Since it was founded in 2007, Glassdoor has gone on to revolutionise the way organisations attract talent. Encompassing everything from millions of company reviews, office photos, salary reports and hundreds of thousands of the latest jobs, it is the definitive go-to resource for potential sales people looking to scope out their next place of hire. It’s one of the cornerstones of employer branding, yet it is often completely overlooked by sales managers.

Glassdoor has the potential to transform the way you recruit sales stars. With reviews from both past and present employees, it paints a far more accurate picture of what your company is really like than any employer branding initiative. In a market where 68% of job applicants see Glassdoor as a more trusted source of career information than employers themselves, it pays to know what is being said about you on the Internet. As 40% of companies are unaware of their online reputation, and given that a bad profile will stop candidates from applying and interviewing, now is the time to seize control of the opportunities that Glassdoor presents and turn it into your most powerful recruitment weapon.

Own your Glassdoor company profile

Glassdoor’s self-stated mission is to ‘help people everywhere find a job and company they love’, and with approximately 700,000 companies listed on the site worldwide it has a truly staggering global reach. The UK site currently lists more than 650,000 reviews and insights on 60,000 different companies.

Because of this, the likelihood is that your company probably has a Glassdoor profile, whether you know it or not. The first step towards improving yours is taking control of it, whether that’s by ensuring one of your marketing team is monitoring and updating your profile or you take charge of the sales side of it yourself. Given that employers with a strong brand drive twice the number of applicants per job compared to less-organised competitors, it’s vital that you start building your reputation online. Your employer brand is a vital part of your recruitment strategy: find your Glassdoor profile and start cultivating yours.

Encourage reviews at the right time

The majority of Glassdoor users read at least 7 reviews before forming an opinion of a company; therefore, a bad review can have a huge negative impact on the way that your company is seen by potential applicants. As a sales manager, it may not be your first priority to monitor and respond to online reviews of your business, but if you want to continue to attract the right sales talent you need to be paying attention. It also pays to ask your existing sales team for feedback at the right times.

Consider: when might a current team member be happy to do a review, and when might it be most positive for your company? A newly-inducted starter, for instance, would be more enthusiastic about their job, and therefore more likely to give excellent feedback; similarly, try asking sales people after giving them positive feedback, extra training, after they have clinched a big sale or achieved their annual bonus.

You don’t have to look solely to your staff, either: get in touch with former sales people who left the company on good terms, and ask them to leave a quick review. Given that it’s all anonymous, they don’t even have to worry about it impacting their current job.

Set up internal processes

However, asking people to ‘write a review’ isn’t enough: if you want to fully take advantage of Glassdoor’s potential then you need to set up an established process for requesting, posting and nominating feedback. Posting multiple reviews on your site at the same time makes it look to browsers as though you’ve asked employees to all pitch in at once, which will then make them think the feedback is biased; instead, you need to think about your internal processes and what kind of strategy you want to put in place. Should you email them, or could line managers nominate stellar workers- and if so, how? Is it something you want to control centrally? Marketing managers may be better placed to plan and manage this than you, but you might want to have your own strategy in place for connecting with current and previous sales people.

Another idea to think about is whether you want to put a template in place for your workers to give them a rough guideline for the kind of things they should be thinking about when writing the review. For sales people, this might involve the training and support given to them, perks such as company cars and technology, and the ease at which they achieved bonus.

Reply to comments

You need to stay active online if you want to remain uppermost in your audience’s mind. Glassdoor is no different: you need to engage people, and for that you need to get involved. And given that 62% of people agree that their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review, it’s important that your organisation takes the time to encourage and address every one that you get.

If you’re responding to a sales person’s review, it’s important to consider tone: don’t get defensive, no matter how much you agree or disagree. Instead, stay calm and professional. Thank the reviewer if the feedback is good; if it isn’t, consider how you could improve. You should also remember that getting some negative reviews isn’t necessarily a bad thing: after all, getting 100% positive reviews doesn’t look very credible, and showing empathy actually increases employee retention, with 56% of workers stating that they would stay on with a company whose management regularly showed empathy.

Leverage your Glassdoor company profile

Once you’ve got the basics sorted, you can turn your new profile into your biggest recruitment weapon by promoting it on your own online platforms. More than 48 million browsers visit Glassdoor’s website every month; it’s often cited as the Trip Advisor of recruitment websites and is hugely respected in the recruitment industry. Take advantage of this: include the site’s logos on your website, and promote your Glassdoor company profile to potential sales people when recruiting, using it on everything from advertisements to emails and candidate packs. Not only will it enhance your company reputation and increase your standing amongst team members and candidates, but it will indicate to potential job applicants that you’re a trustworthy, transparent employer.

Tie it all together

Glassdoor is an invaluable resource for companies looking to attract fresh, new talent- and if you take control of your profile you can improve your online reputation, build a strong employer brand and increase your chances of making a star sales hire. Don’t hesitate: you’re sitting on an online goldmine, and now is the time to take advantage of it. Work closely with your marketing team to establish clear guidelines and boundaries on establishing and growing your Glassdoor profile.

At BMS Performance, we take pride in offering high-quality recruitment insights that will help you find the right sales talent. If you’re curious about what we can do to help you identify and attract the best people on the market, why not talk to our experts here?