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