A bad sales hire doesn’t just cost you money—it costs you momentum.

Most leaders underestimate how damaging a poor sales hire can be. The expense isn’t just in salary or recruitment fees. It’s in missed quota, lost deals, wasted onboarding, and the opportunity cost of what could have been.

At SalesIndex, we believe the most overlooked lever for scaling revenue is hiring smarter—before reps ever enter your pipeline. And that starts with replacing guesswork with predictive assessment data.

The True Cost of a Bad Hire

Let’s break it down:

• 150%–200% of salary is the average cost to replace a rep
  

• 30% first-year turnover is common in B2B sales
  

• 9–12 months is the average time to productivity in complex sales environments
  

• Each failed hire delays forecasted revenue by at least two quarters
  

And that’s before considering the hidden drag:

• Manager time wasted on underperformance
  

• Pipeline damage from deals that never close
  

• Team morale decline from carrying weak links
  

• Slower scaling due to recurring onboarding churn
  

In growth-stage companies, a few bad hires can stall an entire go-to-market motion.

Why Sales Hiring Is So Hard to Get Right

Even experienced hiring managers rely on the same flawed process:

• A strong resume
  

• A good interview
  

• Gut feel from the hiring panel
  

Unfortunately, that process only predicts success about 20% of the time. Sales is too complex, too nuanced, and too high-stakes for “we liked them” to be a hiring strategy.

What you need is evidence—clear, role-specific data about how someone is likely to perform in your sales environment.

The SalesIndex Fix: Predictive Assessments for Smarter Hiring

SalesIndex helps companies remove hiring risk through our Sales Performance Assessment, which predicts:

• Will this person succeed in this role?
  

• Are they coachable, or will development stall?
  

• What belief patterns may sabotage performance?
  

• How do they sell—consultatively, tactically, or transactionally?
  

• How quickly can they ramp, and where will they struggle?
  

This is Indexing Potential—the first step in our Revenue Performance Framework™. It gives hiring managers real, actionable insight before the offer is made.

Why SalesIndex Outperforms Traditional Assessments

Most assessments measure generic traits: personality types, IQ, communication styles.

SalesIndex measures sales-specific behaviors and beliefs, including:

• Prospecting discipline
  

• Comfort discussing money
  

• Qualification depth
  

• Consultative selling ability
  

• Use of process, tech, and milestones
  

• Internal motivation and ownership
  

We also evaluate a candidate’s Sales DNA—the belief systems that influence how they show up in front of a buyer.

The result? 72% of “Recommended” candidates rank in the top half of their teams, and 0% of “Not Recommended” hires do.

Don’t Just Hire Fast—Hire Smart

Speed is important, but precision is priceless. SalesIndex helps you:

• Reduce ramp risk by knowing who can truly sell
  

• Improve retention by hiring coachable, committed reps
  

• Protect revenue forecasts by minimizing underperformance
  

• Save money by preventing turnover before it starts
  

Predictive hiring turns talent into a competitive advantage—not a liability.

Index Your Sales Candidates

See who’s built to succeed. Make hiring decisions with confidence—not hope.