2. THINGS TO CONSIDER Who do you sell to? (sniper or shotgun) Do you market or sell? (both) When do you hire someone to focus on revenue? Who do you hire? Blue Jeans or Grey Hair
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF SALES / SALESPEOPLE Type of customer and product drives type(s) of sales functions needed: Marketing Business Development Inside Sales / Tele-sales Outside Sales Account managers Hunters vs Farmers
4. PIPELINE Deals currently being worked in various stages More calls = more leads = more sales PR is best (driving inbound) = qualified leads Outsourced lead-generation Hourly / Success-based
9. YOU NEVER CALL ANYMORE Use the phones…. SEO is great, but nothing beats personal contact. Don’t expect your prospects to do the hard work
10. MANAGING SALES PEOPLE Manage to metrics Ultimately expect results Let comp plan do the heavy lifting Press on accelerating the close Flush out deals that are not real Don’t let salespeople trend to the easier conversations Great salespeople are easier to manager
11. COMPENSATION TERMS AND BASICS Base Commissions Draw Recoverable / Non-recoverable Bonus Quota / Accelerator SPIF (Sales Promotion Incentive Fund) OTE (On Target Earnings) Up-side: DO NOT CAP!
12. YOUR BIGGEST CAPITAL EXPENSE• Finding great salespeople is biggest bottleneck for a growing company• Failed salespeople are the biggest waste of capital• Right sales team = life or death• Don’t Scale until you know your head from your feet • Never more than double any sales force•
13. FINDING GOOD PEOPLE•55% of sales professionals are 1 in the wrong occupation 20% A Players Top Performers Account for 80% of•Sales professionals that are Sales job-matched outperform their counterparts by 40% and are 55% 2 C Players twice as likely to stick 25% Should not be in sales at all B Players Should be selling•Try all angles: recruiters, job elsewhere boards, recommendations 1. Croner, Christopher and Richard Abraham, Never Hire a Bad Salesperson Again, Inner Workings LLC, 2006. 2. Greenberg, Herbert and Jeanne, ”Job Matching for Better Sales Performance,” Harvard Business Review no.80505
14. WHAT TO LOOK FOR• Expensive Hobbies• Confidence• Ability to listen and answer questions directly• Grasp general ideas around your product quickly• Creative thinking on new ways to pitch your product• Construct a pitch on the fly…