9 Points for Effective Hiring: How to Build a Sales Team to Enter the International Market

1. Overcome the “Home Market Syndrome”
The most common mistake is the misleading expectation of business owners that strategies that worked in one market will be successful in others. It is important to understand this tendency and approach a new market with a “clean slate.” Study and research competitors, candidate mentalities, and sales strategies.
Mistakes and lost time are costly not only in terms of profits but also in terms of reputation, especially as an employer.
How you build the core of your new team will determine your position in the market. An unprofessional, non-competitive team will create the wrong strategy, causing the business to miss the moment and the chance to capture a larger market share.
2. Research Market Talents and Secure the Best Player
I recommend starting with finding a regional manager who will design the team: distribute regions, set priorities, and establish key goals. It is this expert from the field who will help build a strategy to achieve the desired market share.
Hiring a manager will take more time than building the rest of the team, and it’s always about building relationships. The business owner may already know a potential candidate for this role through networking. If not, you need to analyze the market, identify donor companies, and their top employees.
The path to securing a star employee can begin with organizing a meeting through the participation of your business leader in exhibitions, conferences, or through mutual contacts. It is important to show genuine interest, conduct the conversation casually and harmoniously, thereby assessing the candidate’s cultural fit.
I recommend always having backup options for leadership positions because the risks of losing such candidates during the hiring process are high. If there is synergy in values and expectations, you can move forward.
Your communication skills play a very significant role; the ability to tactfully and timely remind the candidate of yourself will set you apart. Note that communication with C-level candidates works best when it comes from an executive-level recruiter or CEO.
Getting the strongest people in the market into your team is possible through transparent, inspiring communication: honestly share information that reveals the advantages of your company, especially in comparison with the candidate’s current place of work.
Think about your advantages. What stage of development is your company in?
- Are you a mature startup in the scaling phase, where there is still no corporate structure? Great! Most likely, you have a horizontal management style that may attract candidates, especially from large companies.
- Do you make decisions faster? Make this your advantage at this stage of winning over market players. When inviting an employee to a leadership position, you are offering a dream and the opportunity to make their mark in the history of a young, promising company. By working in your company, an ambitious leader can gain a reputation as a pioneer and business leader. This is undeniably inspiring.
- If you are a large, established company, that’s also great! Your advantages may include a recognizable brand, especially as an employer, an established knowledge base, stable processes, practices, and systems. Many candidates seek such conditions.
You can also interest C-level candidates with future plans and ambitions for scaling, revealing their role in these processes, or offering a competitive bonus system or stock options.
3. Develop a Recruitment Strategy for Each Market
Together with the department head, create or discuss a hiring plan: team structure, a very detailed description of positions, management structure, and communication chain.
Conduct an in-depth labor market analysis to identify specific features, approaches of donor companies, competitors, and competitor partners. Create a list of recruitment channels, hiring processes, candidate evaluation methods, and the format of the final selection.
It is necessary to understand local specifics. For example, language can become a significant barrier between you and the candidates.
Be prepared that in some countries, the language of communication can become a critical issue, for example, in Germany, France, Italy, or Spain. You will need to communicate with candidates in the local language, translate job descriptions and evaluation scripts. Technical interviews are better conducted by an expert who knows the language. However, in Scandinavian countries, for example, where everyone speaks English fluently, such needs do not arise.
4. Craft a Pitch That Hooks and Sticks
The market is an organism with various connections that are constantly evolving. Your recruiting team is the face of the company, carrying the culture and shaping the vision of your company within the industry. Formulate your corporate pitch about the business for potential employees: who you are, your history and values, goals, and aspirations.
I’ve noticed that new candidates start using phrases about the company that we mentioned earlier. Your story and presentation will be shared and discussed.
5. Research Legislation and Develop Bonus Systems
For each new market, determine and research the following:
- Type of employment;
- Salary benchmarks;
- Probation period;
- Currency for payments;
- NDA;
- Payroll;
- Insurance;
- Work format (remote or office);
- Equipment and car provision (car allowance or leasing);
- PTO;
- 13th/14th salaries;
- Other bonuses.
For this, you need to study the legislation and the offerings of competitors. For example, in Belgium, the probation period is prohibited, while in Austria, it is only one month. Therefore, in these countries, candidates need to be selected more carefully because after hiring, it is extremely difficult to dismiss someone in Europe who may not perform their job effectively.
Another example is additional benefits, the provision of which is not mandatory for employers in certain countries by law. However, it is worth observing how your competitors act.
If the majority of companies offer employees medical care or gym memberships, you will eventually have to add this corporate bonus as well.
If you try to avoid these additional expenses, you will lose in the long run. On the market, you will develop an unattractive reputation as an employer. It is better to enter the market with the best possible approach right away. This is your investment in a higher-quality and faster hiring process in the future.
You will thank yourself if you start systematically structuring all employee data in an HRMS system or even in a regular Excel spreadsheet from the outset. Store data about each employee in a pivot table format, indicating the type of employment, insurance, days off, who handles payroll, whether there is a 14th salary, and so on.
6. Agencies – Important Support and Effective Resource
If your recruiting team lacks the capacity to effectively and quickly fill positions, it is better to use the help of agencies or freelancers. Contact various local agencies or find one with relevant experience in different countries that can effectively fill positions within the desired timeframes.
For example, in the U.S. market, companies often outsource hiring, while internal recruiters handle account management tasks and build cooperation with agencies.
7. A Recognizable Employer Brand Will Help Find the Right People Faster
More than half of the world’s large organizations (57%) implement employer branding campaigns. Therefore, increasing your brand awareness is no longer just an addition to the marketing plan, but a mandatory part of the recruitment strategy to remain competitive in the labor market.
Marketing activities enhance the hiring process and the time-to-hire metric. Unfortunately, this impact is difficult to track and measure. I recommend creating global landing pages on your website and writing articles on local platforms in the local language, highlighting successful scaling stories, and so on.
8. Onboarding: Engage and Inspire New Employees from Day One for Long-Term Cooperation
A well-thought-out onboarding process requires time and financial investment and is crucial for the sustainability of international hiring. During onboarding, you need to integrate the employee into the environment, corporate culture, and thoroughly familiarize them with the product and team. As a result, the employee should embrace the company’s spirit, clearly understand their tasks and KPIs.
In my opinion, personal meetings are essential. The initial momentum from leaders is very important and often underestimated.
9. Evaluate Hiring Results
I am not a fan of defining too many recruitment effectiveness indicators. At a stage where you need to hire people quickly, it is better to focus on the main ones. For me, these are: time to hire, cost per hire, and quality of hire.
For example, when determining the quality of hire, I consider whether the employee passed the probation period, feedback from leaders and colleagues, work efficiency, quality of communications, and contribution to business goals.
For successful scaling, it is crucial that the team involved in attracting and hiring understands their impact on the business and feels responsible. Ensure that the recruiting and HR teams deeply understand the specifics of your business, know how the product or service works, who your competitors are, and the industry trends. Inform the team about these aspects and the company’s strategy, and replace people in a timely manner if they are not interested.
This way, you will be able to build a well-coordinated, effective team from the start that shares your values and, inspired by faith in the business, achieves results even in a highly competitive environment.