In last week's edition, we gave you 12 sales recruiting tips from David J. LiVigni, senior HR director at Dublin, Calif.-based ISV Sybase.

What are his qualifications? Well, as head of North American staffing, LiVigni and his department of 11 people have to recruit about 300 people each year, 60 percent of them for the sales department. And, LiVigni nearly always makes his quota.

Here then is part two: Nine more ideas you can use to boost your success rate when recruiting software sales talent.

Sales recruiting tip #13: To get the best people, you'll have to root them out. "On the technology side, it's a boom market for us," LiVigni says. "You still have to do some cold calling, but for the most part there are lots of good technology people who are available.

"On the sales side, however, you'll find the best people are working. The best people are always selling. Rarely will they have the time or inclination to publish their info on."

One of the best places to root them out, it turns out, is trade shows. To mine that vein, LiVigni has turned to a service called CardBrowser, which collects business cards from technology trade shows, then makes them available to its subscribers online.

"CardBrowser was a good find for us," LiVigni says. "We can't possibly get to all the trade shows. We'd love to be at all of them, but we just don't have the bandwidth or the time. A service that does it for is a really good step in the right direction.

"They let people know why they're collecting the business cards; for the salesperson, it makes it easier to find other opportunities—all you have to do is hand over their card. Most are not looking, but they're willing to be included."

Within the CardBrowser database, however, nothing's a slam dunk—you will have competition. "We're not the only customer, as you can imagine, and as fresh cards and info come in, those people may get 10 calls in one day," LiVigni says.

"Still, if we find two or three sales people a quarter, it's more than paid for itself. It isn't magic; it's a lead. What you do with that lead is why you have recruiters."

"It's a known fact that software companies hand-pick their best people to represent them at the high-end niche events," says Steven Morgan, CardBrowser's president and CEO. "So, in essence, tradeshow networking is really the best way to network your way to the best available sales talent."

Copyright (c) 2004, SoftwareCEO Inc. Reprinted with permission.
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