Many small business owners and entrepreneurs take on a majority of their sales and marketing planning strategy on their own. However, if you’re looking to reach substantial goals, you may find it’s beneficial to recruit, hire, and retain top sales and marketing professionals who can help you make your mark. Today, hooed.com has some tips and resources to help you put together the best sales team out there.
Benefits of Professional Salespeople
People who are independent contractors or freelancers in the sales and marketing arena are probably working in this capacity because they’re really exceptional at their profession. You may be able to hire them for a specific campaign, in a consulting capacity, or to train any part or full-time hires you bring on board in best practices in sales and marketing. Even though they may cost a bit more to retain, if they’re working in a consulting capacity you won’t have to pay their taxes, vacation, or health benefits, which can be savings for you.
Hiring In-House Staff
One of the nice things about hiring an in-house sales and marketing staff is that they won’t have any outside competing interests as a freelancer might have. The person will be on your payroll and in your office every day so customers will have an opportunity to build long-lasting relationships with your salespeople. According to American Express, when it comes to deciding between in-house and freelance, it’s a matter of analyzing your budget, your revenue goals, and the cost-benefit ratio of having somebody on the payroll versus having someone operating in a contract capacity.
Finding the Right People
When you start your search for marketing and sales professionals, Rainmakers suggests asking around industry or trade groups for recommendations or referrals, or advertise on your website and popular job boards. You want to make sure you clearly define the role, the pay structure, and your specific expectations. Ask potential applicants to describe their past performances and ask them to describe what sets them apart. You’ll also want somebody familiar with your Industry, particularly if they have existing contacts they can tap for your benefit.
Paying Your Sales People
Regardless of whether you hire staffers in-house or in a freelance capacity, you’ll have to determine what type of compensation structure you’ll offer. Many people are short-termers in sales roles if they’re working strictly on a commission-only basis. While theoretically this offers a lot of incentive to produce, if somebody doesn’t have a regular income it can be difficult to maintain the pace. You might offer a flat rate or a draw against commission that ensures employees or contractors have a base income that they can substantially increase based on their sales performance. However you proceed, make sure there’s a clear understanding of how the pay structure will work.
Communicate Well
For salespeople to be successful, they have to understand your company, your product, your goals, and your performance expectations. Orient salespeople – whether in-house or freelance – to these key topics so there are no surprises and everyone knows what success looks like. Not only will this improve productivity, but people who understand your brand and your vision will be much more effective in a sales capacity. Provide support for workers, especially if remote. For example, if a staffer has a large image file with many images, they can use this free image resizer to make the file size more manageable.
When it comes to sales and marketing, you know that you need to do both effectively for your business to grow and prosper. Bringing in staffers to help you can be a worthwhile investment, particularly if you work in a line of business where you’re securing long-term contracts rather than just making one-off sales.
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