How you hire a sales representative depends on your understanding of the selling motion your business relies on. Strong candidates know how to generate pipeline, secure qualified meetings, and advance opportunities through each stage. With a structured, repeatable hiring process, building a reliable sales team becomes far more predictable and revenue-focused.

What is a Sales Representative?

A sales representative turns interest into revenue by finding potential customers, checking if they are a good fit, learning about their needs, and addressing any concerns until the next step is clear. In small teams, they handle the whole process. In bigger companies, they usually focus on inbound, outbound, or specific territories.

Quick tip: A sharply defined sales representative job description attracts reps who match your sales motion and quota reality.

Where to Find the Best Sales Representative Candidates?

If you’re trying to hire sales reps who can meet a quota, don’t just look for people with general sales experience. Focus on your specific sales approach, like inbound or outbound, SMB or enterprise, inside or field sales. The best way to find strong sales reps is to look where top performers already work, compare their strategies, and have real conversations about sales pipelines.

• SDR/AE communities and revenue forums where reps share prospecting scripts, call breakdowns, and objection handling patterns.
• Industry events and trade shows where sellers actively network, qualify leads live, and show confidence initiating buyer conversations.
• Competitor-adjacent ecosystems like partner directories and reseller networks where reps already sell similar buyers and deal sizes.
• Tool-specific groups for Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Apollo, or Zoho where reps discuss workflow discipline and pipeline hygiene.
• Referral pipelines from your best closers because top reps know who consistently hits targets without constant supervision.

How to Screen for Good Sales Representatives?

If you want to hire good sales reps, don’t just look for confidence. Instead, focus on whether they have consistent prospecting habits, strong qualification skills, and an honest pipeline. The quickest way to make a bad hire is to be impressed by their energy without checking how they actually set up meetings and close deals.

• Use AI Recruit to shortlist candidates who show quota context, segment clarity, and consistent activity-to-meeting conversion.
• Ask for a 30-minute work sample: write a cold email along with a 60-second pitch for your ICP.
• Run a short call role-play: discovery + objection handling + next-step close, scored on structure.
• Close with HR validation on stability, territory fit, and reasons behind job changes—key in how to hire good sales reps.

How to Assess Skills of Sales Representatives?

When you assess sales reps, focus less on their confidence and more on how they think through deals. A strong candidate can spot real buying signals, ask the right questions, and move a deal forward without relying on discounts. Give them practical tasks that align with your sales process, whether outbound, inbound, or channel-led. 

This way, you can see how they handle situations like a buyer saying “not now,” asking for pricing early, or going quiet after a good call. The best assessments show whether a rep can create urgency honestly, qualify quickly, and keep the pipeline accurate. This approach makes hiring salespeople much more predictable.

Pro Tip: Assess for potential with Sales Representative Test where you can measure competency across skills like cold outreach, discovery scoring, and objection-handling scenarios.

What Soft Skills are Important for Sales Representatives?

Soft skills decide whether a representative earns customer attention, guides the conversation effectively, manages emotions, and keeps trust intact during challenging interactions.

• Listening discipline that captures real pain, not just surface needs, before pitching features.
• Resilience that sustains outreach volume and energy after rejection or stalled conversations.
• Influence that frames value clearly across different stakeholders without sounding scripted or pushy.
• Ownership mindset that follows up consistently and closes loops without relying on managers to chase.

Hard Skills of Sales Representatives that You Must Test

Hard skills show whether the rep can execute your sales motion with clear structure, consistent processes, and measurable output that supports predictable revenue growth.

• Prospecting ability that builds targeted lists, writes sharp outreach, and books qualified meetings consistently.
• Discovery skill that uncovers budget, authority, timeline, and success criteria through focused questions.
• Objection handling that addresses price, competition, and “send details” with control and next-step clarity.
• CRM hygiene that maintains accurate stages, notes, and forecasting so your pipeline reflects reality.

How to Interview a Sales Representative?

If you want to hire good sales reps without leaving it to chance, run interviews that feel like a typical workday. Start with a focused discovery, present one objection, and ask for a clear next step. 

The aim is to see if the candidate can think in order: who they sell to, what creates urgency, and how they move deals forward without just relying on charm. This approach helps you find sales reps you can trust, and it works quickly.

Bonus Resource: Use our compilation of sales representative interview questions to score discovery, objection handling, and closing discipline consistently across interviewers.

How Much Does a Sales Representative Cost?

When hiring a salesperson, budget for both base and variable pay. Most sales reps earn commissions or incentives based on meeting quotas, so their total pay can vary significantly depending on performance and territory. Use the ranges below as a starting point for your segment and deal cycle.

Conclusion

Hiring a sales representative talent becomes predictable when you test for repeatable motion, not charm. Use these steps on how to hire good sales reps to verify discovery structure, objection control, and clean pipeline habits. If hiring a salesperson feels inconsistent, PMaps can help you hire a sales representative with role-fit evaluations—call 8591320212 or email assessment@pmaps.in.