Hiring a top-performing salesperson has always been critical to a business’s success, but lately, many sales leaders and CEOs are finding it more challenging than ever. If it feels harder to recruit those A-players who consistently crush their quotas, you’re not alone.
The sales landscape has undergone significant changes in the past few years. Consider this: only 43% of salespeople met their quota last year, down from 53% in 2022, per RepVue’s latest Sales Index report.
At the same time, new sales hires are churning at alarming rates – about 30% of sales reps leave within their first year, which is roughly 2.5 times higher than the average employee turnover rate. With total costs of replacing a salesperson reaching $1.3 million, hiring mistakes are costly.
So, what’s making it so difficult to find and keep those superstar sellers?
Our partners at Objective Management Group recently published their findings on the three big reasons hiring top sales performers has become more challenging than ever before.
We break down these three reasons below and highlight what these shifts mean for your sales team.
1. A Smaller Pool of All-in-One Sellers
Companies have shifted focus from rapid growth to profitability, and it’s changing the profile of the ideal salesperson.
During the past decade’s “growth at all costs” era, many organizations scaled their sales teams with highly specialized roles. For instance, Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) handled prospecting and lead generation, Account Executives (AEs) focused on closing deals, Account Managers (AMs) focused on growing existing relationships, and Customer Success teams managed adoption and renewals. An AE in that high-growth environment didn’t necessarily need to prospect or qualify leads – their primary skills were delivering pitches and closing deals, all while a steady flow of opportunities was handed to them by SDRs. In addition, these SDRs could rely on their counterparts in marketing to help generate the majority of this “warm pipeline” in insolation.
Deals were closing and funding was flowing, and “company bloat” was tolerated in the pursuit of market dominance. Back in 2021, 100%+ YoY growth was a realistic goal for industries experiencing favorable tailwinds from the pandemic, and the “cost” of a few extra employees could easily be justified.
But today, that model has flipped. As economic conditions tightened – think rising interest rates, market uncertainty, and investors demanding “sustainable” growth – companies scaled back hiring and reduced bloated sales teams. Many high-growth organizations went from a 1:1 ratio of AEs to SDRs down to a 3:1 ratio of AEs to SDRs, meaning far fewer dedicated prospectors per salesperson.
This ideal of a lean go-to-market organization coincided perfectly with the boom of Artificial Intelligence and new GTM technology innovations, enabling the restructuring to demonstrate success in just a few short years.
With the rise of AI automation and a modern tech stack that now understands the cross-department collaboration needed for pipeline generation and customer satisfaction, the same actions that once required actions from marketing, sales, and customer service can now be done in half of the time by one highly skilled individual, regardless if said action was before or after a closed/won deal.
The brunt of this corporate epiphany fell on the salespeople, who are now expected to generate even more of their own pipeline and run the sales cycle end-to-end.
The trouble is that many salespeople who thrived in the old model weren’t hired or trained for this full-cycle sale. Some AMs and even AEs weren’t harnessing their outbound “hunting” skills – they were brought on as closers, not as cold-callers or prospectors. Even experienced salespeople now find themselves needing to master prospecting, social selling, and consultative selling techniques that weren’t critical in their previous roles.
Sales teams are now under pressure to do “more with less.” This all-in-one seller can’t afford to waste time on poorly qualified leads that may veer off the path of an ICP or spend the necessary hours on an unlikely renewal because their pipeline is dangerously low. Top sales performers today must not only excel at ruthlessly prioritizing their time, but also excel at a broadening array of skillsets such value-based selling and consultative conversations, which have become increasingly important in this new era of profitability over growth.
The result is a smaller talent pool of reps who check all these boxes.
The “unicorn” salesperson who can hunt, qualify, and close – all while focusing on profitable deals – is in high demand but short supply. For example, you might encounter a candidate who was a top 10% performer at a large tech company, but upon closer look, they depended on an SDR team to fill their pipeline or perhaps were solely focused on growing existing customers their business had relationships with. In a leaner organization without that support or structure, that same rep might struggle.
This mismatch can make hiring the right person tricky. Companies now must vet candidates more carefully for a broader skill set, which lengthens the hiring process and limits the number of truly top performers available for hire.
Takeaway: If you’re hiring a top-performing salesperson today, do not assume you need this highly sought after “all-in-one” seller. Many companies fall into the trap of unnecessarily competing in this increasingly competitive talent pool. Instead look for those sellers with the specific selling skills necessary for your role. If you are in search of a true hunter, probe whether they have experience prospecting and self-generating leads in addition to closing if the role demands, or, if you are in a market with high competition, ensure they are comfortable discussing money and excel in value selling. The best approach – utilize our Sales Candidate DNA Test which will benchmark candidates against the specific skills required for your team’s selling environment. If you are looking for someone who can truly run the full sales cycle, make sure they demonstrate success in all of the 21 core competencies scientifically proven to predict a salesperson’s success, or lack there of, in seat.
Download a Free Sample of Our Sales DNA Candidate Assessment Here.
It also may be worth investing in training for legacy team members to build these skills internally. The bottom line is that the shift to profitability may mean your next sales hire needs to be a versatile player who can drive revenue efficiently from start to finish, and you won’t be able to pinpoint those unicorns on a resume alone.
2. Longer Sales Cycles Make Quick Wins Harder (Even for Top Performers)
B2B sales cycles have become longer and more complex, which can obscure a new hire’s impact. Today, many industries are seeing decision timelines stretch out. Recent data from OMG shows the average sales cycle jumped by 24% for start-ups (from ~60 days in 2022 to 75 days in 2023) – and for enterprise deals, sales cycles increased by 36% over the same period. In other words, what used to close in two months might now take three or more.
Why are sales taking longer? A major factor is the rise of buying by committee. Purchasing decisions that used to involve one or two people now often require consensus from a larger group of stakeholders. By 2021, Forrester research showed 63% of B2B purchases involved more than four people – nearly 20% higher than a few years earlier – and today a typical complex B2B sale involves six to ten decision-makers, which is even higher than the 5.4 decision makers stated by CEB, now Gartner, which we were religiously trained on as salespeople at LinkedIn just a few years ago.
Each additional stakeholder means more opinions, more questions, and usually more delays in the process.
For a top-performing salesperson, these longer cycles and bigger buying committees present a double-edged sword. On one hand, experienced sellers know how to navigate complex deals – they’re skilled at stakeholder management and persistent follow-up. They also understand decision fatigue for buyers who are inundated with choices. But on the other hand, even the best reps can’t accelerate a buyer’s internal process by sheer will. A new sales hire might do all the right things, yet still have little to show in terms of closed business for six, nine, or even twelve months, simply because that’s how long the deals take now.
This creates a challenge for sales leaders evaluating new hires. How do you discern early on whether a salesperson is truly underperforming, or if they’re just a victim of a slow sales cycle? This challenge is only heightened today, with many industry titans tightening their budgets and laying off employees, signaling yet another cycle of fiscal conservatism. It requires patience and better leading indicators (like pipeline progression, meetings, and proposal activity) rather than just looking at booked revenue in the first quarter or two. By 2024, it’s taking longer for all sellers to produce – even top performers aren’t 100% effective immediately out of the gate. In fact, about 40% of companies report that a new salesperson takes over 10 months to reach full productivity on average. That’s almost a full year before they’re firing on all cylinders.
From the hiring perspective, these prolonged ramp-up times make each hire a bigger investment. If you only find out a year in that someone isn’t working out, that’s a lot of time and money lost. It’s no wonder sales VPs are extra cautious about who they bring on. Some companies have responded by extending their onboarding and training periods (more on onboarding in a moment), or by hiring more experienced reps who presumably can ramp faster. But even a veteran “rock star” will be constrained by a sluggish market cycle.
Example: Imagine you hire a salesperson who previously thrived in a fast-growing SaaS company where typical deals closed in six weeks. Now they’ve joined your enterprise sales team, where each deal is six figures and takes six or more months with many stakeholders involved. Six months in, they might have built a strong pipeline and received positive client feedback, yet have no closed deals to show for it. That doesn’t mean you made a bad hire – it means the context changed.
Takeaway: Acknowledging longer sales cycles is key. When hiring a top-performing salesperson, set realistic expectations about time-to-productivity. Use metrics beyond closed sales (like how many decision makers the rep has engaged, or how far their deals are advancing in the pipeline) to gauge performance in the interim. Remember that patience is part of the new playbook – rushing to judge a salesperson’s success too quickly could cause you to prematurely lose a potentially great performer. But patience does not excuse ignorance. Ensure you are setting up your new hires for success with an onboarding playbook that they can use to hit the ground running. Salespeople who follow a documented sales process ramp 50% faster than those who don’t.
3. Remote Work Has Outpaced Onboarding Practices
The third big reason hiring a top-performing salesperson has gotten harder is that onboarding and training practices haven’t kept up with the shift to remote and hybrid work. In the past, new sales hires learned a great deal by osmosis on a bustling sales floor – overhearing veteran salespeople close deals, asking quick questions, and absorbing tribal knowledge.
Now, with many teams distributed, that natural onboarding experience is largely gone – yet many companies haven’t updated their approach to compensate. In fact, most companies’ onboarding practices were already insufficient when everyone worked in the office, and it’s only gotten worse with the move to hybrid teams. Many firms still assume that a brief, one-week orientation is enough to get a new seller up to speed, which simply isn’t true for today’s complex sales environment.
It turns out most organizations’ onboarding processes were inadequate even when everyone was in the office. (Think of the classic first week where HR throws a handbook at the newbie and has them watch a few training videos – hardly enough for a complex sales role. And no, “watch me” is not a sufficient onboarding strategy for new hires) In a hybrid or fully virtual setting, relying on a brief orientation is even more problematic. New salespeople can’t just lean over to ask a neighbor for help, nor absorb the tribal knowledge that floats around a physical office. Without a deliberate plan, a remote new hire can feel isolated, disoriented, and unsure where to get answers.
Recent OMG data underscores this gap. Among employees onboarded remotely, a whopping 63% felt their training during onboarding was inadequate. Many companies recognize this as an issue – and it may be a sign to dig further under the hood of your overall sales process as a lack of a sales process leads to a 40% longer ramp time for new hires. If a new salesperson isn’t given the tools and support to succeed early on, even a top performer may flounder or lose motivation. It’s not surprising that poor onboarding has a direct link to retention. In other words, you can hire a rock star, but if you throw them into the deep end without a life raft, there’s a good chance they won’t stick around.
So what does effective onboarding look like now? It’s more than just a one-week orientation. They need a structured onboarding playbook – call frameworks, ICP breakdowns, discovery call frameworks. They need deliberate practice – role-playing with real scenarios, real-time coaching feedback over months not weeks. And they need mentorship with a runway – pair new hires with veterans for 90 days, instill regular check ins and coaching sessions with managers. Set up weekly call review sessions or virtual team huddles where newcomers can hear how veteran sellers pitch and handle objections. This is a 3 month+ timeline with formal training modules and clear milestones for what the salesperson should learn and achieve by certain dates, and a documented sales playbooks of your product, sales methodology, criteria for each stage of the pipeline. If you suspect this sales process engine may be overdue for a check up, explore if our sales process transformation service may be of interest.
Finally, don’t underestimate the social aspect. In an office, a lot of bonding and learning happens through informal conversations. In a remote world, you have to be intentional about creating opportunities for interaction. This might mean arranging virtual coffee breaks, shadowing opportunities on client calls, or even some in-person meetups early in the hire’s tenure if feasible. The companies that get onboarding right see the payoff: faster ramp-up, better performance, and higher retention of those talented salespeople you worked so hard to hire.
Takeaway: Onboarding is not an afterthought – it’s a critical part of the hiring success equation. To attract and retain top performers, invest in an onboarding program that sets them up to win, especially in a remote/hybrid environment. Provide structure, training, mentorship, and cultural connection. Remember, the goal isn’t just to hire a great salesperson, but to ensure they thrive and stay with your organization.
Conclusion: Winning the War for Sales Talent
In today’s environment, hiring a top-performing salesperson is a bit like finding a unicorn if you don’t know what you’re looking for. The pool of candidates who have the complete package – the ability to prospect, close, navigate long sales cycles, and adapt quickly in a remote setting – is smaller than it used to be. Companies are facing a perfect storm of higher skill requirements, slower results, and the need for better training to support new hires.
The good news is that being aware of these challenges is the first step to overcoming them. Savvy sales leaders are adjusting their hiring and onboarding strategies accordingly. Some are incorporating data-driven candidate assessments to identify the specific traits and competencies that actually predict success in a particular role. (Traditional gut instinct in hiring only identifies true top performers about 20% of the time, whereas a tailored sales assessment can dramatically improve those odds.) And let’s face it, the sales resume is broken and personality tests have never and won’t ever suffice.
In fact, our sales-specific DNA assessment flagged candidates who ended up in the top half of performers 72% of the time. When you combine better hiring insight with a robust onboarding plan, you vastly increase your chances of building an elite sales team.
This might be the moment to partner with specialists in sales hiring and development. At The Sales Collective, we offer specialized hiring solutions to help companies attract, assess, and onboard top sales talent effectively. Check out The Sales Collective’s Sales Recruiting Services to see how we can help you find and develop the sales rock stars who will drive your business growth.
Because it’s not just about the right hire, it’s about the right hire in the right seat at the right time for your company.
