There is a common assumption in sales hiring: if you want the best person, you have to pay the most money. It is easy to see where that idea comes from. Sales professionals know their worth. They can benchmark their OTE against competitors in five minutes on a Sunday evening. And with 72% of tech sales firms citing a candidate shortage, the pressure to outbid the market feels real.
But companies that win the best sales hires do not always win on salary. They win on something harder to replicate: a compelling reason to join that goes well beyond the number on the offer letter.
Here are five questions every hiring manager should be asking.
1. What does your sales role actually offer beyond commission?
Top sales candidates are not just evaluating your base salary. They are evaluating the whole picture: what their day looks like, who they will be selling for, whether the product is something they can get behind, and whether they will be set up to succeed or set up to struggle.
Before you post a job ad, be honest about the full package. Strong pension contributions, private health cover, clear progression routes, and a training investment are worth more than most hiring managers realise when they are communicated clearly and early. A learning stipend or development budget tells a candidate you are invested in them beyond their quota. That matters, particularly to the people you most want to hire.
The question to ask yourself is this: if money was equal between you and a competitor, why would someone choose you? If you cannot answer that, neither can your candidates.
2. How much does your culture actually do the selling for you?
Culture is one of those words that has been so overused it has almost lost its meaning. But the substance behind it has not. Sales professionals spend most of their working lives around their team. The quality of that environment, whether it is collaborative or territorial, whether leadership is honest or political, whether wins are shared or siloed, shapes day-to-day experience more than almost anything else.
The best way to communicate culture in a hiring process is not to describe it, but to show it. Let candidates meet the team. Give them a real sense of how deals get done, how the business handles a difficult quarter, and what it looks like to succeed there. Candidates who are motivated by team ethos and a sense of belonging will self-select in. The ones who are only motivated by the highest number will self-select out. That is not a bad outcome.
3. Is your hybrid working policy genuinely flexible, or just flexible on paper?
Hybrid working is no longer a differentiator for most candidates; it is a baseline expectation. But there is a significant difference between a policy that exists and a culture where it genuinely works. Candidates will find out which one you have, usually within the first two weeks of starting.
Sales roles carry a particular tension here. There is often a legitimate business case for time in the office, particularly for onboarding, team collaboration, and live deal conversations. But enforcing a rigid in-person policy without good reason is one of the fastest ways to narrow your talent pool and push candidates toward businesses that are more willing to trust their people.
Be specific about what your hybrid model actually looks like. How many days, for what reasons, with what flexibility around it. Clarity builds trust. Vagueness raises red flags.
4. Can your candidates see a future in the role?
One of the most consistent findings in sales recruitment research is that career progression ranks at least as highly as base salary for candidates who are good enough to have options. The sales professionals you most want to hire are thinking about where this role takes them, not just what it pays them today.
That does not mean every role needs a guaranteed promotion at 12 months. It means being honest about what growth looks like in your business, what it takes to move forward, and whether you have examples of people who have done it. A business that can point to people who have grown through the ranks is a fundamentally more attractive proposition than one that promises development but cannot evidence it.
If your sales organisation is flat with no visible path forward, that is a retention problem before it is a recruitment problem.
5. Are you recruiting for skills, or for motivation?
Skills can be trained. Motivation is much harder to manufacture. The most effective sales hires in most organisations are not always the people who arrive with the most impressive CV. They are the people who genuinely care about what they are selling, who find energy in the process of building relationships, and who are competitive in a healthy rather than corrosive way.
Recruiting for values and motivation alongside skills changes who you attract. It also changes who stays. High-performing sales teams with a strong sense of shared purpose and enjoyment tend to retain people longer, which reduces the cost of the revolving door that inflated salaries are often used to solve in the first place.
The conversation around what a candidate enjoys, what drives them, and what environment brings out their best work is just as valuable as any technical assessment. Build it into your process.
Salary still matters. This is not an argument for underpaying.
Benchmark regularly, be transparent about pay, and make sure your offer is genuinely competitive for the level of experience you are asking for. Candidates notice when a business is trying to get away with underpaying and dressing it up as culture. That approach damages your reputation and costs you more in the long run.
But there is a significant difference between a competitive salary and an inflated one. The businesses that attract and keep the best sales talent have learned to compete on the full picture, not just the number. Purpose, team, flexibility, trust and the genuine sense that there is something worth building here. That is a package no competitor can easily replicate.