Salespeople drive new revenue to an organization

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Considerable research exists on the financial impact different corporate functions have on an organization. A recent study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) discovered that top companies “Delivering on Recruiting” had 3.5 times the revenue growth and 2.0 times the profit margin of bottom companies that were not.


To put that into perspective, let’s say a mid-sized firm with a mediocre recruiting function has $500M in revenue and a $50M in profit. Instead of growing at 5% annually, that firm could grow at 17.5% annually and catapult the profit to $100M. Can you imagine revenue growing from $25M to $87.5M Year over Year due to your ability to effectively recruit?

Yes, I’m oversimplifying however if half of the improvement is realistic, doesn’t some investment in your recruitment and retention strategies make sense? Isn’t this the kind of ROI that will raise awareness and buy-in at your leadership’s table?

Identifying and quantifying Return on Investment (ROI) into your recruitment probably panama phone number library seems overwhelming, and frankly akin the age-old question; “How do you eat an elephant?” Let’s look at a couple bite-sized areas that we can use to illustrate the impact recruitment effectiveness can have on your company’s results.

Time to Productivity
For most of us who have been around recruiting for a while, the link between speed of hire and impact on the business is likely obvious. Whether the position is revenue generating or not, filling a position quickly means that the work that needs to be done is getting done sooner. If we include a quality component to the mix and focus on “time to productivity” instead of raw speed of hire, the financial impact becomes tangible. Let’s look at examples of time to productivity impact:

Revenue Generating Positions: Whether or not you’re exposed to the work behind the scenes, every CFO, Head of Sales and CEO set sales targets to achieve and from that, a formula to calculate the number of sales reps, annual quota, and quarterly objectives. For example, your company aims to sell $12M in new business this year and each sales person carries a $1.2M quota, you need 10 salespeople productive for the entire year.Yes, I chose an “HR Math” example, however from a recruiting perspective, for each extra month it takes to fill and get a sales rep up to speed (time to productivity) it’s costing your business $100,000 in unrealized sales. If you’re down 3 of salespeople from your 10 and each role takes 6 months to fill and ramp up, is there not an ROI for investing in your recruitment to shorten that time to 3 months? Absolutely. A $900,000 ROI.