5 Tips on Hiring Your First Sales Rep: How to do it Right?

A critical step in the entrepreneurial selling process is to hire your initial sales representatives. These are the people who become the base for the entire sales structure and hence are very critical to an organization’s success. Most organizations either hire too early or too late. Either way, the loss of opportunity is substantial. Here we have summarized the process of hiring your first few sales representatives to help you down this road.

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Do you need a Sales Rep?

Let’s first check if you are ready to hire a sales representative or not:

• Is your Customer LTV sufficient to support the cost of Sales Rep?

Your lifetime value of a customer should be good enough to support the cost incurred in paying, managing and retaining sales representatives. If your cost on sales rep exceeds the monetary value you get from a customer then you are better off figuring a more cost-effective channel of distribution and handling sales yourself.

• Are there too many complications in the Sales Process?

Companies especially B2B face many complications in managing the sales process. The problem elevates if they target high ticket clients and enterprise companies. You will need sales executives if the sales cycle is too long for you handle alone.

• Is it even worth investing in the complications?

So we now know that a complicated sales process needs the support of a sales team but is it worth going after such clients? At the end of the day, you need to see if the investment and effort involved in a lengthy sales cycle are worth the hassle or not. Maybe you get more profits from startups than enterprise companies.  

Read More: How data science changing the way we sell? 

How to Find the Right Sales Rep?

There isn’t a specific process for hiring sales representatives but following points will guide in the right direction. You should keep these in mind while headhunting your first sales executive:

1. Highlight the Real Skills Needed:

The task of hiring starts with writing a crisp job description. In your job description, you need to highlight the right skills needed for the job. Avoid clutter like “highly motivated” and “quick learner” and focus on core skills. For instance, you might require minimum years of experience, knowledge of industry jargon, soft skills like writing proposals and negotiating contracts etc. When you highlight tangible skills, it ensures that you target the right people.

2. Leverage Personal Connections:

For people with good connections, it is possible that they already know someone who satisfies the above criteria. If you have connections with some entrepreneurs or if your friends are working then it is best to leverage personal connections for your first hire. This eliminates the cost of headhunting altogether and brings filtered candidates.

3. Take Expert Help:

The cost of headhunting is very high. People often rely on advertisements and job board if they are unable to find somebody in their personal connection. The problem with this approach is that the candidate profile you get isn’t very specific. So be prepared to filter through a lot of irrelevant information. As an alternative, you can outsource the role to a headhunting agency and let experts handle it for you.

4. Don’t be Too Careful:

Sometimes in the search for the best candidate, we leave out people who could be a great fit for the company. Remember that sales talent supersedes experience. A person with a genuine love for sales will always perform better than his counterpart. You can identify sales talent with negotiation skills, compassion, the tone of communication, motivation etc.

5. Experiment. Fail. Reiterate:

As with anything new the first few attempts are likely to be a disaster. It is very unlikely to find the right sales rep in the first attempt and retain him long enough in the company. It takes considerable time to find the right person for the job. Just don’t be disheartened due to initial failure. Keep trying with different candidates and you’ll eventually land the right person.

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This was the last chapter of our guide, you can download the complete eBook here or go back to the beginning. Sales have always been a demanding job and it will take time to apply these principles to practice. Keep practicing and eventually, you will find yourself closing a lot more deals than you currently are. Hope this had helped you polish your skills in this domain.

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