Recruiting sales talent can be expensive, especially if you end up with a bad sales hire. We define a bad sales hire as - a salesperson who consistently ranks in the bottom 20% for three months after the ramp-up period. It’s not only that the company has wasted the invested salary in a salesperson who didn’t work out, but there are other expenses created — replacement recruitment and hiring costs, replacement training costs, lost productivity, lost business, and more. So, how much did that bad hire really cost you? Current estimates are 50% to 75% of the annual compensation.