5 Secrets to Hiring a Perfect Salesperson
Are you an entrepreneur caught in the fruitless cycle of hiring and firing salespeople?
No matter how much you pay them, train them, and be patient with them, you always end up with yet another failed hire?
Do you feel like you’ll never be able to get off the phone? Do you fear that you might be the only one who can sell your offer?
In our experience, entrepreneurs will go through 3 of these hiring and firing cycles before saying enough is enough and coming to us for help.
Break away from this hire-trial-fire loop. Learn the 5 secrets to hiring the right salesperson in this insightful article by Coaching Sales, a sales consultancy.
1. Look for transformational and transactional sales experience
- Transformational selling: A salesperson who has in-field experience in having new conversations with buyers, breaking into new markets, working with mergers and acquisitions, and transforming the sales methodology to adapt to evolving situations has a muscle memory that cannot be substituted with theoretical knowledge. This is a transformational selling experience that takes years to build.
- Transactional selling: Then there are salespeople who can sell big-ticket items in short sales cycles. This is the transactional selling experience and skills that you must look for.
Both these experiences are possible when a salesperson has gone through the grind in consultative selling. Coaching Sales looks for salespeople who have experienced complex, long-term sales cycles that require relationship building and innovative selling, and have also cracked good deals in shorter sales cycles.
2. Hire salespeople who are not on the market
In our experience, a worthy salesperson will never go looking for a job. An experienced salesperson will always have a job but will be open to change. You won't find them on a job website. You can discover them through your networks and make them an offer they can’t refuse. That’s another sales process - getting them to come and sell your offer.
3. Avoid the classic “head on fire” hiring strategy
To recruit the top talent, an entrepreneur will need to build a full talent acquisition funnel and systems. However, this requires time and energy which is a scarce commodity for most entrepreneurs. They are either busy running their business or they are also fulfilling the role of a salesperson. So here’s what most entrepreneurs end up doing.
They follow the “head-on fire” strategy. They broadcast their requirements for a sales rep, interview a few of them, and hire the first person they feel is a “good fit”.
This is a sure-shot way to failure. They will probably realize the sales rep can’t sell after a few months and fire him/her. This is a huge loss of investment.
Instead, entrepreneurs can rely on Coaching Sales which already has a successful and well-defined system wherein it can talk to 200 people and pick out 2 to 4 quality reps who are really worth hiring.
4. Build your recruiting pipeline and system
If you have the time and the resources, build your recruiting pipeline and a system to manage it. Once your long-term goals and needs are clear, you can develop a candidate sourcing strategy, connect with your new candidates, assess your talent pool and nurture them. Networking and building relationships are key to getting valuable referrals in the future. This is a long-term process that takes years to build and requires an investment in a recruitment team.
5. Do not hire a sales agency
Entrepreneurs may think that hiring a sales agency will solve their problems. However, there are two reasons why it won’t work. Firstly, a sales agency is accompanied by additional costs. Instead of paying just 15% to your in-house sales rep or 1099 contractor sales reps, you will end up giving away 25% to an agency. Secondly, a sales agency is not committed to your business goals and is disconnected from your company’s culture.
Unlike a sales agency, Coaching Sales doesn't believe in outsourcing your sales function. We’d rather help you build, train, and manage a 7-figure sales team for you that is as invested in your business as you are. With our existing networks and robust recruiting pipeline and systems, we can make hiring the right salesperson a seamless and fruitful experience.
Look for transformational and transactional selling experience, seek salespeople who are not seeking a job, recruit salespeople through an established recruiting pipeline and system - your own or third-party, and focus on building and managing your own sales team instead of hiring a sales agency. Follow these insightful tips and get the right salesperson that your business needs.
Why Coaching Sales?
It’s simple: we’ve solved the problem of attracting, training, and managing 7-figure sales reps that are necessary for a successfully growing business.
Whether you’re looking to hire your first salesperson or scale up your sales operation, our team can help you get the results you want. We’ve helped over 150 businesses (and counting) go from 6- to 7-figure run rates by scaling their sales. We can help you do the same.
