Do not hire a salesman!!!!
Construction business owners often wear multiple hats. Ordering materials, managing sub trades, project managing, accounts payable/receivable, the list goes on. That very rarely leaves time to hunt down new work and perform quoting, estimating and sales/marketing duties. Hiring a salesperson can help take your business to the next level and allow you to pass on some of those responsibilities.
But before you hire a new employee, you need to ask yourself; Do I have sales process that defines the steps necessary to successfully close a sale, from prospecting to closing, and of course, the customer retention strategy that follows a sale? Does it include the metrics in which to measure the progress and success of the sales rep? Ask yourself these questions before you add a new sales rep, and ensure positive growth and an easier process with each expansion.
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Do you have enough leads to hire a salesman?
If your goal is to create predictable, sustainable and scalable growth, you need to implement a sales model that will allow you to grow consistently, meeting the demands of today and tomorrow. It is for this reason that if your salespeople are also prospecting for new business – they should stop. First you need inbound Interest: You should be getting emails and calls from potential customers. If no one is curious enough to contact you, your product isn’t ready. A plan for generating leads needs to come first.
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The better a salesperson is, the more expensive he is.
Experienced salespeople are more protective of their contacts than the memory of their high school sweetheart. So for every day that your new sales gun thinks your product isn’t awesome, she is paying a big opportunity cost by working at your start-up.
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The $1 million rule.
Do you have $1 million in revenue that you can identify but that you cannot pull into your company because you are too busy selling to other people. If you can identify $1 million worth of prospects, it’s a great time to hire a salesperson.
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Are you able To Judge Performance?
If you don’t have a robust sales model yet, the performance of your sales reps is most likely going to be hit and miss. You can’t expect predictable sales when you haven’t achieved product/market fit. It’s going to be erratic and all over the place.
When are you ready? Not until you’ve surpassed the phase of sales exploration and need to focus on sales execution, when you already have a steady flow of inbound interest and a proven sales model.