THE SALES QUOTA

Top 5 Sales Recruiting Companies To Hire For Building High Performing Remote Sales Teams

Updated May 2024

Steven Copithorne is a Fractional Chief Sales Officer for fast growing companies and has tested many sales staffing solutions throughout his career.

Finding the right sales talent can be the golden key to unlocking company growth and big revenue. However finding top notch sales people that can close deals and align with your culture can be a challenge. Especially if you're looking for commission-only reps.

There is no shortage of sales staffing companies out there. The question is, which one should you go with?

Whether you're looking for high ticket closers, entry-level sales reps, outbound SDR, or sales leaders & managers, this guide serves to point in the right direction to acquiring top-tier sales talent.

After testing over 40 sales staffing solutions throughout my career, here are the top 5 solutions that I recommend for hiring high quality sales reps. These companies are ranked based on hiring effectiveness, quality of sales reps, pricing, and fill/delivery time.

Top Pick #1) PhoneSales

PhoneSales AI
Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.9)

PhoneSales AI revolutionizes the sales staffing industry by offering a cutting-edge talent marketplace enhanced with an integrated hiring manager, tailored for companies seeking to hire top-tier sales professionals quickly.

PhoneSales AI simplifies the hiring elite sales talent through a user-friendly platform, making it easy to identify perfect candidates for your organization, review their sales ability, and send out a job offer with 1 click.

Pros:

  • Commission-Only Sales Reps: All sales professionals on the platform are seeking commission-only, ensuring commitment and performance.

  • Interview Recordings: All candidates on the platform have already been interviewed. You can watch their interviews on 1.5x or 2x speed, saving you time from doing interviews your self or paying a hiring manager.

  • Real Sales Call Recordings: Listen to actual sales call recordings from the sales reps, enabling you to assess candidates' real-world performance before making a hiring decision.

  • Incorporates Artificial Intelligence: AI assesses all candidates on the platform and it can recommend sales reps most likely to succeed with your company.

  • Over 1000 Of The Top 1% Sales Professionals: With over 1000 sales pros on the platform from USA & Canada, you can easily find the perfect candidate(s) for your company. New candidates are added almost daily.

  • Extremely Quick Fill Time: Hiring someone is just 1 click. You can hire sales reps as quickly as 24 hours. Most staffing companies take 30 to 90 days to find qualified sales candidates.

  • Dedicated Hiring Manager: Streamlines the hiring process for you by short-listing ideal candidates that match your criteria.

  • Rigorous Vetting Process: Candidates are thoroughly interviewed, scored, and vetted, which includes checking their past sales performances, past experience, and completed sales training.

  • Monthly Pricing, Easy To Cancel Any Time. Once you've hired your dream sales team, you can easily cancel your subscription until you need to hire again.

  • 30 Day Money Back Guarantee: If you can't hire at least 1 sales rep within 30 days, they will refund your payment.

  • Extremely Fair Pricing: Starts as low as $497/month! Other sales staffing firms typically charge several thousand dollars upfront + 25% of candidates first year earnings.

Cons:

  • Remote Positions Only: Candidates on the platform are looking for primarily remote sales positions.

  • Only Has Sales Talent: If you're looking to fill other roles like marketers or customer support reps, this isn't the platform for that.

How Does It Look?

Since PhoneSales AI is what I personally use now 100Code% of the time for hiring sales pros for the different companies where I am their Fractional Chief Sales Officer, I was able to login and do a quick screen share to show what inside the platform looks like.

For a full demo walkthrough, I recommend to visit the PhoneSales website.

#2) Kas Placement

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.5)

Kas Placement has been around for nearly 15 years.

They offer recruiting for a variety of different roles and do not specialize in exclusively sales. They offer recruiting for marketing and sales. They have good reviews, and both companies and candidates seem happy with the overall experience.

They boast a network of 3.31 million sales and marketing professionals, which means they prioritize candidate volume over candidate quality.

Pros:

  • Established in 2009: Many years of experience recruiting

  • 3.31 million sales and marketing pros: This means they have a large network to tap into.

  • Location specific sales jobs: If you're looking for in-person sales reps to go to your office or knock door to door, Kas recruits for specific cities and in-office sales positions

  • Strategic Insights: They offer valuable market insights and strategic advice to clients, helping them make informed decisions about their recruitment and hiring strategies.

Cons:

  • Kas Is High Cost & Expensive: Kas Placement charges a $5000 upfront deposit and 22% to 26% of one candidates yearly salary. So if you need to hire 10 reps, you're looking at paying $50,000+ out of pocket plus 22% minimum of their yearly earnings.

  • Isn't Exclusive to Sales Recruiting: They deal with a lot of marketing positions as well as sales positions, so their hiring efforts and industry knowledge is a bit scattered.

  • Does Not Focus on USA Companies: About 25% of the recruiting they do is for overseas reps and companies

  • Complexity of Services: They seem to over-complicate the recruiting process which leads to longer cycles, and this might not be necessary for most companies hiring and recruiting needs.

  • 180 Day Long Guarantee: This means if they fail to deliver, you have to wait 180 days (6 months) to get your money back.

#3) Sales Recruiters Inc.

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.3)

Sales Recruiters Inc is a bit more of an old school recruiting firm for corporate sales recruiting. You can see this based on their outdated website, and the executive recruitment team is of older age. If you're looking for a sales recruiting company that understands modern technology and trends, this probably isn't the best fit.

The good part is, they have worked with a range of company sizes all the way from startups to Fortune 500 companies and boast over 35 years of experience!

Pros:

  • Over 30 years in business: They have made many hires in the last 30 years

  • Physical and Remote: They offer recruiting for both physical and remote positions

  • Large team: They have over 10 executive recruiters on the team.

  • Sales Specialists: They specialize in specifically sales recruiting and nothing else!

Cons:

  • Super Slow Hiring Times (2 months): In the FAQ section of their website, it clearly states the average time to hire a sales rep is 8 weeks.

  • Unclear Pricing: They offer retained and "engaged contingency" pricing. This means if you want their full attention and effort, you will have to pay their monthly retainer fee which others have reported starts at $8000.

  • No Money Back Guarantee: If you're not happy with their service, quality of sales reps, or if they fail to deliver, that's unfortunate as they have no money back guarantee.

  • Oldschool and Outdated: The website and team seems a bit outdated. This is probably why it takes them 8 weeks to hire for one sales position.

  • Hit Or Miss: Sometimes they recommend unqualified candidates who aren't really a great fit.

#4) Korn Ferry

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4.2)

Korn Ferry is a legendary recruiting firm for Fortune 500 companies looking to hire for executive or C Suite positions.

Unfortunately, their pricing is also legendary, starting at a minimum of $100,000.

They cover recruiting for a vast range of industries and job positions. They are known to have made some very successful sales hires in the industry.

If you have $100,000 to spend on hiring 1 person, I recommend moving forward with Korn Ferry.

Pros:

  • Legendary Brand: They are very well known in the recruiting industry and have made many successful hires.

  • Executive and C Suite Hiring: They specialize in hiring for these high up sales positions like VIP of sales or Chief of Sales.

  • Global Presence: They have many offices in many different countries.

  • Quality of Talent: With their extensive network and big brand name, they will surely find you the perfect candidate(s) you're looking for.

Cons:

  • Astronomically High Priced: To work with Korn Ferry, you will need to pay a minimum of $100,000 upfront for 1 sales position.

  • Large Enterprise Focused: Not ideal for small or medium sized companies.

  • Slow Hiring Times: You can expect to wait 2-3 months before your sales position is filled.

  • Broad Focused: They don't specialize in hiring for sales. Instead they serve over 100 different industries ranging from legal, engineering, and more.

#5) RevPilots

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3.9)

RevPilots is fairly new to the sales recruiting space.

The good thing about RevPilots, is they focus specifically on hiring for sales positions, so they really know their sales lingo and are dedicated filling roles in the sales space.

On top of this, they also offer additional services like sales audits and sales strategy which is helpful, but which of course will cost extra.


Pros:

  • Sales Focused: They only deal with recruiting for sales roles and nothing else. This is what you want!

  • Full time and Fractional Positions: They can help recruit either full time or fractional (part time) sales people.

  • Additional Services: They offer clients additional services such as sales strategy, creating sales scripts, and more

Cons:

  • Misleading Information: Their website makes it look like they've worked for Apple, Amazon, Adobe, Google, Goldman Sachs, Paypal, Indeed, Uber, Oracle and more. However, this is not true.

  • Traditional Pricing: They charge 20% to 25% for 1 sales reps annual earnings, paid upfront, plus an additional onboarding fee. This means your bill will end up in the tens of thousands of dollars.

  • New To Business. They don't have much of a proven track record as they are a newer company, so results may vary.

Final Conclusions

As you can see, there's lot of options to choose from. It just depends on what your priorities and budget are.

As a fractional Chief Sales Officer for 7 different companies, I needed to find a sales hiring solution that works reliably and a network I can quickly tap into to hire fast.

If hiring speed isn't a priority for you and you can afford to wait 2-3 months to hire a sales rep, you may want to consider Sales Recruiters Inc or Kas Placement. Keep in mind, you will have to pay them their upfront fees, plus about $20K once they find you the candidate.

I've worked with many sales recruiting companies, and the only one I use now is PhoneSales AI.

It's a hybrid of a sales talent marketplace + dedicated hiring manager, which in my opinion is the perfect sales recruiting solution. The sales people they have are top notch sales reps, and I can hire them as quickly as 24 hours. I just have to click one button.

On top of that, it only costed me $497 to get started and try out the service. This is way cheaper than any other sales recruiting solution I've come across.

I've been a client for over 10 months now. I've hired sales managers, high ticket closers, SDRs/appointment setters, software sales reps, part time and full time, pretty much every kind of role.

New candidates are added almost daily to the platform, and my dedicated hiring manager sends me a notification once there's a new candidate matching one of my job listings.

So, if you're looking for a reliable solution for your sales recruiting needs... I recommend PhoneSales AI, and worst case if it doesn't work for you, you have their 30 day money back guarantee.