With the hundreds of sales resumes you will likely screen for the position that you have open, you really need a methodical way to screen a resume and get the sense of what the candidate is all about.

The problem is if you list your openings on any of the online job posting sites like monster.com or hotjobs.com , you’ll end up getting deluged with resumes and just get muddled in the muck, so to speak.

A lot of companies have an internal recruiter, which is a great help…however you still need to have direct contact with the person who’s actually talking to the candidates initially.

Whether you’re using an internal recruiter or and external recruiter, you’ll need to teach the recruiter about the essential qualities you are looking for in your ideal candidate. In The Sales Management Mastery Academy, we call those "The Fabulous Five".

After you’ve done Step 1 and have written out your "Fabulous Five", now you’re ready to find a good recruiter.

Here are a seven steps to getting a great sales recruiter:

1.Look for recruiters who specialize in sales recruitment – there are tons of recruiters out there, but only a handful specialize in sales exclusively.

2.Find a recruiter with a long track record of success – there are plenty of "fly by night" sales recruiters out there, so make sure they have been in the game a while, because experience counts.

3.Find sales recruiters who have extensive experience with national expansions, product launches and regional expansions – if the recruiter has done well here, then chances are they can handle your singular request.

4.Ask them about thier track record of success and "stick rate" – meaning how many of the candidates they placed are still employed with the organization they recruited them for? There’s no real way you can validate this, but it is extremely helpful to ask.

5.Ask what they feel are the core attributes of "the ideal sales candidate" – if their answer overlaps your "Fabulous Five" (or at least three or four out of the five), then you’re on the right track.

6.Ask the recruiter what kinds of questions they ask in the screening. You’ll still have to do a fair amount of screening in your actual interviews, but making sure the recruiters are asking "knockout questions" prior to you talking with them will save you hours of time.

7.Ask yourself is this someone I can work with? If you have no level of rapport with them, it may be difficult to constantly be fielding their calls. Remember that you’lll be talking to this person alot, so make sure you connect with them.

8.If need be, inquire about their fees and direct them to the correct person within your company to negotiate rates.

At Sales Management Mastery, we highly recommend these two excellent recruiting firms: Briand Fiorella Search, Inc. and Treeline, Inc. Both firms have placed top sales superstars for a wide-range of industries – with particular expertise in the medical field.

Once you’ve found your recruiter, then give your recruiter your list of the your "Fabulous Five" criteria – ask them what kinds of questions they would ask to uncover those characteristics in an initial screen.

Remember that a resume is a very good initial guide to the who, what and where of a sales candidate – what is says and where it says it speaks volumes about the candidate’s character attributes. And resume screening is just the very first step in the whole process and a very important one.

So save yourself hours and hours of time, hire a sales recruiter and have them do the screening for you. You’ll save hours of needless work by hiring an outside source to screen and recruit suitable candidates for you and you’ll get a whole lot more talent to interview in half the time.