Hiring A sales consultant

On another note Rus, I would be very keen to get an idea of what sort of other "criteria" do you use to evaluate if a potential company is worth working with?

Thanks for the honest opinion guys.

Hi Rus,

Appreciate the honest feedback. Our company is in an industry, where a "potential customer" would be expected to spend $300,000 - $1m a year. Only the first sale is where the "sales person's" active role is needed, as future orders in most cases are repeat orders where sales person may not be required to do anything. Clients are actively looking for a service like ours (that has a good reputation in our target market and several client references), however due to the high value of transactions and money being sent to a "moderately risky" foreign country need human contact to build trust.

We are also in an industry where there is at least some difficulty for the buyer to change suppliers on future orders & hence client retention is good. Finally, once again, closing the sale in our industry does not require much effort and a sales agent (who has contacts in his industry) may only need to leverage his contacts (perhaps a different compensation system is needed for agents who just "refer" us to their existing clients and agents who follow up on leads provided by us?).

First transaction can be anywhere from $20,000 - $60,000. Of course, to make up for the smaller margins, we are happy to give to pay commissions on "repeat orders". I wonder, what the salesperson's expectations would be in this regard, i.e. how long should the repeat commissions be paid?

Thanks Aaron, very useful. Once again, to close the deal, we don't need "top quality" salespeople, but people who have contacts in their industry or can deliver the message sufficiently well. I agree top salespeople who go for "higher returns", but due to our above mentioned advantages, do you believe their is still a decent incentive for commission agents to be interested?

Competition in our industry is fairly limited which makes closing the sale easier. The challenge we are currently facing is that our lead "follow-up" is too weak, due to lack of resources and cultural barriers. We are based in Asia, while clients are based in Developed english speaking countries, hence local sales-staff cannot effectively close deals.

Look forward to some ideas.

Thanks