One of the most common mistakes small businesses make is hiring a sales team at the wrong time. It may seem like the right decision, but many have made the mistake of hiring a sales team either too early or too late.
Hiring a sales team is a great idea–what better way to generate more sales than to hire an experienced professional who’s dedicated to selling your product or service.
However, hiring a sales team too early drains cash out of your business while hiring one too late can cause you to miss valuable growth opportunities.
Find out the best time to hire a sales team
Do the Selling First
Before hiring a sales team for your small business, put in the effort to sell your product or service directly to customers.
Doing the sales yourself puts you in a position to get feedback on what your customers like and don’t like about your product or service. You need to understand people’s objections to buying your product so you can train your sales team to counteract them.
Selling your product yourself will also give you valuable insight into whether or not you need to improve your product or service. You’ll likely find out whether your product is too expensive or too cheap, how you can improve on your product, and ways you can adjust your services to better meet the needs of your customers. This information will help you better train your sales team.
Create a Lead-Generation Strategy
Having an effective cold lead and inbound lead strategy will help you train your future sales team to generate consistent sales.
Build your business a database of cold leads manually by networking, scouring social media like LinkedIn, or by using lead generation data services.
Create an inbound marketing strategy, like writing blogs and publishing videos, to generate warm leads your sales team can follow up with. You don’t want your new sales team to have to do all of the prospecting for your business or get stuck in the early stages of the sales process. Having warm leads is a much easier way to close a sale and motivate your sales team.
Once you have a sales process that’s consistently generating leads and sales, you’re ready to hire a salesperson or team for your small business.
You’re Ready To Hire Your First Sales Employee
Hiring a salesperson or team is one of the most validating experiences in running a small business. It’s not only proof that your business is growing but it will allow you to automate your business’s growth while at the same time enable you to start managing the business again.
In an ideal scenario, you’ll be able to hire two salespeople at once. If you can afford to, hire a service development representative (SDR) first who has experience in researching and calling cold prospects.
If you can’t find or afford an SDR but can afford to hire two experienced salespeople, pull the trigger fast. Hiring two at a time will allow you to distinguish between the effectiveness of your sales process and the team you hired.
If you see that one salesperson is doing dramatically better than the other, you may want to consider rehiring. If both of your salespeople aren’t selling what they should be by a large margin, gather their feedback, and reevaluate your product, pitch, and strategy.
Unless you were an expert in sales prior to starting your small business, hiring experienced salespeople should come with dramatic results. You should see a boost in sales and accelerated growth.
Hire a Smart and Savvy Sales Team to Represent Your Company
To a customer, your salesperson is the face of your business – they are a representation of your brand and what you stand for. Before you hire someone, make sure to have a clear picture of what type of person you want to be the face of your business – should they be funny, professional, or empathetic?
Choose candidates either related to your industry or who have worked in similar-sized companies before.
Once you’ve got a clear understanding of the salespeople you want representing your company, find your perfect salesperson by reaching out to staffing agencies, posting on job boards, asking for referrals, or by connecting with people on LinkedIn.
Deciding when to hire a sales team is all about timing. Hiring someone early can burn cash, but hiring someone too late can cost you growth. You need to get out there and sell your product, create a lead generation strategy and hire a professional team once your business finds a rewarding market.
