Hire Your First Sales Professional
Start by hiring yourself to sell.
Have you thought about how you are going to hire your first sales professional? What will their day to day look like? Do you have the system to support them? We’ll explore these questions and more today.
Building your sales org chart.
You might think this is for a company much bigger than yours but it is important to have an org chart. Again this idea came from reading The E Myth Revised by Michael Gerber. Even though you are a small company with just one or two employees it’s important to build an org chart for your company. That way you know the roles and responsibilities that need to be filled and who will be responsible for what. More on that if you read the book, but for now we are going to focus on the sales team you want to have. Do you need just one or two good professionals to call on customers and make sure they are happy? Do you need an inside sales team generating leads, or will your sales team do that for themselves? What about creating quotes and bill collecting? These questions (and more) will help you understand the size of the team you need. Also, how much growth you can expect given your size. For example if you want each sales person to handle no more than 5 accounts, you would need to have 3 people if you want to have at least 15 accounts. I know this seems very straight forward, but this has to be part of your quarterly and annual plan. If you can only afford 1 sales person then they will have to handle more than 5 accounts, or you can only grow to 5 accounts for that time period. As you start to reach and exceed the limits of your team you know it is time to hire more people. Then the question becomes who to hire?
The first sales professional.
How do you find your first sales professional? Well being a small business you start by looking in the mirror. You have to hire yourself to sell first. That will allow you to understand the sales process and the type of sales professional that you need to hire. If you have someone that just wants to build relationships all day and you need a lot of paperwork filled out it will not be a good fit. So hire yourself for the first quarter or two. Engage with customers and document the important parts of the sales process. That way when you do hire your first sales person they can follow you for a week, read the instructions you have an be ready to contribute right away. I also emphasized the word important above because you do not need to outline every little detail of the sales process. You want to make sure there is consistency from one sales person to another, but you also do not want to stop them from making contributions to the process as they get up to speed. Every sales person will have some experience that can make your process better. Do not stamp that out by having a process that is too rigid.
What do you want in a sales professional?
Now that you know what it takes to complete a sale or two for your company what do you want in a sales professional? Do you like doing sales? If so, maybe you should look to hire someone on the operations side to free you up to do sales. However, assuming you do not want to be the sales person how do you find a good sales professional. One way to start is find a young hunger individual that has no real experience, but is passionate and hire them. this will require more training, but you will get someone that can be taught and will do things very similar to the way you have done them in the past. Another option would be to ask your customers. Do they have a sales person they like working with? Maybe you could hire that person. Also consider the state of your business. If you are trying to grow and you need some one to generate leads, do not hire someone that has only worked on big established accounts, for a big company. Find someone that has business development, prospecting and cold calling experience. Take some time to think about your time selling, what did you do well, what was missing? Can you hire someone with that missing piece? Once you know what you want in a sales professional you can set a compensation plan and go out and find the right person.
So remember:
Build your sales org structure before you hire anyone.
Hire yourself first, so you know what you need in that role.
Take time to review your experience so you know what you need in a sales professional.
Thank you for your time today, I hope you found something useful in today’s post. If you did all I ask is that you share it with a friend, or 15. :-)