Set your new salesperson up for success
A common move a business will make to grow revenue is expand their salesforce. There is a right way to expand your salesforce and a wrong way. To save yourself time and money, you have to make sure you’re doing this right. This applies to large companies of course, but it even applies to the small entrepreneur or the small salespreneur. While the decision to expand your salesforce itself is great, it’s often filled with flaws. Adding somebody to your company to help generate sales will only be effective if you make sure you have a plan in place first.
Clarify purpose
The main problem that companies have when they expand their salesforce is there is a lack of clarity on what these new positions are going to accomplish. You first have to make sure you are clear on several things before you add a salesperson to your roster:
- How often will the salesperson do outbound prospecting?
- To whom will the salesperson be prospecting?
- What will you measure the salesperson against?
These three simple questions can help save a headache and can help save a lot of money. Invest a lot of time considering this before you even begin your interview process. Spending this time in advance to gain clarity on what your new salesforce is going to do will help save revenue on the backend.
Set expectations
Now, just because you plan ahead and get good clarity on what to do with your salesforce doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to help you hit your revenue goals. One of the mistakes people often make is they don’t set expectations in the beginning. You have to set expectations for success from day one. You have to set expectations for failure from day one. Essentially, we’re defining our metrics. If you don’t define metrics in advance, the salesperson is being forced to play a guessing game. A true sales professional— someone who likes to be compensated, someone who likes to be challenged— will want to know their metrics and their goals. This information gives that person something to shoot for. If you’re a sales-preneur or thinking of expanding your salesforce, one of the things you have to ensure you have in place is defined metrics for success. Without these defined metrics for success you’ll have a hard time managing, executing and establishing if these new expansion positions are successful.
If you have questions about how to create clarity for your new salesforce or how to establish measurable metrics, feel free to reach out to me. You can join the Catapulting Commissions’ community texting (661) 228-8967. Text the word ‘hello.’ You’ll get a free copy of the Catapulting Commissions book and join our growing community of sales professionals.
