80% of small business sales hires never match the envisioned sales targets because entrepreneurs attempt to duplicate themselves or other ‘Star Performers’ they have known and do not adequately setup the new hire for success.
What it takes for a founder to sell successfully is light-years different from what it will take for the first sales person to succeed. The requirements change as drastically again for the 5th and again for the 25th sales hire.
Three Requirements for Successful Sales Hires:
1. Right System – Without a highly defined value proposition, product/services offering, well-defined partners, and fine-tuned sales pitch by sales stage and by committee member your direct sales hire is doomed to fail.
2. Right Support - Until executives have established a “sales playbook” (i.e. a step-by-step instruction manual), high-volume inbound lead environment, established referrals and networking, and created marketing and sales support materials including proposals, presentations, case studies, reference sheets, and ROI calculators new hires will not be successful.
3. Right Profile – I have a colleague that has hired 9 sales people in the last 16 months and all 9 failed to produce the expected results; the right profile means that the sales person should succeed within the first 90 days, i.e. produce measurable results, without a support system. What is the easiest way to ensure you are hiring the right profile? Hire someone who has recently, had measurable success selling your exact type of product/services to your exact target audience. We also suggest using a simplified version of “Topgrading” for your interview methodology.
Unless all of the aforementioned resources are in place, what you are really looking for is a “partner.” “Partners” bring opportunities to the table from day one, “partners” open new markets. “Sales people” convert qualified leads to contracts.
There are literally thousands of articles, books, and blogs on how-to hire the right sales people. Our experience has taught us that they key is improving the probability of their success by eliminating all obstacles. Increasing the probability of success for a new sales person should include setting reasonable expectations and performance based monthly goals. Establish objectives and metrics the sales hire can achieve the first few months to give them confidence, failing out of the gate is a recipe for disaster as sales confidence is fickle but required component
We recommend that small businesses only put a sales person in front of a qualified, interested prospect with a 40% probability of buying. Why? Because sales people are expensive resources (typically sales and marketing is the 2nd highest cost in labor intensive service businesses in the budget)!