A sales person that used to work for me called me last week to get my opinion on a new position he was considering. We chatted for a while about the position and the opportunity, and I was very excited for him. Its a great company, a great product, a great team – and I think it will afford him quite a bit of opportunity to advance his career.
Then we started to figure out if the comp was right for him.
Sales is hard.
Anyone who has done sales in a start-up can attest to that fact. Great salespeople make it look easy – or at least hide the struggle well from non-salespeople. Once a great salesperson builds their pipeline, gets down their pitch and starts rolling with it, they can easily bring companies on the pipeline, and move them through, and can often do it with, what looks like, ease and finesse – and often with amazing predictability.
Its worth repeating my post from last December about the December Sales Problem.
December is a hard sales month for companies for several reasons: The month is really only 2.5 weeks long before your prospects shut down. Budgets are often used up. Vacations make it hard to get deals done. Prospects are more focused on their Holiday party then they are on your solution, etc. The list is long, and very intuitive why its hard to get sales done. However, as I’ve posted before, December can actually be an amazing month for sales.
You can draw sales lessons from everywhere in life. The reason for this is that most of sales is about the interaction of human beings with each other – about the acts of persuasion and communication. I write constantly about how everyday life teaches me valuable lessons about how to become a better salesperson and sales manager. First, I wrote about Sales Lessons in a chick flick. Then I wrote about Sales Lessons from my 7 year old. Then, sales lessons from my 2 year old. I also wrote recently about sales lessons from my colorblind brother.
I gave my “Sales 101 for entrepreneurs” lecture to the entrepreneurs at DreamIT Ventures in Philadelphia last week. If you aren’t familiar with them, its a TechStars / Y-Combinator style incubator that helps launch great companies on a shoe-string. It does so by providing a great environment and access to top notch mentors and experienced VC’s and entrepreneurs. I was honored to be one of their speakers this year.
During my presentation, one of the entreprenuers asked me a great question: What should I look for when I’m hiring a sales candidate?
Its been too long since I’ve blogged. Lots of good things going on with QuotaCrush, plus the holidays have kept me away, but I have several topics on which I want to write about and I am goign to be more diligent with sitting down to write.
In the mean-time, an interesting question has come up recently with two different clients about what should be the basis for commission on which I thought I would write a mini-post. Should you pay based on the amount of profit that the sales produces – or should you pay based on the amount of revenue that the project produces.
In speaking to so many start-up entrepreneurs, I get the same question over and over again: what type of sales person should I be hiring?
This is a very interesting dilemma for start-up companies as they begin to build their sales plan, and as they try their best to get to profitability. You have a serious choice. Do you hire someone who is experienced in sales or do you hire a junior, super-energetic salesperson.
The end of any quarter is deal-making time, but December is the best of them all. I was talking to a salesperson the other day whose opinion was, “nothing happens in December” Ah, how UNTRUE! In fact, when other people slow down, its the chance to make a big deal. But… there is a problem with December that puts sales people against sales managers and while both are aware of it, it certainly creates problems for all sides.
Sales professionals live and die by their network. Becoming a very successful salesperson typically means that you can use your network to its fullest to get and GIVE introductions, referrals, and more. There are dozens of posts on ways to build and maintain your network (and I’ll likely have several posts here on this), but what do you do when you want to ask someone in your network for assistance in making contact?
As the credit crisis holds, many start-ups are going to start looking to make sure that they hold onto cash as long as they can.
That may include the decision to eliminate and/or outsource a portion of your sales staff. And, this can often be a very wise business decision. Of course, the cartoon to the right takes it to the extreme, but as start-ups and other companies decide to eliminate sales staff, the challenge becomes on how do you continue (and accelerate) your trajectory in sales with less sales staff and potentially less resources (minimized travel budget, etc).
