Sales Hiring Help for Small B2B Companies
Enki Ventures helps B2B companies hire salespeople who actually perform. As an OMG Certified Partner, Chris Perry combines clear role profiles, predictive OMG sales candidate assessments, structured interviews, and a 90-day onboarding plan — so you stop gambling on résumés and hire reps who can sell in your market.
By Chris Perry, OMG Certified Partner · Updated
Why sales hires fail
Hiring salespeople is uniquely hard because candidates are, by definition, good at selling themselves. Interviews reward the people who talk well in interviews, and that isn't the same as the people who prospect, run a disciplined discovery call, and close in your market.
Résumés don't help much either. Most sales résumés are generous with the truth, and none of them tell you whether someone can reach decision makers or handle rejection. Then, when a good hire does land, many companies skip onboarding and expect them to figure it out — and a promising rep flames out in three or four months.
The fix isn't luck or a bigger candidate pool. It's a system, starting with how you describe the role and attract the right people.
Our sales hiring process
- Role definition and candidate profiling. We define what success looks like in the seat — the selling skills that matter most for this role, the metrics, and the reporting line — before anyone writes a job post.
- Sourcing that attracts sellers. The best salespeople are busy selling, not browsing job boards. We pair a want ad written to the candidate with referral and LinkedIn outreach. How we source great sales talent.
- OMG sales candidate assessment. Candidates take Objective Management Group's sales-specific assessment early, so you spend interview time only on people who can do the job.
- Behavioral and skills-based interviewing. Short phone screens that test rapport, then structured interviews and role-plays scored the same way for every candidate. What to listen for on a phone screen.
- Structured onboarding and 90-day tracking. A written onboarding plan with checkpoints, so you know early whether a new hire is on track. Our onboarding checklist.
OMG sales candidate assessments
Objective Management Group (OMG) evaluates salespeople on sales-specific competencies — things like hunting, reaching decision makers, consultative selling, and handling rejection — rather than general personality traits. That's why it predicts sales performance better than personality tests like DISC, which describe behavior style but weren't built for sales roles.
Chris is an OMG Certified Partner. We use the candidate assessment to filter large applicant pools quickly, compare finalists objectively, and write sharper interview questions for each candidate's specific strengths and gaps. The same tool can evaluate your existing team — see our sales team assessment.
Hiring help plus sales leadership
A great hire still needs someone to manage them. If you don't have a sales leader yet, the new reps report to a founder who's already stretched thin. That's when it makes sense to pair hiring help with a fractional VP of Sales who builds the process, hires the team, and coaches them through ramp.
The Sales Recruit: sales hiring library
Practical articles from Chris's newsletter on finding, screening, and onboarding salespeople who perform.
Sourcing Great Sales Talent
The A-player salespeople you most want are too busy closing deals to browse job boards. Treat recruiting like sales: supplement passive want ads with outbound. Start by asking your network and your own reps for referrals, then run targeted LinkedIn outreach to well-connected salespeople in your industry — and ask who in their network might be open to a move.
Setting New Hires Up to Fail
Hiring a great salesperson doesn't create instant revenue. Without a structured onboarding plan, even strong reps flame out in three to four months. A good plan transfers your sales org's accumulated knowledge quickly — playbook, ideal client profile, objections, role-plays — and builds in checkpoints so you can see early whether a new hire is on track.
The Secret to Parsing Hundreds of Resumes
When a sales job posting draws hundreds of applicants, reading resumes is slow and biased — and sales resumes are often closer to fiction than fact. Run a sales-specific assessment, like Objective Management Group's, as early as possible. It shows how candidates actually sell and whether they fit your role, and it sharpens your interview questions.
What to Listen for on a Sales Interview Phone Screen
A sales phone screen should take 7–15 minutes and do two things: make a human connection and test whether the candidate can quickly build rapport with a stranger. Listen less to what they say and more to how they say it — do they ask questions, match your energy, show research, and probe for problems they could solve?
Attracting vs Describing Sales Talent
A job description and a want ad are not the same document. The job description is an up-front agreement about duties, reporting, and performance measures. The want ad is written to the candidate in the second person and should make a busy, successful salesperson want the role. Send the ad first; save the description for the offer stage.
Organizing the Sales Hiring Process
Don't wing sales hiring. Before the next great candidate lands in your lap, document your process: job descriptions, where you'll source, how you'll screen applicants, the criteria for each interview stage, who's on the hiring team, your interview questions and role-play scoring, an offer template, and a 30-, 60-, or 90-day onboarding plan.
Frequently asked questions
Do you replace a recruiter?
No. Recruiters find candidates; we help you define the role, assess candidates with OMG's sales-specific evaluation, run a structured interview process, and onboard the hire. We can work alongside your recruiter or help you hire without one.
Can you assess salespeople we already have?
Yes. The same OMG evaluation used for candidates can evaluate your current team, which shows who to develop, who to move, and what to look for in your next hire. See our sales assessment page.
How long does a sales hire take with your process?
Most searches take four to eight weeks from role definition to signed offer, depending on how many candidates you need to see and how fast your team can interview.
What size companies do you help hire for?
We've helped companies with $2M–$400M in revenue hire salespeople. Our sweet spot is B2B companies with $2M–$40M in revenue, from the first sales hire to building out a full team.