Hire in House,
Sales positions have some of the highest churn rates of any career. Often sales reps go from company to company chasing the best opportunity or they can’t handle the rejection have to change jobs. a good way to create committed sales people is to take the time to make them yourself. Sure it could take 6 months- 2 years (yes 2 years) to develop a new salesperson but by the end they know the business better than any outsider could without significant investment and then they may leave anyways. Take the time, make the investment in your own people and decrease your churn rate. Try having your people work in prospecting, then need finding (phone calls, role playing, etc.), and then closing smaller deals.
Commission + Salary,
98% of the time, go for a commission and salary pay for your salespeople. Commission only only works in very particular industries, such as financial services. The thing is, there are months a salesperson just is not going to meet that monthly quota. The funny thing is that’s okay. maybe that month they are planting seeds to be harvest the next month. But commission only is killer. no matter what money trouble will effect a person. The stress will make the salesperson shoot for the quick sale. The sale that does not last and leads to unhappy customers.
Change the way you measure,
Maybe number of calls made is not the best way to evaluate a salesperson? How about number of conversations? Or number of leads moved down their pipeline? There are a lot of measures used to evaluate a salesperson’s progress, but many don’t truly reflect the progress a salesperson is making in converting leads to paying customers. How is your measuring system? is it truly reflective of your best salespeople? Does it put undo stress on your salespeople or pull their time away from more valuable activities?
BoweryJE22
People in house – working from the bottom up – will know their stuff so much better than an outside worker brought in. If the in house employee is moved to a sales position, they’ll be much more attuned not only to the company, but also to the prospect because they’ve been working to stop the pain for so long. Great observations.