role in streamlining recruitment processes. 

Staffing agencies handle administrative tasks, including job descriptions, initial screenings, and candidate communications, allowing companies to focus on core operations. 

Tools for seamless collaboration, such as shared documents and project management platforms, enable real-time discussions across hiring teams. This ensures consistency, fairness, and smooth decision-making throughout the recruitment process.

3. Leveraging Flexible Hiring Models

A flexible hiring model is a recruitment approach that allows businesses to hire professionals on a temporary, contract, or fractional basis.

Flexible hiring models, like contract-based or fractional sales professionals through platforms like Activated Scale, streamline recruitment by reducing onboarding time. 

These models let businesses scale sales teams based on demand without the complexities of permanent hiring.

Companies can quickly fill sales gaps and address immediate needs with short-term, high-impact roles, ensuring agility and adaptability while minimizing long-term commitments.

Also read: Why Startups Should Consider Fractional Sales Talent?

4. Incorporating Data-Driven Recruitment Strategies

Data-driven recruitment strategies use analytics and performance metrics to optimize the hiring process. 

Platforms equipped with AI and predictive analytics, like HireVue and Oleeo, analyze candidate data to identify those most likely to succeed in specific roles. These tools help eliminate bias, enhance decision-making, and ensure better alignment between candidate skills and organizational needs. 

By using data insights, businesses can streamline recruitment, reduce time-to-hire, and improve overall hiring outcomes.

Advantages of On-Demand Sales Teams

Once the hiring process is optimized, the focus shifts to the advantages of on-demand sales teams. These teams can accelerate business growth by meeting dynamic sales demands efficiently.

1. Access to Pre-Vetted, Professional Sales Team Members

On-demand sales teams provide businesses access to pre-vetted professionals, eliminating the need for a lengthy recruitment process. These teams bring specialized skills and industry expertise, which are particularly valuable when entering new or unfamiliar markets. 

Specialized recruitment agencies pre-screen candidates for their sales capabilities, ensuring they are a strong fit. This approach fills roles quickly and ensures the right individuals are matched to tasks requiring their expertise.

2. Allowing Businesses to Concentrate on Primary Objectives

By handling critical preliminary tasks like outreach and lead generation, on-demand sales teams free up internal resources to focus on high-value activities. 

This division of labor enables the internal sales force to dedicate more time to building relationships, negotiating deals, and driving revenue. The increased productivity leads to improved sales conversion rates and better overall sales performance.

3. Enhancing Scalability and Agility

One of the key benefits of on-demand sales teams is their scalability and agility — essential factors for staying competitive in today’s dynamic markets. With on-demand sales talent, businesses can quickly adjust their sales capacity based on demand. 

For example, companies can ramp up their sales efforts during high-demand periods such as product launches or seasonal sales. This flexibility can potentially increase sales activity by up to 40%.

This flexibility allows businesses to remain responsive to market changes and growth opportunities without the risk of overburdening internal teams or distracting from core business operations. It’s the ultimate solution for maintaining business continuity and ensuring consistent sales performance, regardless of market conditions.

4. Improving Efficiency and Saving Resources

On-demand sales teams boost efficiency by streamlining hiring and onboarding, providing pre-vetted talent ready to perform. This eliminates delays in sales processes and enables faster market engagement. 

Their pay-as-you-go model ensures financial efficiency by avoiding long-term commitments, allowing businesses to: 

• Allocate resources strategically
• Focus on growth
• Reduce unnecessary costs during slow periods

Expertise and Automation in Hiring

Building on the advantages of on-demand teams, the next step is exploring how expertise and automation can further enhance the efficiency of your hiring process.

1. Leveraging Platforms That Streamline Hiring Tasks

Expert platforms simplify the hiring process by automating key tasks like

• Candidate sourcing
• Candidate screening
• Scheduling interviews

With built-in algorithms and data-driven insights, these platforms help match businesses with top-tier sales talent based on your specific requirements. From creating job postings to tracking candidate progress, automation handles the heavy lifting. 

This saves you time and ensures only qualified candidates make it to the final selection stages. It also accelerates the hiring timeline and reduces the risk of costly hiring mistakes.

2. Engaging Sales Teams Managed by Hiring Specialists

Many expert hiring platforms offer dedicated support from hiring specialists who manage the entire recruitment process. These professionals handle candidate sourcing and interviews and ensure that the sales teams they provide align with your business's unique needs. 

By outsourcing the hiring process to these specialists, you gain access to a pool of pre-vetted, highly skilled sales professionals who are ready to hit the ground running. 

This expert-led approach minimizes recruitment complexities and delivers quality candidates faster, letting you focus on growing your business.

3. AI-Driven Candidate Matching and Screening

Many expert platforms leverage AI technology to match the best-fit sales professionals with your specific needs.

AI can quickly filter through candidates by analyzing resumes, past performance, and other key criteria. It also highlights the most qualified individuals, saving you time and effort during the initial stages of recruitment.

This automated screening process ensures that you're only considering candidates who meet your exact requirements, leading to a more efficient and accurate hiring process.

4. Streamlined Onboarding and Training with Automation Tools

On-demand hiring platforms often include automated onboarding processes that streamline the training and integration of new sales team members. 

With the help of digital tools and learning management systems (LMS), new hires can access training materials, complete certifications, and ramp up quickly — without extensive manual oversight. 

This reduces the time spent on training and enables sales professionals to get up to speed faster, improving overall team productivity.

Also read: The Ultimate Guide to Hiring Sales Talent: How to Find and Attract Top Performers

Conclusion

Finding and hiring on-demand sales teams requires efficient strategies and modern tools. These teams provide businesses with quick access to professional talent, eliminating the complexities of traditional hiring. 

By leveraging agencies or freelancers, companies can address recruitment challenges while staying flexible to meet market demands. This agility allows businesses to deploy specialized talent as needed and adapt seamlessly to industry changes.

Activated Scale connects startups and small businesses with vetted, experienced fractional sales talent. Our try-before-you-hire model ensures cost-effectiveness, offering part-time or full-time options. 

Contact us today to build a high-performing sales team and drive business success.