Hiring Your First Salesman
ByYou started out as a one person company. Up to this point you’ve been the CEO, sales person, even the janitor.
The company is growing. You are the CEO and the company’s best salesman, but you’re to the point where you can’t do both. You’ve decided to hire your first salesman.
The first thing to do after making that decision is to start codifying your selling environment.
- What’s your sales cycle?
- What’s the cost of your product?
- What is the typical expense to the buyer.
- Who is that buyer?
- Is your sales cycle six months or one day?
- Are you selling with about 52 different presentations or a one-call close?
- Do you need your sales guy to be a farmer or a hunter?
Next, describe these characteristics in your job posting. Scan the incoming resumes, discarding any that don’t match your selling environment. If you hire a guy who sold $1,000 products and you put him to work selling a $15,000 products he’s going to fail.
Finally, have multiple people interview each candidate.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
