Why is hiring sales people such a risky and expensive business, when it doesn’t need to be.

I interviewed a candidate for a sales manager role this week. When I asked her to describe an experience of having to sack a sales person for non performance she gave me the following story….

The CEO wanted to establish an operation in Sydney. The organisation provides professional training to engineering staff. The decision was made by the CEO to establish an office, hire 3 trainers, and hired a sales person that had a good resume and interviewed well.

Five months later, after giving the sales person extensive induction training and then additional hands on support they let him go. He was just not performing, and yet during the hiring process, which was rigorous, our candidate seemed perfect for the role.

Total direct cost of this exercise was $750,000. This included the cost of the office lease, the salaries of the three trainers and the salary of the sale person; other additional costs that could have been included are the cost of recruitment or the cost of lost opportunities. This was a very expensive exercise as a result of failing to hire a top performer in just one role.

If you want to know if the sales person can do the job, I can help you from making the same very expensive mistake.

Visit this site to find out more and organise for more information that explains the challenges of hiring.

More Sales Gems

Here are some more sales gems as promised.

• If you don’t pay commission to your sales people then they are not sales people
  o Customer service people who up sell without commission are not sales people
  o Marketing people are not sales people
  o Accountants are not sales people
  o The closest thing to sales people are company owners. They are the only other category who only get paid if they exceed their job duties.
• Don’t limit commission
  o Decide beforehand that you are happy to pay for delivery. The quickest way to lose your best sales person is to start arguing after the sales is done.
• Do pay a percentage of last month’s billings(revenue or margin or both) as commission, if you are in an annuity business.
• For most industries, there is no such thing as seasonality, only lack of planning.
• The key to sales, as with any science, is research and research implies asking questions.

It is obvious that these gems, as with any gem, require to be viewed in the correct setting.

If you would like to delve deeper into this area, please visit www.intermizzi.com.au or send an email to paul@intermizzi.com.au And now you can follow me in www.twitter.com/intermizzi

Some Sales Gems

I was recently asked what I would present, as Sales Gems, in 20 minutes to a group of up and coming company owners. As I have not updated the blog for a while, I though they may be useful here.

Here are a few of them.

• Sales does not have to be an Art, it can scale through application of technology and process.
• Don’t let a sales team just happen. There is a skill and team balance just as there is in any team.
• Don’t be happy with 20% of your sales team delivering 80% of your sales. If this is the case then you’ve either a) Picked the wrong team, or b) Don’t understand your sales process
• If you, as the company owner, are the company’s best sales person then you haven’t been able to document your sales process.
• Don’t expect the sales team to share your values a) You built the company, they didn’t and b) Sales people are rarely in the office, they don’t get to share the daily banter and the daily examples of how you apply your values.

I've also put together a template for a sales plan.

If you would like a copy please email me at paul@intermizzi.com.au