The Real Cost of Getting Sales Hiring Wrong

Let’s talk about something people don’t always want to put a number on.

Bad hires.

Because it’s easy to think about it as “just salary”. You hire someone, it doesn’t work out, you move on.

Bit annoying, but not the end of the world.

That’s not the real cost.

The real cost is everything that sits around it.

Let’s say you bring someone into a sales role on £35k.

On paper, that’s your cost.

But in reality, you’ve got:

• Employer costs on top

• Time spent interviewing

• Time spent onboarding

• Time spent managing underperformance

And then the big one… lost revenue.

Because while that person is figuring it out (or not figuring it out), deals aren’t being closed. Pipeline isn’t building properly. Opportunities are missed.

Suddenly that £35k hire is costing you a lot more.

Some estimates in the UK put the cost of a bad hire at £25k–£30k minimum. In sales, you can easily go beyond that once you factor in missed targets.

And that’s just one hire.

Now imagine you’re hiring for growth and you get two or three wrong in a row.

This is where businesses start feeling like things are “just a bit stuck”, without always realising why.

Because it’s not one big dramatic failure. It’s a slow leak.

Money going out. Opportunity slipping through the cracks. Time being spent fixing problems that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

And usually, it all comes back to the same thing.

The hiring process wasn’t strong enough at the start.

It felt quicker to make a decision. It felt easier to take a chance. It felt like the role needed filling urgently.

All understandable.

But expensive.

Good hiring can feel slower upfront. More questions, more structure, more thinking.

But compared to the cost of getting it wrong, it’s cheap.

Very cheap.