4 Time-Tested Sales Hiring Strategies From a 20-Year Software Sales Recruiter

Are you still dealing with high turnover, underperformers, and missed quotas? Recruiting is the hardest part of any sales manager’s job. Getting the right people, on time, with the right skills and a fit for your culture, is rarely simple.

So how do you pick the best sales talent?

As a software sales recruiter with over two decades in the business, I’ve worked with hundreds of hiring managers across software, SaaS, and enterprise tech. I don’t make the final hiring call, but I decide which candidates get serious consideration, which means I compare reps across markets, solutions, and skill levels all over the country.

Here’s what I look for before I present a candidate to a client.

1. Tenure

This isn’t a popular view, but it’s held up over the years. A lot of salespeople move every year or two and want that treated as normal. They don’t want to be seen as job-hoppers, they want to be seen as in-demand. I tend to read it differently.

When someone has stayed with a company four or more years, that tells me two things. First, they’ve hit quota, and probably beaten it, because if they hadn’t, they’d likely have been let go. Second, they have staying power.

I once presented a candidate who’d been at the same enterprise software company for six years, through two acquisitions and three comp-plan changes. That track record almost always outperforms a polished resume full of two-year stints. If a rep is already looking to leave the moment they land somewhere new, that’s a pattern I can’t ignore, no matter how good they look on paper.

2. Relevant Experience for the Actual Role

Sales experience isn’t one-size-fits-all, and this is where a lot of hires go wrong. The skills that make a rep great in one selling context don’t automatically transfer to another.

The clearest example: don’t hire a rep who doesn’t prospect into a role that lives or dies on prospecting. Plenty of strong closers have spent years in inbound-fed or account-management seats where the pipeline came to them. Drop them into a role that requires building pipeline from scratch and they struggle. They can sell. They’ve just never had to hunt. Match the candidate’s real experience to what the role demands day to day, not just to the industry on their resume.

3. Past Performance and a Track Record of Getting It Done

The best predictor of future performance is past performance. I’m looking for a track record of success, and more specifically, evidence that this is someone who does what it takes to get the job done.

W2 income tells you more here than quota attainment. Quotas change constantly and are set differently everywhere, so two reps who both hit “110% of quota” can have wildly different actual production depending on territory, accelerators, and how the number was built. W2 reflects what a candidate actually produced and what a previous employer was willing to pay for it.

One caveat: many states now prohibit asking candidates about compensation history, so know the rules where you hire. In practice, it rarely slows things down. Strong earners volunteer their numbers nine times out of ten, because those numbers are north of $200K and they know it’s the fastest way to prove what they can do. It’s rare to find a weak performer earning over 200K a year.

4. Work Ethic

I know you’re not supposed to say this out loud anymore, but it’s where the real separation happens. The reps who can sell but don’t are almost always the ones who won’t put in the work.

Selling ability without effort doesn’t produce much. Effort is what builds the confidence that you’ll do whatever it takes to succeed, and that confidence is what shows up in a candidate who’s willing to grind through a hard quarter instead of coasting. Those are the reps you want. They push the limits of the comp plan, they drive business in ways nobody’s tried yet, and they set the pace for everyone around them. Hire enough of them and they raise the whole team’s standard for what normal looks like.

The Filters That Cut Your Mis-Hires

I’ve worked with salespeople across entire careers, and these filters came out of years of practice, study, and trench-level observation, not theory. I’ve met CEOs who were convinced that hiring sales leaders and reps is a crapshoot. Trust me, it isn’t. There are clear signs that tell you when someone isn’t a fit, and missing them is what costs you.

If you’re hiring sales talent, these four filters will cut your mis-hires considerably: tenure, relevant experience for the actual role, a real track record, and work ethic. The last one matters most. A rep who’ll do what it takes is the one who ends up carrying the team.