Hiring an Employee

rayee · Oct 13, 2012

Hello Everyone!

I need advice from successful people who have hired an employee and are utilizing them well.

I am going to hire my first salesperson. I intend to have him go from door to door and to do cold calling. I never have done that before and I only rely on SEO and email marketing and meet interested leads directly. I would do cold calling or go from door to door but I do not have the time to do so as I need to sell, design and manage overseas employees. I would like to expand my revenue though and that was why I decided to hire a new salesperson to help me do the running sales.

Question:
- Any successful door to door or cold calling pitches that you can share with ?
- How do you utilize your employees to make sure that they are bringing in sales? My employee that im hiring will be working from home with a basic salary + commission
- How do you know you are hiring the right person?
- What is the period of time would you allow an employee to stay in the job without firing him? I was thinking 1 month

sasuke120 · Oct 13, 2012

well just try them ou t dont use one salesperson use more and build your team stick with those who aregetting you money

dexter · Oct 13, 2012

Read The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes.

I think there's a share of it on this site. There's an excellent chapter on how to hire sales people.

hotdog10 · Oct 14, 2012

well, it may sound cliche.. but I usuyally ask for past testimonials which I do actually call to do a backgrd check. like the say ' the past does predict the future'

Luxurious · Oct 15, 2012

Theres alot of cars salesman with 15+years of experience with a little black book you can hire for cheap.

Tangy · Oct 15, 2012

You're definitely going to want to test out a number of applicants before making your decision on this. If your salary is low (like $20-$30k) then your commission structure had best be very, very tempting or you won't get experienced salespeople to bite.

Someone that can sell anything and doesn't mind commission can easily pull 6 figures in a number of different industries. If you're thinking of topping them out at like $50k or something you're in for an uphill battle.

Personally, I make use of a handful of lower paid employees and built out a business outreach structure where each person does a certain task. Once the leads are warm either one of them handles a soft close or they pitch it over to me to get things closed up.

Good luck with this and be sure to keep us posted!

rugbyjack2005 · Oct 15, 2012

The best way is to do it yourself, sort out a method that works and then hire someone to follow your method. You don't just want a sales person, you want someone to draw up a sales strategy and everything. Remember for every good person, there is about 5 bad especially in sales. With no experience doing this yourself, you are likely to burn money.

zball24 · Oct 15, 2012

Instead of hiring an employee, have you looked into lead generation services? There are a few options you can go about that would ultimately be cheaper and would bring in much better results than an employee. Look into Classified Posting services, especially Craigslist. If you need help, get a hold of me.

dexter · Oct 16, 2012

Seriously? Not all businesses can survive off craigslist posts - different types of sales require different promotion methods. Some (shock!) even need sales people. As this post is in the local section, I'm assuming the OP was looking to sell local services to local businesses. Do you HONESTLY think that hiring a craigslist posting service will match the value of a live salesperson going into these businesses? (???) I'm already scaling up and am hiring using the practices suggested in the book I linked above. All commission. Twenty of them.

I guess you got me on one thing - I'm using Craigslist (and the local equivalent) to find the sales people.

rayee · Oct 17, 2012

I was thinking of hiring someone that was willing to be hired at $14,500 per year. I promised him that if the going gets better, he will receive a higher salary. He does not have any experience in sales and Im hesitating on whether to hire him. Should I or should i not? I am worried about burning the money even though he is cheap because I have to train him. He's a lawyer but because he relocated, he couldn't bring his expertise over to my country.

I was thinking of using him for a month to see the results but then again,one month might be too short. Any advice?

dexter · Oct 17, 2012

You should plan on at least a 3 month ramp-up period.

Re the guy, if you're not sure about him then the answer should be an absolute NO!. Are you planning on donating something to charity, or do you want sales? Depending on where you are, $1200 a month is either peanuts or an amazing salary. Here, Minimum wage is higher than that. If you want a good sales guy, you will either pay a decent base and an ok commission, or all commission and he'll be expecting to make a crapload. I dangle a $330,000 year two comp package in front of applicants. It either scares them or motivates them - guess which ones I want working for me?

Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

dexter · Oct 17, 2012

Read this book: /blackhat-seo/member-downloads/421026-get-chet-holmes-sales-marketing-machine-2-0-a.html

netmoney1 · Oct 17, 2012

rayee said:
I was thinking of hiring someone that was willing to be hired at $14,500 per year. I promised him that if the going gets better, he will receive a higher salary. He does not have any experience in sales and Im hesitating on whether to hire him. Should I or should i not? I am worried about burning the money even though he is cheap because I have to train him. He's a lawyer but because he relocated, he couldn't bring his expertise over to my country.

I was thinking of using him for a month to see the results but then again,one month might be too short. Any advice?

Not sure where you are located...but here in the US the job market is SO bad that there are SO MANY talented sales people out of work...I would highly suggest you hire an experienced sales guy. With this guy you need to train him...why not get a hungry experienced sales person that you will not have to babysit? In the long run they will be more productive. Unless your industry is specialized and you would rather teach a newbie your sales methods.

dexter · Oct 17, 2012

Absolutely. Let the guys with money to burn do your training for you.

rayee · Oct 17, 2012

My industry is not niche. In fact, the guy Im hiring is an ex colleague. What Im paying him is 1/5 of what he should be getting based on his qualifications. He's never done sales before but I did intend to train him because of his low salary. But then again, I am afraid that I might be throwing money down the drain.

I did thought of hiring him for one month and trying him out but if he fails, it would be equivalent to losing an iPad.

dexter · Oct 17, 2012

I would hate to lose an ipad

dexter · Oct 17, 2012

Sorry, I went searching and the link I provided above is not what I thought it was, turned out I found the book on another "similarly named" site.

You might want to go googling for "ultimate sales machine" by Chet Holmes.

This whole cant paste a link thing really blows, btw.

The gist of the Ad he uses:

SUPERSTARS ONLY $50K to $300K
Don't even call unless you are an overachiever and can prove it.
Come build an empire within ourfine, progressive company. We are
in the XYZ industry, but we don't hire backgrounds. We hire top
producers. If you're average, you can earn $50K with us. If you are a
star, you can earn $300K plus. Young or old, if you have the stuff,
we'll know. Contact us at ...

rayee · Oct 19, 2012

Update: I did not hire him in the end. I read the book "Ultimate Sales Machine" and I used one of the techniques in the sales interview which I call it the "Rejection Technique". He clammed up immediately and I saw that he wasn't suitable for this job at all.

I've now posted an advertisement to get the right people.

pj413 · Oct 24, 2012

There's really no way you can tell the value of a salesperson without testing them out. Someone who looks fantastic on paper might generate terrible results, and the person you least expect to do well can hit it out of the park.

Your best bet is to hire 6-10 salespeople on commission only. Set them loose and hire the top one or two people. There's literally zero risk to you, since you only pay them if they make you money.

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