Hiring the wrong salesperson is expensive and they don't work out over 1/3 of the time.
Jamie Jansen
Sales management training and fractional leadership. For small businesses looking for best practices systems and processes in sales management.
Whether you are hiring your first salesperson, or this is your 100th, you know how difficult it is to get it right. As a sales leader, you know how much this impacts you, your team, and the company. Let's dive into that for a minute shall we.
Let's say one of your outside sales reps (hunter) leaves for a different opportunity. Unless you have someone you can promote, the clock starts ticking. You are now missing a portion of your overall capacity. Let's say you had 4 to start, you lost 25%. What we generally see happen in this scenario is the sales leader takes over that territory or accounts until the role is filled. Why, if they don't they fear they won't make company goals and the company will not pay bonuses and their job might be on the line. So what do they stop doing?
They stop managing the team...
Ok, so we've all seen they take their hands of the wheel when they lose a salesperson. But in the short term, isn't that ok?
That all depends on your definition of short term. Right now your sales leader is running all over trying to keep the work coming in so they don't fall short. That's their time lost to do strategic things that are valuable big picture to keep the company moving forward. But beyond that let's create a scenario that paints the picture.
Day 1 - Salesperson leaves
Day 5 - Job Description Approved and posted
Day 15 - Initial candidates selected for interview - schedule fist round
Day 30 - Completed first round and selected to final 2-3 candidates setup last interviews
Day 45 - Offer delivered and accepted
Day 60 - First day on the job. Time to onboard and get up to speed (90 day plan)
Day 150 - Completed 90-day onboarding plan, off selling on their own.
What did you pay for this person. Let's say they are low base and high commission.
$70,000 (base) * 30% (recruiting fee) = $21,000 for recruiting.
I can't estimate all the time of all the people involved in interviews, HR time for scheduling, IT costs for new person, etc. Likely over $5000 probably closer to $10,000.
As you can see in this scenario, adjust accordingly, is going to approach $30,000 of actual costs. Then there are the opportunity costs. How much of the pipeline was the leader able to recover and how many opportunities were lost in 150 days for new business? This is going to be an expensive mistake and you'll have to start those 150 days all over again.
Sales organization turnover is nearly 3x higher than any other organizations.
HubSpot reports?the average rep turnover is 35 percent, which is higher than the average for all other industries at 13 percent. Sirius Decisions data also shows that almost half (45 percent) of B2B sales organizations have average turnover rates above 30 percent. It’s because of the competitive nature of sales. As companies grow, their need for additional salespeople also increases. Now that sellers can work from almost everywhere, the competition for talent has skyrocketed. Source: Xactly
This is where NextRock Advisors can help. There are so many variables to being an effective salesperson or leader for your business. First, let's talk about experience. When evaluating experience, it needs to be similar to what you can support and what you need.
My short list of experience and needs:
Hunter or Farmer
Big Brand or widely unknown
Individual or team
Product or service
Technical or non-technical
Transactional or tailored solution
Deliver Estimates or write proposals
领英推荐
Given leads, or develop leads
and more...
Now that we have an idea of some experience, what do we call the role? I tap into my partner at SalesGenomix for help with that one:
Outbound Inside Sales Outbound inside sales reps take the initiative to contact prospects and customers rather than waiting for someone to call them. Typically, quota-driven, they may be assigned total responsibility for landing smaller accounts or asked to sell renewals or peripherals to larger, established accounts. They may also support field teams by cold-calling to generate appointments or qualify leads.
Inbound Inside Sales Inbound inside sales reps are responsible for fielding customer-initiated sales opportunities and seeing that orders are effectively and courteously handled. Typical responsibilities include discovering customer needs, solving customer problems, making purchase recommendations and introducing upsell opportunities. Inbound reps often carry some sort of sales quota.
Customer Service Rep Customer service reps are responsible for fielding customer inquiries and resolving customer issues. The focus is on collegial problem solving and solution seeking – and on sensitively managing customer emotions when things have gone very wrong. While customer service reps typically aren’t responsible for sales they play an essential role in maintaining customer relationships.
Indirect Sales Indirect sales reps don’t call on the customers who use their company’s products. Rather they support their company’s channel partners, including distributors, agents, VARs and manufacturer’s representatives. Key responsibilities include providing training on product knowledge and sales programs, promoting sales contests and campaigns and making joint calls.
Strategic Account Director Strategic account directors manage relationships with large, multi-site accounts. They apply initiative, research, information sharing and concentrated attention to become a credible and trusted customer asset, and advocate for the customer in marshalling the resources of their firm. SAMs are comfortable calling on the executive suite and skilled at negotiating agreements and contracts.
New Business Development Sometimes known as “rainmakers” or “hunters”, new business development reps specialize in finding and winning important new accounts. They are skilled at unearthing leads, working referrals and striking up conversations where there has been no prior relationship. Entrepreneurial and hard driving, they are strong problem-solvers and adept at turning opportunities into bookings.
Account Management Unlike new business development specialists, account mangers focus on cultivating business within current accounts. Sometimes termed “farmers” they develop deep and broad customer relationships that yield productive up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. Account managers are patient in explaining applications and adept at working internal systems on the customer’s behalf.
New Product Field Sales New product field sales reps draw upon a complex array of products and services to craft solutions tailored to customer-specific needs. Assigned by geography or market segment, they are expert at building a business case and getting new concepts accepted. The focus is typically 70/30 on landing new business, with headquarters handling post-sale support.
Consultative Solutions Sales Consultative solutions?sales reps sell pre-configured solutions addressing known customer needs. Assigned by geography or market segment, they call on technical buyers at small to medium size firms. Because buyers are typically unfamiliar with the solution, persuasion must be coupled with education. The focus is 70/30 on new business, with headquarters handling post-sale support.
Relationship Solutions Sales Relationship solutions?sales reps cover an assigned geography, leveraging trust and rapport to expand penetration within currently served accounts. The focus is on migrating a standardized solution to other buying centers and driving consumables and upgrades. Accounts are small to mid size and minimal customization and training is required. New business acquisition is 20% of the mix.
Relationship Product Sales Relationship product sales reps cover an assigned geography, leveraging trust and rapport to expand penetration within currently served accounts. The focus is on up-selling and cross-selling additional products and services to grow share of wallet. Accounts are small to mid-size and minimal customization and training is required. New business acquisition is 20% of the mix.
Specialized Solution Sales Specialized solution sales reps?are the resident expert in a particular subset of a complex solution and may carry corresponding niche sales goals. They are temporarily brought into customer situations when advanced knowledge, solution customization or training is required. Alternatively, they may be assigned in an ongoing way to customers or industries routinely requiring their specialized expertise.
Specialized Technical Sales Specialized technical sales reps?are experts in a designated subset of a company’s catalog of offerings, with coinciding sales goal responsibility. Acting as a resource to territory or account generalists, or assigned to accounts requiring their specialized expertise, they provide valuable training and consulting services and ongoing insights regarding R&D intentions and industry trends.
Transactional Product Sales Transactional product sales reps?sell impulse items that don’t require a great deal of justification or explanation – and where there is not necessarily an opportunity for repeat business. The sales cycle is typically short and success requires resiliency, an ability to read emotions and perseverance in the face of rejection. The context is frequently B2C, or solo purchases to B2b early adopters.
Sales Management Sales managers are responsible for managing the overall efforts of an assigned sales team. Duties include selecting sales talent, coaching and developing necessary sales behaviors, promoting account and territory planning, marshalling headquarters support, achieving revenue and volume quotas, managing unit expenses and dealing with performance problems.
Ok, right now a lot of my clients will say they want a combination. This is where I'll tell them yes, we can do that, but we need to pick the one that is most important, and we will tailor the job description to include the rest. The concern being my 3-in-1 lawn mower was only good at 1 of 3.
Ok, we know what we want, and we know the title of what we need. We develop our interview scorecard so that everyone is working from the same page. We get down to 1-2 people using our scorecards and want some assurance that we made the right choices.
This is where I tap into my partner again. We run them through an assessment to make sure their behaviors align with the job.
Sample Report from SalesGenomix
This gives us our final peak to make sure they are right for this role. Getting this wrong could cost your business 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars over the next 6-9 months.
Reach out if you would like help with your sales hires whether it is your first, or 100th.
If you currently have a sales leader opening, we can fill that gap while we implement our best practices tools and processes while managing your team. We can then help you build a job profile that can be used to give to your recruiter to build a job description. That profile will also be used to build an interview scorecard, so it isn't just about who everyone "likes". At the end we can use our partner for a sale behavioral assessment to ensure they have to right traits for the role you are hiring. Do you want another set of eyes on your comp plan? Is it driving the behaviors you are looking for; we can help with that as well. Hiring salespeople is hard to get right, we can certainly help.