Hiring
Before hiring a manufacturing salesperson, specify what the person sells and how customers buy it. Standard replacement components, custom fabricated parts, industrial equipment and automation systems require different discovery, quoting and account-management skills. Separate responsibility for new accounts, installed-base growth, distributor support and technical applications work.
Map the buying group: maintenance may identify a failure, engineering may set specifications, operations may evaluate throughput, purchasing may negotiate terms, and finance may approve capital spending. Your salesperson must reach the right people without treating every stakeholder as the final decision-maker.
Do not assume every manufacturing sale follows a long capital-equipment cycle. A replacement-part order may depend on availability; an automation project may require trials, integration review and budget approval. Validate your role against recent wins, losses and stalled opportunities.
Review these questions with operations, engineering and customer service. Use actual opportunity histories to identify stage exits and delays; separate buyer indecision from internal quoting bottlenecks. Give candidates a realistic account of both.
Choose criteria before reviewing applicants. Score each from one to four: unsupported claim, partial example, clear example, or repeated evidence with a transferable method. Prioritize technical discovery and commercial judgment over familiarity with one product catalog.
| Capability | Evidence to request |
|---|---|
| Application discovery | Explains operating conditions, specifications and consequences of failure before recommending equipment. |
| Buying-group navigation | Maps users, technical evaluators, purchasing and budget authority in a past deal. |
| Commercial discipline | Describes protecting margin while negotiating scope, terms or delivery. |
| Opportunity management | Distinguishes customer-confirmed milestones from hopeful close dates. |
| Internal coordination | Shows how engineering, production and service helped resolve a customer issue. |
| Territory development | Presents a repeatable account-prioritization and outreach approach. |
Accept anonymized examples and do not request confidential customer documents. Record evidence separately from impressions such as confidence or personal rapport.
Set compensation after defining the job's technical responsibility, travel, account inheritance and expected sales cycle. A role developing new automation projects should not automatically use the same plan as one managing recurring component orders.
Use BLS occupational wage tables as one benchmark. Compare occupation descriptions first: technical and scientific product sales, other wholesale/manufacturing sales, and sales engineering may represent different work. Then select the relevant geography and release year. A broad national occupation is not a local salary quote or a complete benchmark for your incentive plan.
Document payout timing and exceptions. Have appropriate internal advisers review plan terms before presenting them.
Source for comparable selling motions, not just matching titles. Relevant candidates might sell industrial components, equipment, automation or adjacent technical services. Check whether their success relied on inherited accounts, channel partners, applications engineers or self-generated opportunities.
You can browse salespeople on Salesfolks alongside referrals and your other sourcing channels. Use the same screening criteria across sources.
Give every finalist the same fictional brief: a plant is considering an automated inspection station, but throughput requirements, acceptance criteria and budget authority are unclear. Provide a short product sheet and stated constraints. Ask for a discovery conversation, stakeholder map and follow-up email. Score question quality, assumptions, technical boundaries and next-step clarity—not presentation polish. Keep the exercise bounded and never use it to obtain unpaid work on a live account.
Use consistent reference questions to test collaboration and follow-through. Obtain appropriate permission, and avoid asking for proprietary customer information.
Teach products, application limits, quoting workflows and escalation paths. Arrange plant or production exposure under applicable site procedures. Have the hire shadow discovery calls and explain when technical review is required. Assess learning through a mock discovery call and correctly routed quote request.
Assign a manageable account set. Coach account research, stakeholder mapping and customer follow-up. Review early opportunities jointly with engineering or applications staff. Track discovery completeness and customer-confirmed next steps, not just call volume.
Require a territory plan, prioritized pipeline and defensible forecast. Review one call and one opportunity each week. Where sales cycles extend beyond onboarding, judge progress through validated requirements, technical approvals and buying-process clarity—not an arbitrary expectation of closed revenue.
Not necessarily. Identify which application knowledge is essential on day one and which can be taught. Test adjacent-industry candidates on discovery, technical learning and judgment about when to involve specialists.
Only if workload and incentives support both. Estimate service demands, travel and prospecting time before combining responsibilities. Otherwise, urgent account issues can displace new-business development.
Use verified milestones: access to relevant stakeholders, documented requirements, agreed evaluation criteria and customer-confirmed next steps. Activity counts alone do not demonstrate buying progress.
Use O*NET OnLine to compare occupation tasks and skills with your actual role. Verify occupation, geography and year in the BLS wage tables; supplement them with your own hiring evidence and compensation-plan economics.
Once the role and assessment process are ready, browse salespeople, create an account, or check current employer plans. Verify current plan details directly before choosing a service.