4 Steps to Finding and Onboarding the Best Sales and Marketing Employees

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By Gloria Martinez

By Hiring new employees — especially new workers whose job it is to sell your products and services to the outside world — can sometimes feel like a gamble for business owners. If you’re considering hiring new sales and marketing employees, use the four steps below to locate and hire the best employees for your enterprise.

1. Know Your Weak Spots

When you’re looking for a new employee, begin by asking yourself what gap he or she is filling. Do none of your current employees understand how to run a successful email marketing campaign? Or, do you simply need someone who understands social media? There are many types of marketing. Choosing to hire a sales analyst is quite different than opting for the social-media-savvy digital marketer. Ensure that you (and your hiring team) understand the benefits and the drawbacks of these common types of sales and marketing fields before posting an online job ad.

2. Understand How New Sales and Marketing Employees Can Benefit Your Business

Perhaps, after completing the first step, you’ve decided to seek out someone with marketing and sales knowledge in addition to general business skills — including asking others for money. Maybe you’re looking for a newly-minted MBA grad who can whip up a business plan and apply for grants for your company. Finding the right grants can be difficult, but they can help small businesses stay on track. Securing one may depend on developing an airtight business plan and looking for grants specifically for your industry.

3. Hire Your Favorites

A “full-stack” marketer could be a good choice for a fledgling business without any current marketing experts on staff, but if you need someone with more specialized experience, stay away from those who claim to know how to do every aspect of marketing. You may need to narrow your choices down to a social media manager, a content strategist, or a media buyer. Similarly, a professional who specializes in building brands by curating photos, content, and creating a narrative for your company may be in order if you wish to project a new image to your customers.

4. Know the Benefits and Drawbacks of Full-Time and Part-Time Employees

If you’re running an extremely small business or a startup on a shoestring budget, hiring several new full-time employees may not be the right choice. Full-time employees have the advantages of being daily members of your team who are on-site (or available for remote meetings) whenever you need them — but they’ll cost you a lot more in salary and benefits than would a few freelancers or multiple part-time workers. According to Inc.com, part-time workers can fill the gaps and work as few as five hours a week.

Who you hire should ideally depend on what your company needs at this time. If you find a person who can juggle multiple sales and marketing roles and has a great grasp of what your company needs, you may opt to hire this person as a full-time member of your staff rather than hiring many freelancers.

Choosing your new staff members is not a task to be taken lightly, and selecting the right candidates can often help revitalize and rebrand your small business. Using the steps above can help you to simplify the process of hiring and onboarding new full-time or part-time employees.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Content Strategy Alliance.