Hello Reader,

Today, I’m going to speak about the challenging topic of hiring salespeople, why many businesses get it wrong, and, more importantly, how to fix it.

First, let me share my story about how I got into selling B2B SaaS for an Australian startup and the salespeople I came across in my time to give you some context.

Before entering B2B SaaS, I was a business development manager for WorkPac, a blue-collar recruitment company.

It was my responsibility to find civil construction projects, sell WorkPac's value over hundreds of other recruitment companies, and get them to hire our workforce. EASY!

The problem was that I had just returned from working for 5 years driving cranes at an aluminum smelter and had no recent sales experience.

On the first day, they gave me a car and a folder full of documents and sent me out into the field without proper sales training.

I had plenty of training in everything but sales training. It was only after being there for 12 months that I enrolled in a sales course, and it was only for a select few.

It was the scariest time of my professional career, I didn’t know what I was doing, had 2 mortgages but had to find a way to succeed. If I didn’t find a way to make this successful.

Through trial and error, making mistakes and continually learning, I slowly started winning clients and making sales.

I stayed in this role for almost 5 years, and during this time, about 50% of salespeople left within the first year and another 25% left in the second.

With an estimated opportunity cost of $500k for every failed salesperson, this likely had a crippling effect on that business.

This brings me to the number one reason most salespeople fail in a new position which is a lack of proper sales training.

Reason #1 - Lack of proper sales training

This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many new salespeople aren’t trained in a process that actually works to close sales.

This is especially true for startups and their founders, who may have a more technical background and aren’t strong at sales.

Like it or not, you’re in sales 😀, which applies to you too.

Here are some key points to consider when it comes to considering sales training.

• If you are a founder, make sure you trained in sales first so you know it works
• Get industry specific training early for your salespeople
• Continually refresh and revisit training
• Make the training and sharing key lessons part of your weekly schedule
• Create a common sales language in your business
• Adopt a continual learning approach for the team in areas in sales from hiring to deal management

Too many businesses treat the function of sales like an afterthought and wonder why they are getting poor results. If companies make sales training a deliberate continued focus, results will follow 100%, including sales people being more successful.

Back to the story…

During my time at WorkPac, I met the founder of a B2B SaaS startup called RedEye and one day I saw Wayne advertising a Business Development role in his business.

I didn’t have the technical software skills for the role but I knew my tenacity and success in the saturated recruitment industry would go a long way to helping me succeed in this growing industry.

I was so grateful to be given the chance by Wayne and I made a commitment to never stop learning how to sell the RedEye solution.

I was in that business for just under 5 years and in that time and in that time, they hired at least 20 salespeople, most more qualified than me and nearly all of them failed.

Every January 4 or 5 would start and by October, they were all gone. The cost of this would have been staggering.

This brings me to the second reason...

Reason #2 - Hiring the wrong salespeople for the business

I think the type of salesperson a business hires should be directly related to sales momentum they have.

Sales momentum is the rate and ease at which sales are made.

In my case, the early days of working at RedEye were very difficult because there were long stretches between the multi-million dollar clients we were looking for.

It didn’t mean we weren’t working hard, in fact, we were working extremely hard without the reward because we were testing markets, messaging and different buying groups.

On reflection, personally it was a really transformative experience but extremely tough and I wouldn’t go through it again because I don’t need to (Unless it was my business).

This here lies the challenge, some businesses get so fixated on the industry experience or the companies someone has worked instead of how they’ve previously built sales momentum and where their ideal fit it now based on their career progression.

In the case of RedEye, the salespeople that were hired, especially the senior ones, were not prepared to do what was required to build momentum because they had moved past that stage of their career.

Here are some key points to consider when thinking about sales momentum and matching it with a salesperson.

• How much sales momentum do you have right now
• What are the fundamental skills you need in the business right now
• Can you find those skills outside of your industry
• If I was to hire this person, is it a step forward, backward or sideways in their career
• Have the demonstrated those fundamental skills in the previous roles

Let’s wrap this up…

If you find someone with those critical skills your business needs to build more sales momentum, potentially outside of your industry, you need to support them through effective training and mentorship to get them up to speed.

If you don’t, chances are they won’t make it and you won’t have built the momentum you had hoped for to take your business to the next level.

Have you thought about sales momentum before, how much you have and what skills you need to take it to the next level?

I’d love to know if you want to reply to this email.

Cheers

Gavin

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Thank you again for being part of SMF.