Recruiting sales, business development & account management roles

The sector

We observe an increasing demand in 2025 for Inside Sales, Customer Service, and Business Development roles in industries such as industrial machinery, food & beverage, environmental services, chemistry, and tech. Employer demand centers on proficiency in advanced CRM systems, sales automation, AI analytics, and fluency in Dutch, French, English (and German in some cases). Soft skills like relationship-building, empathy, adaptability, and problem-solving are also prioritized.

Many Belgian companies still tie incentives to volume or revenue and lack training in value-based selling. Only 50% provide sales teams with training to sell on value rather than price. This can limit alignment with more consultative or solution-oriented sales roles. Flexible models—freelance, interim, hybrid roles—are increasingly common as firms look to manage cost and staffing agility, particularly for high-skill senior or niche business-development roles.

First, we focus on technical & sales domain knowledge first as well as tools:

Core sales functions: inside sales, field sales, account management, enterprise sales, channel/partner sales.
Business development scope: lead generation, strategic partnerships, market expansion, deal negotiation.
Sales models: B2B, B2C, SaaS, consultative selling, solution selling.
Industry-specific cycles: long enterprise deals vs. high-volume transactional sales.
CRM systems: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Microsoft Dynamics.
Prospecting & outreach tools: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Outreach.io, Apollo.io.
Analytics & forecasting tools: Tableau, Power BI, Clari.
Communication tools: Zoom, Teams, Slack for client engagement.

Then we evaluate the candidate’s understanding of Metrics & KPIs

Familiarity with pipeline health metrics: leads generated, conversion rate, sales velocity.
Revenue metrics: quota attainment, average deal size, ARR/MRR for subscription models.
Customer metrics: churn rate, net promoter score (NPS), upsell/cross-sell rates.

The core aspect is to evaluate the candidate’s cultural & performance Sensitivity

Evaluating sales track record—look for consistent quota attainment or overachievement.
Assessing prospecting ability—can they open doors or only manage existing accounts?
Spotting soft skills: resilience, negotiation, relationship building, commercial awareness.
Checking deal complexity experience—selling high-value, multi-stakeholder solutions vs. quick transactional sales.
See if the candidate has a good understanding that sales cultures range from high-pressure, numbers-driven to relationship-focused.
Being mindful of burnout risk—top performers are in demand and won’t tolerate toxic environments.

To source top Sales talent we leverage:

sales communities: LinkedIn sales groups, Sales Hacker, Pavilion.
industry events & trade shows to spot active and passive talent.
competitor sales teams—but discreetly, to avoid reputational issues.
earning potential—clear base + commission + bonus structures.
product-market fit—top sellers won’t join if the product is hard to sell.
career progression—salespeople want to know there’s a path to leadership or enterprise-level deals.