To do this, a robust strategy is required and onboarding the right resources at the right time is critical. For example, a big hitter with no leads is a heavy overhead, therefore it may be more appropriate to focus on lead generation activities first to get the motor running first.

The importance of Content

Irrespective of whether you use internal resources of external providers for your lead generation, you will need some form of marketing, tasked with creating collateral to help spark interest for your lead generation activities.

But it’s not enough to just make content. You have to make content that is directly applicable to the salespeople’s needs and find ways to easily get that content into their hands. If you are lacking the ammunition of brochures, case studies and ROI calculators perhaps it’s time you extend your efforts and create them.

This should take us back to the Value Proposition as a simple place to start is by getting back to basics. Whilst this sounds like a dull process of going back to the beginning, it is also a critical element of any new hire’s education and we should always be checking to make sure we’re still relevant.

To do this you have to think about your target Customers and your Product/Service mix. For the customer you should be creating content around Wants, Fears and Needs, and for Product/Service you need to cover off Features, Benefits and Experience.

Only by doing this will it allow you to create the right content for the right audiences.  Once armed with such material you are far better placed to stimulate and feed the Lead Generation function.

But who generates leads?

My personal preference is always to hire internally for Lead Generation and a great way I have found to keep this initial cohort of salespeople/SDR’s interested is to engage them in the strategy.  By showing them a clear development plan – you’d be amazed how motivating it can be as a junior hire to spend time with the Top Performers and Founder in the business as part of their evolution.

Taking on a more junior sales hire with mentoring, clear direction, and good quality marketing support also allows you to offer significant steps in their earning capability; although don’t rule out adding more experienced hires into the blend – provided they buy in to your longer-term strategies.

Hire based on sales talent

Hiring based on recognizing core sales talent is a stronger sales indication than purely looking at ‘years in industry’. But how do you identify sales talent?

Good salespeople must be effective communicators, socially strategic, technical, patient and have plenty of good old-fashioned grit. Primarily, you must evaluate if an individual has the ability to learn, develop and be coached.

You need salespeople who can recognize their own mistakes and areas to improve and figure out how to do better. We have found that salespeople who are naturally curious and humble are generally far more able to learn from others (management, coaches, peers) and from their own experience. This is something you need to look out for.

At the same time, you need to ask yourself is this person going to work hard enough to foster a culture of competitiveness on my team and drive revenue? You can evaluate this by asking about career goals (people who have high ambitions want to beat the competition to make it to the top).

Overcoming the hurdles and getting the blend right

A hurdle that often comes into play is getting the sales team to use the collateral on an ongoing basis. And one element that is often skipped is getting the marketing and sales team to continually work together on collateral ideas. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised by how many teams skip this step – something a great sales playbook such as GrowthEnabla can support.

Whether it’s quarterly, monthly or weekly, schedule regular meetings with the sales team to touch base and get updates on what’s needed. From there, you can prioritize projects based on what’s requested and have a steady flow of collateral that will actually support with the sales process.

By building your sales function and ensuring to evaluate your strategy, sales talent, and collateral, will ground the sales team and provide a strong position for the team to overcome hurdles.

It will also set them up for success and start the process of shifting the sales responsibility and sales targets away from the Founders and allow them to address other aspects of the business growth.

The job can be tough and challenging, especially when they’re also the primary revenue driver in the business. The ideal solution is to have another leader who is responsible for the continued success of the revenue stream. Usually, this is a Sales.

So, what does a Sales Director look like and how is it possible to find the right person for a business? It’s a very common scenario for a business to struggle to find the ideal Sales Director, going through a lot of failed hires, which is very risky and also extremely costly.

In addition to the expense, when a Sales Director is found who seems like the right fit, the average longevity of a Sales Director is only 19 months and it’s estimated, that during the first nine months of their tenure, they are ineffective because they are building their credibility in the company.

These are pretty shocking statistics and even in the best-case scenario, the sales industry is not known as a stable environment. When a Founder/Director of a business experiences this first hand, they might decide to do away with the Sales Director position and take it on themselves.

This may seem like a risky step, but is it?

When the company’s revenue is at stake, it’s a smart move to cut back on stress and expenditure and build the sales team into a super productive unit. Does the MD, the FD or another role have time to be the Sales Director too?

Time is the traditional enemy of most leaders in a business. There’s too much that needs attention, too many problems that need fixing now and a sales team that needs leadership. It seems impossible, so back to the Sales Director, right?

Not necessarily. From experience this is where many Founder/Directors often make significantly costly errors by hiring the wrong person at the wrong time in the business evolution. I’ve lost count of the number of Founder/Directors I’ve met that, with the best intentions, have hired someone to lead and drive the revenue number. The downside is that if they’re not totally immersed in the journey and heartbeat of the business then making an external hire without the necessary structure in place is often about as successful as pinning the tail on the donkey.    

Indeed I recently met a Founder/Director who had spent upwards of £400k over a 3-year period through hiring supposedly high level people, often from big business backgrounds, without the necessary sales systems in place.

This is where a more robust strategy is required, one that considers a sales system and support technology. Thereafter onboarding the right resources at the right time is equally critical. For example a big hitter with no leads is a heavy overhead therefore it may be more appropriate to focus on taking on a more Junior sales hire with mentoring, clear direction and good quality marketing support.

This way the Director/Founder is still involved in the high-level discussions but not having to lead all aspects of the sale. In doing so they can focus on other elements of growing the business.

The right Sales Leader in the business at the right time often makes the difference between a business that flies and a business that stutters.

Wealth Warning – whilst letting go of sales to focus on other areas of the business feels like a key step forward for a Founder/Director, it needs to be a considered process with a well thought through sales strategy and evolution process. Making a success of a stepping away from Founder/Director led sales should be a planned ‘delegation’ and not a costly ‘abdication’ that takes the business backwards.

If you’re lucky, there’ll be sales training once you’ve got won a position, but how do you prepare for that first interview and how do you persuade a company you can do the job?

You can start off in a relatively easy job and work your way up, using the experience you accumulate as your ‘training’.  In other words, learn on the job.  Experience teaches us what works and shapes what we know.

Learning will teach us what to do, but we can only get experience from actually doing it. So, which is more important? It’s impossible to say, because there are too many additional factors that come into play to influence the different outcomes. The saying: ‘If only I’d known then, what I know now’ describes looking back and wishing our experience could be retro added, to protect us from the mistakes we made.

What is certain, is that learning from mistakes will be significantly lower, if there is proper training.  The value of training cannot be underestimated. Really, who wants someone learning by their mistakes on actual customers?

Sales people are in a unique position, precisely because there is no specific ‘learning’ path to teach selling skills and techniques. There are no exams to take, no quick starter courses to catapult you up the ladder, no certificate to prove you know how to do the job.

Experience then, becomes the key to success but, and it’s a big but, experience can be limited to a specific sphere and not transferable.  The way to achieve consistent results in any sales environment, is to make sure your sales people are selling the way you want them to.  They’re not all going to be the same type, they might be confident and experienced with a great track record (perhaps why you hired them), or they might be straight from school, with zero experience and a hefty dose of first job anxiety. Whether you have a mixed bunch, or they all have similar experience (or lack of), how do you get your sales team all selling the way you want them to?

Simple. You tell them. You train them. You measure their results, and you reward them for doing things the way you want.  The better your induction and onboarding, the better they’ll be set up for success.  Regular training will teach them new skills if they’re new to the workforce, or if they’re experienced staff, it’ll be a refresher to get rid of any bad habits.

A good sales process, which matches experience with proper learning, is the key to ensuring all your team achieve their potential and maximise your company’s success.  If you think this doesn’t apply to you, because your team aggregate is ok and your top performers are doing well enough to cover the less experienced people, consider what might upset the balance of your team and affect your bottom line:

• There’s a sudden disruptor in your market
• One or more of your top performers leave to join your competitor
• You lose a couple of long term customers

One or more of these will happen at some point and they are all outside your control.  You can minimise the risk to your business, by introducing a sustainable sales system with regular training and performance management.  In addition to staff development, it’s important to reward and recognise the behaviour you want to see.

Muhammad Ali could’ve been talking about sales with this quote:

“I hated every minute of training, but I said: ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’.”

While gaining their experience in the field, give your sales people regular great training and you might just build yourself a team of champions!