I've been on calls with hundreds of entrepreneurs, all of whom are looking to get off the phones, delegate their sales, and eventually build a top-performing sales team.
Many of them have tried to hire salespeople before and failed miserably. Rather than continue the cycle of hiring and firing, they come to us.
In this article, I've compiled a list of the most common questions asked by entrepreneurs just like you, before becoming our clients. It is a long read, but I have included a table of contents and “back to top” links for easy navigation.
Once you finish reading, I recommend that you watch our free case study to discover how we use our proprietary ATM System to build multi-million dollar sales teams. Or simply click here to watch it now.
Contents
- Are you a sales agency?
- What is a 7-figure sales rep?
- Where do I find good salespeople?
- What's the best way to hire commission-only sales reps?
- Before hiring salespeople what do I need?
- Are commission-only sales reps full-time employees or 1099 contractors?
- How long is the trial period for new sales reps?
- How should I pay my salespeople?
- What's the best way to coach or train new salespeople?
- Can you train my existing sales team?
- Can you find sales reps for my specific niche?
- Can you find me minorities or foreign salespeople?
- Can you find me sales reps who will work in-house/on-site?
- Conclusion and next steps
Is your question not listed here? Ask us in the comments below and we'll answer.
Are You A Sales Agency?
Sales agencies carry a lot of extra costs. The agency doesn't foot the bill for those costs. You do. You can typically expect to pay out an additional 10 to 15 percent. If you're paying 15% to your in-house sales reps, expect to pay 25% to an agency. This is bad in the obvious sense that your cost of acquisition goes up. But there's another, not-so-obvious reason I'd like to bring to your attention.
At CoachingSales dot com, we aren't just salespeople. When it comes to scaling businesses, we're obsessed with every part of the business. We want to know the systems, the accounting, the delivery, the advertising, we want to know how they all relate. Once you do some cash flow engineering – so you know where all your money is going – you'll understand that paying 25% doesn't make sense.
Especially because as you scale your business, you'll have to scale your advertising. You started off advertising to hot and warm audiences but now you're going to advertise to lukewarm and cold audiences.
As you target colder and colder audiences, your advertising costs will inevitably go up. That is your cost per lead and your cost per acquisition. Because you're advertising to people who are further out in the sales cycle (or early in the buyer's journey, whichever way you want to look at it.) Not only this but your sales velocity will slow down because it's going to take longer to convert leads into customers.
Also, think about the process of hiring new sales reps. When you initially put them on your offer, they won't perform as well in the beginning as they would in 90 days. That means your conversion rate will take a hit in the short term. So, if you're adding sales bodies, and you're scaling your advertising to get more demand volume, you're in a kind of medieval torture device that's stretching you from both ends.
And if you're doing all this while paying out 25% in commissions, the odds of you being cash flow positive are pretty slim. In fact, business owners who hire sales agencies tend to go negative in those initial months.
We don't want to put our clients in that position.
Here's another reason why we don't operate a sales agency. We don't believe in outsourcing your sales function. Sales (and marketing) should always be an internal function because generating clients is the most important part of your business. As a business owner, you can and should delegate sales to a team member. Don't outsource it to a third party that doesn't care about your business as much as you do.
We'd rather help you build in-house sales teams so that you can maintain control over the heart of your business and keep your costs down. It allows your business to scale more efficiently.
What Is A 7-Figure Sales Rep?
Sales takes muscle memory. Muscle memory means you need repetitions. Time spent on the field of play is the only way you can get good at sales.
You can read all the books you want about working out but it won't matter unless you actually start lifting weights. It's only when you start lifting that your brain makes those neural connections to get better at pressing, squatting, or deadlifting. That's the only way you're getting gains.
And the same thing happens with Sales. You can read all the books in the world, take all courses, attend all the seminars, and so on. But unless you've been on the field of play and you've produced a lot in revenue, then you don't know a thing.
This being the case, when we look for sales reps for our clients, we look for people with a proven track record. Meaning, they've gone through similar sales cycles.
Side note: to us, a 7-figure sales rep doesn't mean someone who's closed on 5 $200,000 properties as a real estate agent. First of all, real estate agents barely even know how to sell. Second of all, selling 5 homes doesn't qualify you as a 7-figure salesperson.
Rather, what we're looking for is someone who's sold a $5,000 to $20,000 offer on a shorter sales cycle. We're looking for experience with the transformational AND transactional sales that only come with consultative selling. There's an unmistakable emotional journey that occurs, that the sales rep must have in his muscle memory.
If they have this, when we put them on the right offer, the thing just takes off. This is how we define “7-figure sales reps.”
Where Do I Find Good Salespeople?
We get this question a lot from our audience: “where do I find good salespeople?” I'll tell you where NOT to find them. You don't find good salespeople by going in the ClickFunnels FB group (or any other group, for that matter) and posting, “Hey, I need a salesperson.) Here's why:
Any sales rep who needs a job…IS NOT A GOOD SALES REP. Interviewing, or going through the process of getting a job, is just the process of selling yourself. If someone's calling themselves a sales rep and they're unemployed, there's an inconsistency there.
What we want to do, is find good sales reps who already have jobs BUT there's something about the job they don't like. Once we've identified these people, we reach out to them with an attractive offer they'll consider. Maybe they won't take it right away, but they'll at least consider it or be open to having a conversation about it.
Once we've got them considering the offer, we work our own sales process. And we lead them to a place where they're ready to come over and sell your offer instead. So you can finally get off the phones once and for all, and take your company to the next level.
One thing you need to keep in mind is you're not Xerox. You can't take a kid right out of college and teach them how to sell. Most small business owners need someone who already knows how to sell so that they can hit the ground running.
It's a lot like real estate investing. If you want to find a deal, you don't look for homes that are on the MLS. You look for an owner who's considering selling but hasn't quite listed the home yet. When you find a person in that position and they have a motivation or a reason to sell, that's when you get a good deal.
It's no different with hiring sales reps. If you want to find a good sales rep, you don't look at Indeed. That's just not where they are. Indeed typically has low-talent people that are out of a job or need one.
We don't want to find someone on the open market because usually, they're not that good. We want someone who's not on the market but they're open to change and have the motivation.
That's why we do so much marketing to attract the level of sales talent we're able to attract.
Entrepreneurs: if you want to attract the best salespeople, you need to build a recruiting pipeline and a system. OR if you're not able to build one yourself, you need to hire someone who has a system in place to be able to place sales reps for you.
What's The Best Way To Hire Commission-Only Sales Reps?
If you're an entrepreneur who's TRIED TO HIRE commission-only sales reps before AND FAILED, this video is for you. The reasons you're failing are how and where you're looking. Let me break it down for you.
How do you find clients? You have a funnel, right? You'll go prospect, and out of 100 people, maybe 50 to 70 express interest. Out of these 50 to 70, maybe 20 to 25 are qualified and look like a good fit. Out of these 25, maybe 4 to 6 become clients.
The problem is that most entrepreneurs run around with their heads on fire, looking for a bucket of water. They want to find someone today, right now. So, they'll put a post out, saying, “I'm looking for a sales rep,” Then, they'll talk to maybe 10 people. And then, hire someone who “feels” like – in their gut – a good fit.
That's a bad idea. I know because I've done it. And it's always backfired.
Here's what we do instead. We talk to maybe 200 people to find 2 to 4 who are highly qualified. So that we can introduce them to our clients and put them on the phone for a trial period.
We look for people who have a background in sales and a proven track record. Because it's too expensive to train someone how to sell. You aren't a Xerox. You can't take someone brand new and put them through a sales training process for months before they're actually productive. You need to find someone who can sell today and get them on the phones as quickly as possible. And in order to do that, we need to have a full talent acquisition funnel and systems built out in order to recruit top talent.
For most entrepreneurs, there are 2 options. One, they can build out their sales recruitment pipeline and systems themselves. But the problem with this solution is, with the type of entrepreneurs we work with, they're too busy. Their plate is already full, running their business. Maybe they take sales calls and their calendar is full.
That's why they go for the second option, which is hiring someone to do it for them. That's what we do at Coaching Sales. We already have this machine built and running. And like I said earlier, we're talking to 200 people a week just to find 2 to 4 quality sales reps to introduce to our clients. This is ongoing, and we run advertising to find sales reps the way companies do to find clients.
This is why we're able to get such breakout results. Like, for example, Mark Coulter, who's one of our clients. We found him some sales reps in August of this year. And in October – so, just 3 months later – he messaged me saying the team is at $100,000+ for the month.
Before Hiring Salespeople What Do I Need?
What do you need in place before bringing on sales reps? Before I answer this question, let me tell you what sales reps are not:
Sales reps are not the key to help you sell an offer that's not selling already. They're more like the gasoline you're going to pour on a fire. They're not going to start the fire.
A lot of business owners can't sell their offer to save their lives. And so they feel like, “Oh my goodness, I need to find a salesperson and THAT will be the key to me making sales.”
Most people will never tell you, “you have an ugly baby.” And if you can't sell your own offer, that's exactly what you have. You need to address the ugly baby first. It's not a salesperson problem, it's an offer problem.
So, the first thing you need before you hire salespeople is an offer that coverts consistently. You have to know that your offer works in a proven marketplace.
Also, do not change your offer when you bring in sales reps. If you change multiple variables at the same time, you will create confusion and you'll have no idea what caused any problems that occur.
The second thing you need is consistent appointments. Don't hire sales reps to generate appointments. Given the option between a robot and person to do a job, I'm hiring a robot every time, especially if they do it just as well (or better.)
Online advertising is way better at generating appointments than a salesperson. VSLs, funnels, organic, etc. Marketing is for generating appointments. Sales is for turning appointments into cash. You hire a salesperson to do your sales, not to do your marketing.
Eventually, as your team scales, we do add salespeople in to do marketing (i.e. setters,) but when you're on the ground floor and you're just starting to get off the phones, delegate booking appointments to a machine. It's easier to manage, more predictable, and more scalable.
What I recommend is that you have about 10 qualified appointments booked per week. And you want to convert about 20 to 25 percent of those leads into clients. If you've got that dialed in, you're probably in a good place to hire a sales rep.
If you don't have those metrics in place, and you do hire a sales rep, here is a fair warning to you:
You will find a sales rep who will take the job. AND THEY WILL SUCK. They will be terrible. They don't know enough to recognize an opportunity. So, they'll take anything that comes along because they're desperate.
And when you've got a desperate person on an unproven offer without a consistent way to book appointments, you're just going to waste your time dealing with them. You're going to be no closer to success in 60 to 90 days, and for the most part, you won't even know why.
You're going to think it's the salesperson's fault, but it's not. It's the broken system you have in place. You have a process problem, not a people problem. It's important to understand this. If you look at the process first, you'll be able to build a more solid, well-functioning business.
So, to recap, you need:
- A proven offer converting at 20 to 25%
- At least 10 qualified appointments per week
- To keep all other variables the same
If you put a good salesperson on an offer like this, that's when you'll start to see crazy results.
Like our client, Tyler Narducci, who went from ZERO to $70,000 per month in under 2 months.
Or Mark Coulter, who went from ZERO to $100,000 per month in just 6 weeks.
Joel Kaplan, same thing, he went from ZERO to $100,000 per month in less than 60 days.
It's because they had a consistent offer, they had consistent appointments, and we just had to plug someone in to blow that thing up.
Are Commission-Only Sales Reps Full-Time Employees Or 1099 Contractors?
If you're hesitant about working with independent sales reps who are 1099 contractors, don't be. It's both convenient and profitable for both parties. Here's why.
We often get the question, “are the salespeople you introduce working for us or for you?” They don't work for us. We aren't a sales agency (I've explained why in another video.) They work for you.
Another question we get is, “do they work exclusively for me or will they sell other offers as well?” As 1099 contractors they CAN work for you and other businesses.
But here's the thing. GOOD salespeople don't want to sell more than one offer. They don't want to work for multiple people.
Why is that? Because they have to know multiple pitches and work on multiple sales pipelines (which multiplies their admin work.) It just makes what they're trying to do far more complex.
If they can master one sales process…If you can pack out their sales calendar…If they can hit their personal income goals…If you and the sales rep have an understanding that you'll keep their calendar full if they can close the deals…
Then, typically, the sales rep is only going to work with one business and sell one offer.
How Long Is The Trial Period For New Sales Reps?
Have you ever hired salespeople on a trial period, only to find out 3 or 4 months down the line that they're not a good fit? In this video, you'll discover how to compress the trial period down to 30 days, so you always end up with a top performer on your team.
Alright, here's the secret: NEVER TRIAL ONE SALESPERSON AT A TIME.
There's a saying in the military: two is one and one is none. Redundancy is the key to hiring success. That's why we always introduce our clients to 4 sales reps instead of just one or two. This is all based on data and the law of averages.
Typically, when we introduce sales reps to our clients, we know they'll go through a period of getting to know them first. What they should do at this stage is to find out whether the potential hire aligns with the overall values, culture, and mission of the business. So that when they do join the team, they become a true believer. At this point, it's normal to eliminate one of the four because the entrepreneur doesn't click with the sales rep.
This leaves 3 people. And we recommend trialing 2 to 3 sales reps at a time. It doesn't mean they have to give them full calendar-loads. Instead, they should take one full calendar and distribute it between the 2 to 3 reps.
What happens is this: one rep over-performs, one under-performs, and one performs about average.
This is the fastest way we've found to be able to add superstars to our clients' teams. Salespeople who totally crush their quotas and blow past KPI's every single month. So much so, that entrepreneurs thank the heavens that these sales reps are on their team (and not on their competitors'.)
Contrast this to what most business owners do. They hire one sales rep on trial for 60 to 90 days. And if they don't perform, by the time they're in month 2, sunk cost bias sets in.
“They're so close. They just need a little more training and a little more time, and they'll be able to perform.”
Newsflash: that approach very rarely works. Typically, what will happen is they end up getting rid of that salesperson after 90 to 120 days. Then, they have to start the process all over again. And it's not uncommon that they'll go through 2, 3, or 4 of these cycles WITHOUT finding a sales rep who converts.
Now, if you'd like to avoid this hiring cycle of doom, all you have to do is compress the process down to 30 days by trialing 2 or 3 people instead of just 1.
How Should I Pay My Sales Reps?
How do you pay your salespeople? Commission-only? Base plus commission? What's the best way to structure sales compensation? In this video, I explain what I think is optimal for small business owners with growing sales teams.
Many business owners make the mistake of thinking about compensation in terms of commission percentage. That's not what it's about. Paying your salespeople is about “on-target earnings.” I.e. How much money your sales reps will make IF they're doing their job properly.
So, the sweet spot depends on the talent you're hiring and the complexity of your sales cycle. For example, an appointment setter will get paid differently than someone who closes $10,000 deals.
A sales rep who can close $10,000 packages in one call should be able to close about 10 deals a month on the low end, and 18 to 20 on the high end. This means they're bringing in $100,000 to $180,000 in revenue. So, you'll pay them between $100,000 to $180,000 per year, give or take.
One of the secrets to paying salespeople is to NOT pay them too much money. If you pay your sales reps $200,000 to $250,000, they'll start to feel like they should be running their own business.
“Well, I'm making my boss so much money.”
“I've got so much money saved up, I can just quit this job and go do my own thing.”
At $100,000 per year, they'll be making a good living. But they won't have so much cash on hand that they can take everything they learned in your business and start competing with you. That's the last thing you want.
If you're hiring a “setter,” i.e. someone who book appointments for the closers, you should pay between $50,000 to $75,000 for a full-time role. Your setters are responsible for pre-qualification and opportunity volume.
So, the number 1 thing to think about when paying your salespeople is On Target Earnings. After that, you need to think about the metrics of your business.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to sales compensation. Everything depends on the price point of your offer, your profit margins, and doing what's called “cash flow engineering.” That is, for every $100 you earn, what percentage goes to marketing, sales commissions, operations, owner compensation, profit etc.
Once you've figured that out and you know what the levers are, you can come up with a compensation number that's fair to your salespeople and makes sure you attract and retain top sales talent, while still maintaining profitability.
Closer compensation is more commission-heavy, maybe even pure commission. Setter compensation is typically a base plus commission, or a base plus a bonus for every call booked.
So, that's how you pay salespeople. On-target earnings, modified by your price point and profit margins, adapted to the type of role you're hiring.
What's The Best Way To Coach Or Train New Salespeople
“Who's going to train my sales reps? How do I train my sales reps?” If your business is already doing $5 to $10 million a year or more, you probably have sales management staff, so this video is not for you. This video is for the small business owner who's still taking sales calls but trying to get off the phones.
In a situation like this, the entrepreneur might be an expert at what they do, but they aren't a sales coach or a sales manager. Nor should they be. It's not their domain of expertise.
This is where we come in. We're sort of like a fractional sales manager. We onboard, train, and coach the sales reps, and make sure they have everything they need to succeed. (It's one of the programs we offer, called Scale Your Sales.)
When training sales reps, there are two phases (if you want to do this on your own, better take notes.) The first phase is called “ramp-up” and the second is called “calibration.”
What's the difference between the two? The first phase is about learning the rules. The second phase is about learning how to break the rules. It takes 60 to 90 days for a rep to go through both phases.
In the first phase, we teach mental models, structures, and frameworks to help the sales reps get momentum quickly. However, this doesn't cover all the nuances of selling a particular offer.
After they learn the mental models, they learn the exceptions to the mental models. That's what they learn in phase two. When they're able to internalize both of these, that's when they're able to perform at a high level consistently.
As for metrics, if you're running something like a VSL or webinar funnel, our goal is to get the sales reps to a 25% close rate within 90 days. If they hit that number, it becomes easy to scale up and add more reps.
Here's another way to look at it. Let's say your offer is priced around $5,000 to $7,000. Each sales rep you add to your team should be bringing in around $75,000 to $150,000 per month in revenue.
Can You Train My Existing Sales Team?
So you have existing sales reps. And you want to know if you should train the existing reps the same way you train the new reps. You also want to know whether we can train your existing sales reps.
The short answer is YES. And here's the key:
If you are going to train anyone on your team inside a department, EVERYONE with the same role needs to get the training. Because if you don't, you'll end up with a cultural divide.
Your culture is one of your most important assets when it comes to scaling your business. Culture is what makes it easy to plug people in so they learn quickly. So they can be a part of something where they feel like they have momentum, they're moving forward, they're achieving goals, they're growing, they're stretching, etc.
Culture is what keeps top talent on your team over the long-term.
So, if you say, “you guys get this training but these other guys don't,” one group will have their way doing things, another will have a different way. And if they don't agree on how to approach the mission, it will lead to problems down the line. Avoid this at all costs.
That's why, whenever a client signs on with us and they already have salespeople, we train the existing reps too. And we do this at no extra charge. Because ultimately, we want our client's cultures to be congruent and consistent. We want their team to feel safe and included.
When we can build that environment, that's when the team starts to fire on all cylinders. Everybody's speaking the same language, they're all on the same wavelength. And your team can scale bigger, faster.
Can You Help Me Find Sales Reps For My Niche?
“I really want to hire a salesperson, but have you guys worked with my niche before?” I'm going to answer the questions behind this question in several parts/videos.
For now, let me tell you about the types of clients we work with. Mostly, they're service providers. Agencies, local businesses like lawyers and accountants, coaches and consultants. So, client-based businesses.
When business owners ask us the question I just mentioned, what they're really asking is:
“My audience is unique. How are you going to address that?”
“My industry/business model is different. Can you really fit what you do inside my model?”
“Don't my salespeople need to be experts in what I do? Don't they have to have the same level of training and expertise that I do, in order to deliver an amazing client experience on calls? I don't know how I can someone else to do what I do, because I'm amazing and I've put in my 10,000 hours. So, how are you guys going to find someone who can do it that effectively.”
It's usually one of these 3 questions:
- My audience is unique
- My industry is unique
- My experience is unique
I'll be breaking down each of these questions and responding to them in upcoming videos.
My Audience Is Unique!
It's normal to feel that way. Maybe you're talking to women. Maybe you're talking to gay men. Maybe you're talking to more sophisticated buyers. Maybe you're talking to people who're going through a crisis. Maybe you're talking to people in a specific industry, like accountants and lawyers, who have their own jargon and way of talking about their business.
One of the principles we teach at CoachingSales dot com is the “Nelson Mandela Effect.” He once said, “If you speak to a man in a common tongue, you speak to his mind. If you speak to a man in his native tongue, you speak to his heart.”
And this is powerful because when you can talk to a realtor using the jargon realtors use, or a lawyer or doctor using the jargon they use, they feel understood. They feel safe and comfortable making a decision to work with you.
You can't talk to a doctor and call their patients “clients.” Or call a lawyer's practice a “business.” It sounds weird.
So, yes, your audience may be different. Every audience has its nuances. That's why we don't just look for people who know how to sell. We look for people who have a background or some sort of relationship with our clients' industry.
If we're hiring for a medical practice, we're looking for maybe someone who has been to medical school or worked for a medical practice or whose parents were doctors. This means they can draw own their own experience, or that of people close to them, to understand and talk to the market they're selling in. That's how they can take to our clients' offers so quickly.
My Industry Is Unique!
I'm going to break down the second concern, “my industry is unique.”
Because really, it's not that hard to find salespeople who know your industry. We do it all the time. And instead of me telling you about it, I'll let one of our clients tell you in his words.
To give you some background, he works with financial planners. In the financial planning space, there's quite a bit of legal red tape with regard to how they conduct their practice. There's also a lot of industry-specific jargon.
“I did all 4 interviews today. All great guys. Your recruiter did an amazingly good job of finding people with this variety of backgrounds. A guy who had worked on Wall Street, a guy who had worked with a competitor, and then 2 other guys with great experience in what I'm offering.”
Yes, your industry is different. You might have legal red tape. You might have things you can or cannot say. It's important to you (and us) to obey those guidelines.
So, it's important the sales reps you use to talk to the people in your industry understand it and have experience with it. These are the people we look for, and consistently find, for our clients.
No amount of training will fix a bad hire. That's why it's so important we get it right from the beginning. We understand that.
My Expertise Is Unique!
The short answer is this:
Your salespeople don't have to be experts in what you do. They need to know the fundamentals. The need to know the 20% that gets 80% of the results. And if they do that, and you build a team of 4 or 5 salespeople, your business will triple or quadruple in a short amount of time.
Now for the long answer.
As a business owner, you're probably a legitimate expert in what you do. In fact, you've probably forgotten more than other people will ever know about your business. So, it's normal to be concerned that sales reps won't be able to lead on calls the way you can because they don't have the same basis of information or mental models that you can apply.
That's why it's so important, when onboarding new sales reps, that we look at your process and break it down into categories. The thing is, it's all happening subconsciously for you. So you haven't taken the time to slow down your thinking to start to unpack it and to create the decision trees that are necessary. For example:
“If they say this, it's likely this is the problem. And if that's the problem, then we take this approach.”
OR
“There are 3 or 4 core problems that people will typically have. And then, there are these types of audiences. Is it this person or this person that we're talking to? OK, what's the problem, is it 1, 2, 3, or 4? OK, it's a combination of 2 and 4. What are the core symptoms of those problems? What are the ripple effects?”
Once we've got all that out of your head, that's when we can map out your sales process. Then the diagnostics become repeatable.
It's just like going to the doctor. They're going to ask you, “does it hurt here or here? Is there any swelling or bruising? How do you feel when I do this? Is it a sharp pain or a dull pain?” The doctor is moving through a decision tree to narrow down the options and make a diagnosis.
This is what we do for your process. You've been doing it unconsciously all this time. We just document it.
Once we've got your process mapped out, sales reps can accurately diagnose any prospect. They don't need to be an expert like you. They just need to know enough to diagnose. If they can do that, and they can help the prospect understand the cost of inaction, and whether the pain of staying where they are is greater than the pain of change. And if it is, then they just guide them through the process of change.
If there are any concerns along the way, they answer them. Most markets tend to have the same types of concerns. And we can come up with ways to address those concerns using metaphors and analogies in order to guide the prospect to where they need to be to have the beliefs, the trust, and the confidence to work with you.
What I just described to you is what we do for all of our clients with the ATM System. We find them proven 7-figure sales reps, train them on the offer, and then get them to a consistent, high close rate.
Can You Find Me Minorities Or Foreign Salespeople?
“Do you have female closers?”
“Do you have gay closers?”
“Do you have African American/Asian closers?”
“Do you have UK/US/Canada/Australia closers?”
Short answer: yes.
We can find salespeople all around the world, of any demographic, it doesn't matter what kind you want. There are some offers when a certain kind of sales rep will work better.
If your offer is helping women “step into their feminine,” you're obviously going to want a woman who can be feminine and powerful at the same time. So we're able to tailor our efforts to find that person.
Other times, we might have a client in the US or UK who wants to expand into Australia (which is a huge market.) And if you can have a local sales team over there, you can literally wake up to sales. Our client Tyler Narducci has this happen to him all the time. He'll go to sleep and his Australian sales rep will close a $12,500 deal and he'll wake up to a notification. That's the best way to wake up in the world. So, expanding your sales presence to other countries is a good move. Because it amplifies your impact.
Sometimes people have a concern about foreign accents. We find that sales reps with accents tend to do better and outperform one without an accent (in this case, one that's familiar to the prospect.) Intuitively and instinctively, we're all enamored with accents. When someone has an accent and it's a little hard to understand them, we tend to pay more attention. It's like when someone speaks quietly, you'll lean in and listen carefully.
So, whatever kind of salesperson you need, we can find them for you. We've handled it all.
Can You Find Me Sales Reps Who Will Work In-House/On-Site?
“Can you find me a salesperson who'll work in my office?” We get this question a lot and the answer is NO. And we have a very strong reason for this. Let me explain:
What we've found, and what the data suggests, is that the higher the skill level of a sales rep the more remote work becomes non-negotiable.
Also, considering that you're a small business and it's a competitive marketplace, someone who's good at sales always has a few job offers in their back pocket, on top of the job they're at right now. In many cases, these job offers can include benefits like 401k matches, sometimes even cars, internet/phone allowances, expense accounts, and per diems.
Can your business afford to match that? In most cases, you can't. That's not how this works for us. So, what we need to do is create a competitive offer. And our competitive offer is to give them the ability to work from anywhere.
Don't underestimate how powerful this offer is. People will take less money/financial compensation for the freedom to control where they're working from, to not have to commute to an office and back every day, to not have to be in a uniform, to not have to be on-site all day.
To be able to work from home in their regular clothes, to not have to get in a car for 2 to 3 hours a day, to set their own hours, is sometimes worth it for really good sales reps. And that is why we only work with sales reps who are looking for remote work. We don't put people on-site.
Another thing to consider is that most of our clients are paying commission-only where other companies may be offering a base plus commission. In this case as well, remote work might be the perk that gets the sales rep to say yes.
Conclusion And Next Steps
In 2019, my team and I helped 21 businesses get to $1 million run-rates. Is your business next?
Check out our free case study showing you how we attract, train, and manage million-dollar sales teams. Click on the link below to get access.