My business is growing, and I can finally afford to hire a salesperson, now what?

My first bit of advice, don't. If you are in an upward trend and the only reason you're thinking of hiring a salesperson is to increase revenue, you're doing the wrong thing and you will probably be costing yourself a lot of money learning a mistake you will probably end up repeating because they do not teach you this concept in business school.

I'm emphasizing probably here for one important reason, my advice and experience is not infallible, and this specific scenario is not a universal truth. I have personally hired salespeople for my own business without following this method, I have seen other people do it, I have consulted small businesses to do it as well. That said, do what I say and not what I do, because if you risk the gamble it's a damn expensive mistake you can easily prevent by being patient and doing it the right way:

When is the right time to hire a salesperson?

I used to think this was a variable thing, but over the years I have come to the conclusion that it really isn't. Critical mass is the point where your business gets upward enough to the point where you alone can not facilitate all the tasks to continue the successful operation of your business. I'll say it again: Critical mass is the point where your business gets upward enough to the point where you alone can not facilitate all the tasks to continue the successful operation of your business. The first big mistake I typically see consulting is when a business owner decides that they are fluid, money is coming in, they can hire a guy to keep it up assuming that their new employee is going to work emphatically with the same love and passion and upward trend they are. This causes you to make assumptions about the direction your business will take moving forward.

No.

The unfortunate bit about this is the fact that if you just are getting to the point of profitability and you hire the wrong guy, you will lose your profitability, you could potentially lose your business. A lot of people out there think hiring a salesperson is a turnkey event where you can pull someone on, tell them how to do something and boom goes the dynamite. This is flawed logic from the get-go, and this seems to be the only industry that no one really gets when it comes to that sort of thing.

You would never own a restaurant, hire a 'cook', show him what pots and pans are and say, "cook".

A new employee at any business needs constant supervision until they can stand up on their own and do the job without a necessitating management. This is a fairly universally accepted really except when it comes to sales, which arguably requires even more supervision.

Okay, I think we're on the same page, how do I hire a salesperson the right way?

Don't. This loops back to my first bit of advice, if you aren't at critical mass you have to continue to budget your time and money to hire someone more critical to your business success than a salesperson. You need to hire a sales manager, or a VP of sales to take over the onboarding of new employees. There are a myriad of benefits to this path, and very few negatives, especially if you are at a point where you can expand from a business standpoint. Someone with experience in a similar field to yours who has managed salespeople before will be a well connected and vetted candidate, it'll be very hard for a career sales manager to hide any blemishes on their record because you can't just walk into a business and be a VP or a SM, you need work history. I'll leave going into how to look for a VP or an SM for a future post so I can elaborate on what they do and why you need them below.

What does a VP of Sales do, what does a Sales Manager do, what is the difference?

A VP of sales does a lot of things that your typical salesperson will not do: Size your market, build a canvass, create training materials for sales staff, hire salespeople, fire salespeople, create lyrics for sales calls, source lists for cold calling, build marketing collateral, coach you on how to better position your products and services, and plenty of other small things. From a basic standpoint, a VP of Sales is your end-all powerhouse to generating more revenue, provided you enable them properly. Your VP needs a decent salary, an extremely good understanding of your product, a decent budget to work with for sales needs, final approval on the hiring of salespeople.

When to hire a VP of Sales? You need to really believe in the business and the future success of your products and services, a VP is expensive and demanding and should be reserved for future growth. You wouldn't hire a VP if your end-goal is to be a small shop with up to 5 salespeople, you want someone who can build a small empire of salespeople to generate massive growth for your business over time. If this isn't your business, don't bother with a VP.

A sales manager on the other hand is just that, they manage salespeople. They'll make sure that your salespeople are doing the right things at the right times and the activity is there. They should have a background in sales coaching and training in order to continue to build your dream team. A good one will still do a couple of the things a VP will do, provided they're capable and experienced. They need to be able to hire and fire people and know your product and service just as well, you would treat a SM just the same as you would a VP in the early stages of your business. As you grow, you wouldn't want to task a small business sales manager with a team over 5 or 10 people depending on your territory and what your quotas are, the thinner you spread them the weaker your sales team will be.

The difference between the two is really determined by the scope of your business. Technically a VP of sales is a position above a typical sales manager, maybe two if you have a general sales manager. An enabled VP is going to promote salespeople to management of their own teams and continue to source talent to grow your business, they'll keep everything coming up until you cut them off or tell them to slow down.

Closing

To finalize the above, the best way in my experience to hire a salesperson is to not hire a salesperson. Ideally in a perfect world you could run a small business with 2 sales guys and everything would work out fine, the problem is that they need management and you have a business to run. If you have the kind of time to sit around and be a sales manager, odds are you probably do not have the kind of time to run a business, I find the two are very often mutually exclusive. The expensive mistake you'll make is going to be hiring someone you can't manage who isn't going to manage themselves, that'll cost you a small fortune at a turning point of your business that can't afford that sort of mistake.

~Shade