Overview
Most sales job postings are written by nobody for everybody: a template of duties, a requirements list, "competitive compensation," and a paragraph of culture adjectives. Then companies wonder why the applicant flood contains no killers. The answer is in the mirror: a posting is a sales page, the product is the seat, and the target buyer is a strong rep with options. Strong reps read postings the way closers read prospects, scanning for specifics, and a posting with no numbers tells them everything they need to know about what the numbers must be.
Write for the exception, filter the flood
Remember what inbound is: a channel whose median applicant is weak but whose exceptions, the laid-off performer, the relocator, the escapee from a broken floor, are real hires. The posting therefore has two jobs at once. Job one: give the exceptions a reason to pick your flood over the forty other tabs they have open. Job two: make the wrong candidates close the tab themselves. Both jobs are done with the same tool, specificity, because specifics attract exactly the people who benefit from comparison and repel exactly the people who survive on vagueness.
The anatomy of a killer posting
Lead with the money, honestly. The real OTE, the structure, and the credibility line almost nobody writes: what percentage of the current floor hit that number last year, and what the top rep earned. "OTE 140K, six of nine reps cleared it in 2025, top rep at 212K" outpulls "competitive uncapped commission" by an embarrassing margin, because one is information and the other is wallpaper.
Then the lead flow, because it is the first question every real closer asks and the thing your posting's competitors are hiding: where leads come from, how many booked calls per week a full calendar carries, and the show rate. A rep reading real calendar math is a rep already computing their commission, which is precisely the mental state you want an applicant in.
Then the machine: the coaching cadence, daily call reviews, the SOPs, the ramp system with its two-week timeline and half-calendar structure. To a weak candidate this paragraph is noise. To a strong one it reads as "your skills will compound here," which is the retention pitch and the recruiting pitch in one, and it is a paragraph almost no competitor can honestly write.
Then who wins in the seat, drawn like the irresistible pitch draws its buyer: not a requirements list but a portrait. "This seat fits a closer who wants a dense calendar and daily film review, and who would rather be measured every day than managed once a quarter." Portraits make the right readers feel seen and give the wrong ones an honest exit.
And close with the process, stated plainly: group interview first, then roleplays, then verification of your numbers, then a paid trial where relevant. Naming the gauntlet does two jobs: it pre-frames the steps so nobody is surprised, and it is itself a filter, because candidates who bristle at proving skill were never going to survive proving it.
The subtraction pass
Now delete: every culture adjective (fast-paced, family, rockstar), every duty everyone already knows (conduct sales calls), and every requirement you would waive for a killer (degrees, years-of-experience thresholds that screen out the D2D assassin). Each deleted line raises the density of the lines that sell, and density is what separates a posting from a form.
One honest warning belongs in, not out: the hard part of the job, stated straight. "The calendar is dense and the film review is daily, reps who want to coast should pass." Strong reps trust postings that admit a cost, because every real seat has one, and postings that promise only upside read as fiction to exactly the readers you want.
Distribution and iteration
The posting is one asset deployed across the whole channel map, corporate-clean on the boards, first-person on the feeds and communities, and it gets measured like any sales page: not by applicant volume, which is vanity, but by group-interview standouts per posting version. Rewrite quarterly against that number, and keep the winning version standing even between openings, feeding the candidate bench.
Summary
Treat the posting as a sales page for the seat: real OTE with attainment proof, real calendar math, the coaching machine, a portrait of who wins, the process named, one honest cost admitted, and every vague line deleted. Measured by standouts, not applicants, and rewritten until the exceptions in the flood have no better tab open.
Frequently asked questions
Legal says we can't publish comp. Now what?
Publish everything else, lead flow, coaching, ramp, and note comp is shared in the first conversation, then actually share it there. But fight the fight: comp transparency is increasingly required by law in many places and it is your single best filter either way.
Won't naming the verification step scare candidates off?
It scares off the candidates whose numbers won't survive it, which is the feature. Real performers read "we verify" as "my W2 finally beats the liars."
How long should the posting be?
As long as the specifics require and not a sentence longer. Four hundred dense words beat a thousand fluffy ones, the same rule as every other sales asset you own.