Even if you have seen every episode of The Office, you might not be properly qualified to hire the best sales people. Just because someone is looking into careers in sales, does not mean that they are prepared for a job in sales. If you are a sales recruiting manager sifting through applications of people looking into a sales career path and investing the in the best employee retention programs, then here are the top five things that you should be looking for.

1. One of the most important aspects of hiring for a sales career path, is to make sure that you are hiring is someone who will stick around and preform for the long haul. The cost of a sales hiring mistake can be as much as six to 10 times the base salary of the sales person. It is best to hire the best people for the job so that you do not have to spend the money finding, hiring, and training a new person.

2. In order to be good sales representatives, your recruits have to have good research skills. They need to be able to find out about their prospects, know the needs of the business, and understand exactly what it will take to get the job done.

3. In sales, experience is not always the most important thing to look at in a candidate. This is most important if you have existing sales reps who can assist in the training and mentoring of new recruits. There are certain intangible qualities that you want to look for and give preference to.

4. There are certain intangible qualities that help make a salesperson successful. These include, but are by no means limited to charisma, adaptability, confidence, and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, these are often the kinds of traits that might not show up as part of an employee retention program or an accompanying questionnaire on employee retention.

5. Lastly, one of the biggest indicators of whether a candidate will make a good salesperson, that might not actually show up in an employee retention project report, is their overall attitude and countenance. A warm genuine smile and firm handshake can go a long way during a sales call.

Though finding the best sales people for your company who are going to stick around for the long haul might seem like a daunting task, spending the extra time to find the best people the first time around will make employee retention programs a little bit less necessary.