There will come a time when the team has to expand, this is a good milestone but not without risk. Here are some tips on how to hire smartly, with a focus on sales.
Hire Before You Hire
If your business is sales-focused and growing at an exponential rate then you’ll need to make sure that the inflow of new employees can hit the ground running, deliver quality work, whilst maintaining the reputation of your company – no small ask. For these reasons, it can help to hire a professional to ensure quality hires and to help rifle through the hundreds of resumés that you may not have time for. In other words, you may need an HR specialist/internal recruiter. A smart move would be to bring someone in with experience in sales (or recruiting salespeople) so that you can be sure they’ll correctly convey the right information and understand your key requirements.
Outline Your Criteria
Before you actually begin the hiring process, it’s important that you’ve outlined the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) that need to be met in order for the company to facilitate its own growth. Once you’ve outlined your goals, you’ll know what kind of personnel you need. In a sales context, for example, your new hires may need sufficient experience using certain software to reduce time spent onboarding and a track record of ‘x number of sales/month’ – this way you’ll have a rough idea of whether they’ll be able to handle the work quantities.
To ensure the right hires, it’s important that you know exactly how the right employee thinks, what they’re motivated by, etc. If you’ve pre-constructed a style of management, incentives, commission percentages, etc., you’ll have clear answers to any questions in the interview and potential employees will know from the outset whether the role is a good fit for them – this will save you endless stress and hassle in the long run.
Nature of Hire
Time, budgetary constraints, and personal preference will dictate whether you choose to hire freelance or full-time. There are pros and cons to both – hiring contractors may save you money in wages (per hour) and in social security and other governmental taxes. You can also pay contractors per task or per time period, which helps with both flexibility and affordability.
On the flip-side, full-time employees are usually the better long-term solution – as they will develop unique understandings of you and your company. They may also prove to be cheaper than contractors due to their cheaper per hour rate. Make sure to pay close attention to your contracts of employment, as a probation period, terms of notice, etc. often affect business outlook and inform relationships with the employee.
Management
Once you have your employees on board, it’s up to good management whether or not they contribute or detract from your company’s long-term potential. You’ll need to show patience, generosity of time, and usually some funding to ensure that everyone is properly trained and ready to contribute positively. It’s important to consider the wider framework within which your employees will be working. Is your CRM suitable for the size of the team? Do you know enough about the process to understandably convey this to the others?
You also want to create as little confusion as possible. One method that helps is forming a DBA name (Doing Business As) for your company, as this can provide a useful umbrella term for all salespeople to sell products under. This will also give you more flexibility for the company – for example, if your website domain is different from your company name, you can form a DBA and sell using both the domain name and the original company name.
Hiring is a tiring, long-winded process but it can also be an exciting and crucial time for your company as it grows. Make sure you show it as much care and attention as you would any other area of your business.
Expert-Velocity is a business accelerator service specializing in Amplifying your core message, Attracting prospects, and Accelerating your business growth. Find out how we can help you attract new prospects at: www.expert-velocity.com
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