Hiring and Training Salespeople for Offline IM?

Hey I'm sure You know quite a bit Charles, but if You will allow me I'd like to share with you someone that I feel may Help Offer what YOUR LOOKING FOR..

THe First person that comes to mind is MARIA GUDELIS. She's another fellow warrior member...There are alot of Offline Marketers out there and they know their stuff.. IMHO Maria blows this OUT OF THE WATER..

HOpe I was able to help direct you to someone that will get you the answers your searching for.. =)

Take care,

JP

1. Training is quite simple, actually. If you're hiring qualified salespeople already, the process isn't quite as daunting as you'd think it would be. I run them through details like making best use of our internal CRM to stay in the prospects' top of mind. I drill them on the benefits of each product/service we offer, and how best to relay those to our target business owners. I also teach the sales crew the value of personal branding, and how best to go about establishing their own expertise/"brand" recognition. Obviously, having a working knowledge of our Products/Services is absolutely key too.
2. You're right, giving away too much isn't going to be cost-effective in the long run. I think the one thing most people get wrong in this "Offline" game is that they expect salespeople to do the marketing. This will NEVER work. Here's why. Salespeople are just that...their role is to take a sales-ready lead, and nurture that into a purchase/commitment. You should never force a crossover on them. The best qualified salespeople will have an expectation that they're working with a regular stream of leads. That means lead generation is the responsibility of the marketing team...I'm going to assume that's you.
   
   Hiring salespeople is hardly a magic bullet. In the real world, most of your smaller Offline operations aren't even going to be ready to take on a salesperson, and have them be effective. Usually, this just increases your own responsibilities and business burdens. Most salespeople will not produce unless you're providing them with a proven system that can, again, take a sales-ready lead and move them into commitment. Now, the exception obviously is if you're finding a superstar at lead generation who can also nurture the relationship and subsequent sale. That's likely not going to happen. So, as a note to all of those looking to hire salespeople for their Offline business...take a deep breath, relax, and realize that you're still going to have to come up with the vast majority of leads.
3. I like to work with a probationary period of 45 days. In this time, I have an expectation that my new-hire will bring in somewhere around $3,000-$4,000 in revenue. They get 20% of all sales in the probationary period. If it makes sense to continue the relationship, I'll kick that number up to 30% with benchmarks set for bonus pay. If they're REALLY good, I'll pay them base+commission.
4. I've never hired a sales manager. Frankly, I don't see that I could find one that would be more effective than myself or my partner in managing and training the salespeople. Again, hire talent, and not promise. With every other internal position, my mentality is the opposite. In the case of salespeople, if you're not finding talented producers, you're only causing yourself more stress and worry. One of the things about salespeople is that there's no quicker way to dilute the quality of your brand. They can easily smear your reputation in the business community.

Hope that helps some of you out there!

Ohhh this is RIGHT up my alley.

I usually only hire people that are already trained and have a history in sales. I don't mind how they do their job as long as its effective and I collect weekly reports on what activities they've done.

I also have a unique method of hiring them. No matter who I'm hiring for sales I always tell them at the end of the interview "Sorry, you're not qualified" or something along those lines. If they start to push back and qualify why they should be hired, I know I have a winner. If they give up now, they'll give up during the sale.

As far as pay... I usually pay my sales staff 50% commission or let them charge whatever they want and we keep the base amount. I also have sales incentives. Ie: next month whoever hits 3 sales first gets a Kodak Zi8 HD Camcorder.

As far as materials - I give them generic business cards and if they want custom ones they have to pay for them, I also give them a leave behind brochure. However, because of our business model even those aren't really necessary.

Cheers & GREAT questions!

- Adam

Running a sales force is tough. If you're not a sales-pro Charles
you might look at finding a guy/girl with the grit and ambition
to manage a sales force and partner up with them.

I know this means giving up control, but hiring, managing
and keeping a sales force on task is like herding cats. If you
can deliver the service in a scalable way and have the
marketing machine in place to generate the right kind of
leads, a sales manager can really make things happen for you.