A company called me last year about a sales search they’d been running for six months. Strong product-market fit. Fundable team. The role was real and the territory was open. They’d seen plenty of resumes. None of them stuck.
By the time we talked, they were sure they had a recruiting problem. They wanted more candidates, faster, from a wider net.
When we dug in, recruiting wasn’t the problem. The comp was below market for the buyer profile they wanted. The profile itself was too tight, drawn from a unicorn version of their last hire. And the interview process took three weeks per candidate, which meant the strongest reps accepted other offers before they cleared the second round. Once those three things were adjusted, the search moved along.
After 22 years of recruiting software sales talent and more than 12,000 interviews, I can tell you that most stalled sales searches aren’t recruiting problems. They’re comp problems, profile problems, or process problems sitting under a recruiting label. A recruiter doesn’t fix any of the three. The hiring company does.
You don’t need a recruiter for every sales hire. In some cases, you shouldn’t use one at all. But there are situations where handling it internally slows things down or leads you in the wrong direction. Here’s how to tell which one you’re in.
Before you decide whether to bring someone in, run the same diagnostic I run on every stalled search.
Compensation. Is the compensation package competitive for the buyer profile and deal size you want this rep to handle? Not for the role title, for the actual work. AEs selling $250K ACV deals into VPs of Engineering aren’t priced the same as AEs selling $25K ACV into IT managers. If your comp is calibrated to the wrong profile, no recruiter will save you.
Profile. Is what you wrote down on paper findable in the market? The company at six months was looking for someone with five years of experience selling their exact product to their exact buyer at their exact stage. That candidate exists. There are about twelve of them. None of them are looking. Tighten the profile to what’s realistic, and decide which two requirements you’d trade for a strong candidate who’s missing the third.
Process. How long does it take a candidate to move from first conversation to offer? If the answer is more than two weeks for an experienced rep, you’ll lose the strong ones to faster companies. The interview loop is part of the search, not a step that happens after it.
If any of these three are off, fix them before you bring in a recruiter. If all three are dialed in and the search still isn’t moving, then the question is worth asking.
The companies that benefit from outside help tend to share a few characteristics.
The role is hard to find. You’re looking for someone who can sell into a specific buyer, manage complex deals, or operate at a particular stage of company. The pool gets small fast, and reaching candidates who aren’t looking takes direct outreach to a network that’s been built over years.
The opening is costing you revenue. Sales hiring is tied directly to pipeline, and open territory adds up. If the search has been running for two months and you’re not seeing the right profiles, every additional month is a quota you won’t hit.
You’re seeing volume but not fit. The candidates coming in have the wrong background, the wrong deal size, or the wrong type of selling. More volume won’t fix that. Someone who knows the market can adjust the targeting in a way that inbound channels can’t.
Strong candidates keep dropping out mid-process. They start engaged, then lose interest or accept something else. Something in the process is off and it’s hard to see from the inside. An outside set of eyes can usually spot it within a conversation or two.
The role is new and the profile isn’t fully formed. The expectations haven’t been pressure-tested against the market. A recruiter who places this role often can tell you what’s realistic, what’s a stretch, and what’s a unicorn before you spend three months learning it the hard way.
Plenty of sales hires don’t need outside help. If the role is well-defined, the comp is calibrated, the process moves at a reasonable pace, and you have a strong inbound flow or internal referral pipeline, you can run the search yourself. Backfills for established roles, junior SDR hires, and roles where you have a clear internal candidate in mind usually fit this pattern.
The point isn’t to use a recruiter on every search. It’s to be honest about which problem you’re solving.
The company I described at the open is now hiring on a normal cadence. They didn’t change recruiters. They changed the things only they could change.
That’s the part most companies miss. A recruiter can find candidates, calibrate a market, and run a faster process. A recruiter can’t raise your comp, loosen your profile, or shorten your interview loop. Those decisions sit with you. When they’re right, the search works whether you bring in outside help or not. When they’re wrong, the best recruiter in the world is sending you candidates who will say no for the same reasons the last batch did.
If your search has been stuck, the first question worth asking isn’t “do I need a recruiter.” It’s “have I checked the three things a recruiter can’t fix.”
