I offered residual payments so they have incentive to take care of the customer longer term. If someone's paying me $1k/month, I want them to feel important to me more than just after and just before contract signing (or renewal). I am open to a tangent of my main topic on just ways to ensure retention other than residual compensation.
Yeah, I don't want an order taker. If I already had qualified leads, I'd just follow through and then install. That's not a sales person. That's one step away from being a good web site or script. I need someone to generate, cultivate and then close the leads. Agreed on B2B sales experience. It's easier to give someone enough tech knowledge where they can get the customer back to a tech guy (me) than to get a tech guy to do sales.... at least in my experience as a tech guy. :-) ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 7:34:19 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Finding Sales People My first question would be, why do you want a sales person? If it is to get more business, then they will usually want you to deliver them leads. So they will ask for marketing to help in their efforts. If people in the office can answer the phone and take an order, do you really need a sales person if orders are coming in. If you want someone to develop their own leads, go to events to develop relationships with people, make presentations to prospects, then understand it could be 6+ months before they start filling the pipe with sales. That means they are working at the lower salary rate for longer (may get unhappy and leave) and it's hard to judge their effectiveness until orders start coming in. Also, do not do the residual payments. You want your fighting dog hungry! For customer retention purposes and keeping the customers happy, give them a quarterly/year end bonus based on some metric. (Customers that pay on time, fewer support calls, something that they still feel they have to earn.) As for finding them, I prefer someone that is familiar with B2B sales and hopefully, has done IT related sales before. Then they will already have leads and contacts in the industry to help with leads. Most of our sales people have been from referrals or people we knew. On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Mike Hammett < [email protected] > wrote: What's the best way to get a B2B sales guy? That's the overall point, but digging in deeper, what should I be asking for? I'm very tech oriented, very little sales. I'm needing someone that can do it on their own without guidance from me on what I want them to do. To me, sales sounds more like B2C or lower end services while business development sounds more B2B or higher end, but does the sales world reflect that? Where do I look? The #1 source people say is referrals, but apparently I don't know anyone that knows anyone worth a darn as I've posted it on various social media... a dozen times over the last couple years. Here's the copy from a posting I did this past summer: Job Description Local ISP seeking independent sales leader. ICS has been operated in the DeKalb - Naperville area for 12 years by tech guys. Compensation will be a one time commission after the sale and a 10% residual to ensure the customer is attended for on an ongoing basis. Our services range from $30/month into the thousands of dollars a month. The path you take is yours. Job Requirements We need someone with B2B experience to lead our sales force. You will be responsible for the entire sales and marketing process. The tech guys will say what they can do where and your job will be to develop the strategy and then pursue those clients. We can teach a good B2B salesperson the tech they need to know far easier than you'll teach us how to sell. We believe that boots on the ground would be necessary, so willingness to travel to the DeKalb, Kane, Kendall, southwest DuPage and northwest Will County areas as needed would be required. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP
