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Sales recruitment in Australia: how to hire salespeople who perform
Updated October 2026.
Sales recruitment is hiring the people who bring in and grow your revenue: business development managers, account managers, sales representatives and sales development representatives. It’s harder than most hiring, for three reasons:
- sales roles turn over quickly,
- new salespeople take months to reach full productivity,
- the things that predict sales success rarely show on a CV.
The businesses that hire salespeople well define the role precisely, assess how candidates work and what drives them, look beyond the people applying, and hold the same bar every time they hire.
Which sales roles do you need?
Most growing businesses hire from four core sales roles. They’re often confused, and hiring for the wrong one is a common, expensive mistake.
| Role | Main focus | Usually measured on | What tends to separate the best |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business development manager | Winning new clients | New revenue against target | Prospecting discipline, resilience after rejection |
| Account manager | Keeping and growing existing clients | Retention and growth of their accounts | Reliability, relationship building, commercial judgment |
| Sales representative | Selling a defined product or service | Sales volume against target | Consistency of activity, product confidence |
| Sales development representative | Creating qualified opportunities for others to close | Meetings booked and pipeline created | Persistence, pace, coachability |
A business development manager and an account manager can look alike on a CV, but they’re different jobs. One opens doors, the other keeps them open. Our guides to each role cover salary, job descriptions and what to look for:
Why is hiring salespeople so hard?
Because sales roles combine high turnover, long ramp times and a selection process that rewards the wrong things.
Turnover is high. SPOTIO’s 2026 survey found 41% of field sales teams lose half or more of their reps each year. A growing team is constantly refilling seats as well as adding them.
Ramp time is long. The Bridge Group’s 2026 research found new account executives take 6.2 months to become fully productive, and only 48% hit their annual target. Each hire that doesn’t work out costs half a year of lost pipeline.
Interviews reward the wrong skill. Salespeople are, by trade, good at presenting themselves. An interview that runs on rapport and confidence tests how well someone performs in a meeting, not whether they’ll prospect consistently through a quiet quarter.
CVs say less than they used to. Results claimed on a CV are hard to verify, and AI has made most sales CVs polished and similar. Our guide to where the signal comes from when every CV looks good covers this in detail.
What actually predicts sales performance?
How someone works and what drives them, alongside relevant experience.
Recent research is consistent on this. A 2022 meta-analysis by Marcus and Heibrock, covering personality and performance in frontline roles, found that personality traits had moderate and consistent links to performance in sales jobs, whether measured by manager ratings or by actual sales results. The links were weaker and less consistent in non-sales roles, which suggests personality matters more in sales than in most jobs. A 2019 review of a century of research by Wilmot and Ones, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found conscientiousness, the tendency to be organised, persistent and goal-driven, to be the strongest non-cognitive predictor of job performance overall.
That fits how sales works. Results lag effort by weeks or months, so the people who succeed are the ones who keep prospecting when the pipeline looks full and keep going when it doesn’t.
Our own data shows how little of this a CV captures. Of the candidates with the strongest sales CVs who also completed our assessments, around four in ten sat below the middle of the field on attitude. A strong sales CV and a strong salesperson aren’t the same thing.
How should you assess salespeople?
With a structured process that tests what predicts performance, not just how well someone interviews.
- Define the role from your best people. What do your top performers in this role actually do differently? That becomes the profile every candidate is compared against. Our guide to hiring well for the roles you hire most explains how.
- Use a validated assessment early. Measure how candidates work and what drives them, under the same conditions for everyone, before the first interview.
- Run a structured interview. Ask every candidate the same questions, judged against the same standard. Structured interviews predict job performance far better than unstructured conversations.
- Test the real work. A short role play or task matched to the role: a prospecting plan for a BDM, an account review for an account manager.
- Check the numbers. Ask for results against target, not just results, and check them with referees who saw them.
How much does sales recruitment cost?
Agencies in Australia typically charge 15% to 25% of the hire’s salary. For sales roles, check whether the fee is calculated on base salary or on total package including commission. On a role with significant on-target earnings, a lower percentage on the full package can cost more than a higher one on base. Our guide to recruitment agency fees in Australia explains what that fee actually pays for.
A note on OTE. Sales roles are usually quoted as on-target earnings (OTE): base salary plus the commission someone earns at 100% of target. Base salary alone understates what a sales role pays, so compare roles and offers on OTE, and on how often the team actually reaches target.
Where do good salespeople come from?
Often from people who aren’t applying. Strong salespeople who are hitting target are usually busy doing it. Job ads bring volume. Referrals, direct approaches and networks bring people with a visible track record. Most businesses that hire salespeople well use both.
What if you’re hiring salespeople again and again?
Then the role is worth getting better at, not just filling. Define it once, assess every candidate the same way, and compare each group of hires on how long they stay, how quickly they ramp and whether they hit target. Our guide to hiring well for the roles you hire most covers this step by step.
How we approach sales hiring
For every sales role we run:
- we search beyond the job ad from day one, across our own network and direct approaches,
- the client’s top performers set the profile for the role,
- every applicant completes the same assessments straight after their CV is reviewed,
- names stay hidden until the hiring manager has formed a view,
- each hire is tracked, so the next search is sharper.
We’ve screened thousands of sales candidates across Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Singapore.
Frequently asked questions
What does a sales recruitment agency do?
It finds, screens and presents candidates for sales roles, usually for a fee on hire. The useful question is how it assesses candidates beyond the CV and interview.
How long does it take to hire a salesperson?
Ashby’s 2026 data puts the median time to hire for business roles at about 30 days. Allow longer for senior or specialist sales roles, and add the ramp time before full productivity.
Should I hire for experience or attitude?
Both matter. Experience shows what someone has done. How they work and what drives them predicts whether they’ll keep doing it in your business.
What’s the difference between a business development manager and an account manager?
A BDM wins new clients. An account manager keeps and grows existing ones. They need different strengths, so hire for the one you actually need.
Hiring for a role now? Tell us about it, and we’ll tell you what the market looks like for it and when you could expect a shortlist, before you commit to anything.
Working in sales? Build your Ploomo profile, see how you work, and choose whether to be considered for roles that fit. Sign up
About our data: Ploomo campaign records for sales roles filled since October 2025. Figures compare candidates with others who applied for the same role.
Josh del Rio is the founder and CEO of Ploomo, which runs hiring for growing businesses so every role is built on evidence, not instinct. He has coached hundreds of leaders and founders.