Case Study

Boosting Sales Talent Acquisition from Struggle to Success

Key Results

Core Challenges: Struggling to Attract Talent and Adapt Regionally

	Competing for Skills Against High-Profile Entities: The client’s niche segment made it hard to attract top sales talent due to competition from high-demand tech sectors (e.g., AI, machine learning, cloud computing), which were seen as offering more appealing career paths, growth and opportunities for innovation.
	Tailoring Strategies to Regional Needs: The client had trouble aligning compensation and brand messaging with local market conditions and candidate motivations (i.e., adjusting to reflect the local cost of living and marketing a role’s unique qualities regionally).
	Vetting Candidates Efficiently: The client was losing valuable time sifting through candidate profiles manually – a process that lacked initial qualification refinement or advanced screening to filter out unsuitable applicants.

Path to Success: Tailored Strategies for Diverse Markets

	In-Depth Market Research: We relied on our vast industry and client expertise to identify which factors attract top sales professionals and how to market the unique aspects of each role in different markets. By using advanced data analysis tools and sophisticated talent trend reporting, we tailored job requisitions and created AI-driven recruitment workflows that identified and resolved any obstacles before they occurred.
	Targeted Marketing Strategies: We designed marketing campaigns aligned with local candidate motivations to attract the right sales talent in each market. In rural areas, we emphasized the positive impact candidates could have on institutions like hospitals and schools while in urban areas, we showcased entrepreneurial growth potential.
	A Rigorous Candidate Vetting Process: We set a baseline for requirements across locations, created tailored leveling for each office and aligned qualifications with hiring managers’ needs during intake calls. Our screening process minimized recalibration, efficiently filtered out unsuitable candidates, ensured that only the most qualified talent was presented and reduced time-to-offer ratios.
	Optimized Commission Structures: We tapped into our proprietary data integration solution, Sevayo® Insights, to analyze compensation targets against both market benchmarks and the client’s structure. Working with the client, we optimized compensation structures across job boards while ensuring compliance with salary transparency laws. This approach balanced presenting enough detail on commission models to draw in sales talent without revealing too much to competitors to potentially mirror for their own compensation strategies.

Results: Accelerated Sales Hiring and Talent Quality

• 40% Reduction in Time-to-Accept: Cut the acceptance time from 63 days to 38 days, surpassing the 60-day target significantly

• 25% Increase in Sourced Leads: Improved sourcing efforts, which led to a larger and more diverse candidate pool

• 8% Reduction in Requisition Aging: Decreased the volume of aged requisitions from 32% to 24%

• 3.7:1 Submission-to-Acceptance Ratio: Exceeded the 5:1 target ratio for qualified candidate submissions (i.e., those who passed our rigorous vetting process) to accepted offers

Driving these results had an exponential business impact. By reducing the time-to-accept ratio and improving candidate quality, we helped our client activate sales talent into new markets faster, which hastened team performance and directly impacted the company's bottom line.