Still Have A “Big Hat No Cattle” Salesperson On Your Payroll?

Flash; company growth comes from your inside and outside sales force.
Marketing and building a better mousetrap are important components, but many times, if you build it, sorry, they don’t always come! Why not?????? 

More and more companies are now looking to staff up their sales as the economy turns for the better, yet are not really knowledgeable as to what type of salesperson will be successful in the coming years. What we see is they advertise for that perfect “fit” which never exists, hence the sales drop and drop and drop. We suggest you do two things right now:

1) Embrace the understanding that you are looking for a professional salesperson that brings you new orders. Sales is a discipline, the product many times is not as important as the candidates ability to convince buyers to use your product instead of the competitors. This is the salesperson’s talent and what they should be paid for; profitable new sales. 

2) Take a hard look at your existing sales force, Some pragmatic sales force red flags to “deal with” or your company may die.  Are your sales declining and draws (or salaries) are not covered?  Consider the following:

*Are you paying the draw and turning a blind eye to the fact that the salesperson is carrying “other company's  lines" for no draw?

*Is this salesperson continually coming to you to cut the price to get orders?

* Do your top sales people reflect a tactic of annexing accounts from departed low producing sales reps? These reps, mistakenly, claim to be top producers but won’t let you put a new sales rep in to their (“rented”) territory when you find a good candidate, and cannibalize the new rep if you do hire them.

* After being involved in “input from their customers” on your product development and catalogs, do their sales still decline?  Do they blame your products and catalogs as what “their” customer said is the reason, even after you gave them  exactly what the customer asked for?

* At trade shows do they spend more time at competitor’s booths than selling at yours?

* Do they continually want you to foot the bill for new promotions, and a higher draw/commissions to offset rising overhead without taking it out of their side?

*Are you are too busy to track sales results, or ignore them when they are bad?

In 2010, many companies are looking to grow their sales by attracting new sales talent. Do you know where your existing sales force is headed?  Still looking for the perfect salesperson "fit" who comes from your market background?

Would you know a winning salesperson when you met one?  Would you actually hire one or just collapse the vacant territory to an exisitng old timer. Still cautiously looking for the perfect knowledge background "fit" within your industry?  Isn't  it now time to look  out of the box, and recognize "selling ability" is the defined talent skill set you are trying to recruit?   JMHO.

*