Now you have to pay this person! There are great tools on the internet to help you research what sales pay looks like in your industry and geography, and I highly recommend using them. If you are hiring a more experienced salesperson, expect there to be questions about compensation. Be prepared to know what more you can offer and consider tying it to performance and tenure goals. It doesn’t just have to be salary either. Bonuses, equity, vacation time, remote work, benefits, and professional development are all areas you can contribute to that will help close the deal. Have an open and transparent conversation about what they could benefit from, so you can make your decisions about agreeing to an offer.
I once rejoined a company where, while I was away, they took an existing employee, gave him a laptop to demo on, and a list of names and phone numbers. And told him to go sell. Don’t be those people. Check in, ask what they need, understand the conversations they are having, and see what you can do to help. Remember, just because Sales does not build a product, they are still on your team and want to work with you to improve and grow the company. I wish you all great success, especially those hiring their first salesperson.
you did. But what you probably need is someone who is going to focus deeply on getting new customers for you. All the time. However, they can (ethically of course). Just as you did with Product, you probably built, tested, redesigned, built again, retested, and revised, and eventually came to a sort of process or product that worked. Same with first outreach in Sales. The process comes after trial and error, to begin with. So, you are looking for someone hungry, ethical, and not afraid of making some things up as they go along (again, process-wise, not fact-wise!) So how do you find that person? There was a great study in 2014 by S. W. Martin that you can find in the Harvard Business
Review, “Seven personality traits of top salespeople”. And it listed the following traits I pointed out in my last column. You can uncover these through personality tests, or simply asking the same interview questions of everybody. Think about asking questions about when the candidate bounced back from a negative experience. Tell me about a time you had to put a customer first. When was the last time you learned something new? When was the last time you said no to someone, and why? Look to uncover the seven traits, and for me, the most important one is curiosity. If you want to learn and understand, you will have great customer conversations.
1. Resilience 2. Curiosity 3. Reliability 4. Humility 5. Goal Oriented 6. Detachment 7. Fearlessness
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BUSINESS • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE 55
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