The right sales hire,
vetted before they reach you.
SDRs, Account Executives, and VP Sales placed through rigorous performance-readiness screening, sales-specific assessment, and cultural fit evaluation. No rushed placements. No guesswork.
A bad sales hire is not
just expensive. It is disruptive.
Every founder who has made a bad sales hire knows what it costs. Six months of salary. Three months of management time trying to make it work. Team morale dipping because the wrong person is in the seat. Deals lost because a buyer lost confidence. And then starting the search over again from scratch.
We screen harder than anyone so you do not have to go through that twice. Not because we are slow - because we know exactly what a high-performing sales hire looks like and we do not settle for almost.
- Multi-stage performance screening before you see any candidate
- Sales-specific assessments not generic interview techniques
- Cultural fit evaluation against your specific team dynamic
- Reference checks that go beyond the names the candidate provides
- Post-placement check-ins in months 1, 2, and 3
From first SDR to
VP of Sales.
We place exclusively in sales. That means we understand these roles at a depth that generalist recruiters simply do not - what good looks like, what the red flags are, and what separates a 70th percentile hire from a 95th percentile one.
We do the hard work
before you see anyone.
By the time a candidate reaches you, they have passed through five stages of screening. You spend your time evaluating fit, not filtering out mediocre applications.
Before we source a single candidate, we spend time understanding your product, your team, your culture, your current sales motion, and exactly what success looks like in the role at 30, 60, and 90 days.
Day 1 – 2We go to market through our network, direct outreach, and targeted search - not just job boards. Most high-performing sales people are not actively looking. We find them where they are.
Week 1 – 2Every candidate goes through a structured assessment designed for the specific role. SDRs are assessed on cold prospecting and objection handling. AEs go through a discovery role-play and deal review. VPs present a 90-day GTM plan.
Week 2 – 3We go beyond the references a candidate provides. We speak to managers, peers, and where possible, former buyers. We look for consistency between how a candidate describes themselves and how others describe them.
Week 3You receive a shortlist of 3 to 5 candidates who have cleared every stage - with a detailed profile for each covering assessment performance, cultural observations, and our recommendation. No noise, just signal.
Week 3 – 4Sales hiring is a specialist skill.
| What matters in a sales hire | Generalist Recruiter | MarginSales |
|---|---|---|
| Performance-readiness screening | CV and interview only | Role-play, assessment, deal review |
| Sales methodology understanding | Limited | Deep - Sandler, Challenger, SPIN, MEDDIC |
| Cultural and team fit evaluation | Surface level | Structured assessment against your team dynamic |
| Candidate sourcing approach | Job boards and databases | Network and direct outreach to passive candidates |
| Reference check quality | Standard 2 references | Extended references including peer and manager checks |
| Post-placement support | None | Month 1, 2, 3 check-ins and onboarding support |
| Sales onboarding after placement | Not included | Enablement and training available as add-on |
We hired two AEs through MarginSales and they were both producing pipeline within their first three weeks. That has never happened with any other recruiter we have used. The assessment process they ran was more rigorous than anything we would have done ourselves - and it showed in the quality of people we got.
You need this when any of these apply.
The first SDR or AE you hire sets the culture of your sales team. Getting it right matters more here than at any other stage. We make sure you start with a foundation you can build on.
Growth stage companies that need three AEs in a quarter cannot afford to get one wrong. Speed and quality are not mutually exclusive - if the process is already built.
This is one of the hardest hires any founder makes. The wrong VP Sales can set you back 18 months. We run a structured search that surfaces leaders with the right operational style for your stage.
You know what it costs. You want a process that gives you genuine confidence in the hire before they start - not just a shortlist of people who interviewed well.
Before you start the search.
For SDR and AE roles, we typically present a shortlist within 3 to 4 weeks of starting the search. VP Sales searches take 4 to 6 weeks due to the seniority and specificity required. We will give you a realistic timeline based on your role and market before we begin.
Yes. If a placed candidate leaves or is let go within the agreed guarantee period, we conduct a replacement search at no additional fee. The guarantee period varies by role level and is confirmed in your agreement before we start.
Yes - and this is genuinely differentiating. Because we also run Sales Enablement and Training, we can build the onboarding programme for your new hire after placement. Reps placed and trained by MarginSales hit productivity significantly faster than industry averages.
Yes. We place candidates across India, the US, UK, Singapore, UAE, and Australia. For international roles, we leverage our network and run the same screening process remotely - the quality of assessment does not change based on geography.
Our fee is a percentage of the placed candidate's first-year compensation, confirmed upfront before the search begins. There are no hidden fees, no retainer for standard searches, and no charge if we do not place anyone. We only earn when you hire successfully.
The right person changes everything.
Tell us who you need to hire and we will tell you how we would find them. 30 minutes. No commitment. Just clarity on the best path to the right person.