Hiring Salespeople?

Hi,

Has anyone here any experience of using salespeople to find work? I am
thinking of hiring one to find work in local businesses, etc. The sales
person would then get a cut of any work gained. Is this a win-win
strategy to find work?

Many thanks,

Erriksen

In article <1111744644.698296.77790@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
erriksen@go.com says...
> Hi,
>
> Has anyone here any experience of using salespeople to find work? I am
> thinking of hiring one to find work in local businesses, etc. The sales
> person would then get a cut of any work gained. Is this a win-win
> strategy to find work?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Erriksen
>
>
Whereabouts in the world are you ?

"Erriksen" <erriksen@go.com> wrote in message
news:1111744644.698296.77790@g14g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
> Hi,
>
> Has anyone here any experience of using salespeople to find work? I am
> thinking of hiring one to find work in local businesses, etc. The sales
> person would then get a cut of any work gained. Is this a win-win
> strategy to find work?

There are 3 questions you have to really think about for this...

1) Can you find enough work to justify the expense?
2) Will you be able to keep up with the work?
3) How much do you pay them?

From time to time I use telephone sales people to find restaurants to buy
into my online ordering system... for me to look at the above 3 questions I
come up with:

Q) Can you find enough work to justify the expense?
A) With roughly 1.2 million restaurants in North America there is a large
pool of potential customers for us.

Q) Will you be able to keep up with the work?
A) It can take as little as 15 minutes to set up a restaurant and create
their menu. So we can definitly keep up with the volume if we get alot of
sales in a month.

Q) How much do you pay them?
A) For each restaurant signed up we get the initial set up fee that runs
from $120 to $370 depending on what package they sign up for. When we are
using sales people we pay $500 per month plus 20% commision on the set up
fee.


If you hire a sales person the toughest question to answer is going to be
#3: "How much do you pay them?"

When combined with #1, how much you pay them has to be enough to justify
them working for you... if you expect somebody to be working for you pretty
much full time, or atleast enough time that its effectivly a full time job
for them, then they are going to need to be making "full time job" income.

In our case a good telephone sales person should be able to sign up 100-200
restaurants per month... the commision combined with the $500 adds up to a
level of pay that reflects them working full time (which they are) and since
this is only a part of the setup/initial fee and not part of the ongoing
transaction and monthly fees we charge, we can afford to pay that.

But... if you are doing websites around $2,500 a shot and they are bringing
in 2 or 3 jobs a month... you have to look at what you can afford to pay
them where you make enough money for your work put in... but at the same
time that they make enough money to justify them continuing to work for you.

If they maintain those levels (2-3 jobs a month at $2,500 a job) and you pay
them 20% thats $1000-1500 a month... not a bad income and definitly better
than nothing... but what happens to them if there is a bad month and no job
leads come in? Or the customer jerks you around and stretches the job out
for months, or just paying for the job takes months? Or you have an
accident and break your arm and can't do any work for a month?

To them it becomes a case of one bad spell and they could be pretty much out
on the street since they have no set/guaranteed income coming in...

But.. if you pay them a monthly income and any of the above happens... then
its money out of your pocket with no work coming in...

And... if you don't tie in commision in some way then it could hamper their
motivation. You could end up with a case where they look and say "Eh... if
I don't make any sales this month I still get paid" or even "I have been
averaging 3 sales a month for the last few months and the boss is happy... I
made my 3 this month already and I have another 5 in the pipe... if I draw
the 5 out over the next 2 months I got my sales for the next 2 months
covered and that means less work for me"

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005, Augustus wrote:

> "Erriksen" <erriksen@go.com> wrote in message
> news:1111744644.698296.77790@g14g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > Has anyone here any experience of using salespeople to find work? I am
> > thinking of hiring one to find work in local businesses, etc. The sales
> > person would then get a cut of any work gained. Is this a win-win
> > strategy to find work?
>
> There are 3 questions you have to really think about for this...

s/3/4/

>
> 1) Can you find enough work to justify the expense?
> 2) Will you be able to keep up with the work?
> 3) How much do you pay them?

4) Can you be certain that they won't use spam to try to promote you?

--
">> consider moving away from Front Page...."
">To what? Any suggestions?"
"Naked bungee-jumping. It's less humiliating <g>"
-- Matt Probert in alt.www.webmaster, March 20, 2005

"Norman L. DeForest" <af380@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.1050325160520.24983C-100000@halifax.chebucto.ns.ca...
> >
> > 1) Can you find enough work to justify the expense?
> > 2) Will you be able to keep up with the work?
> > 3) How much do you pay them?
>
> 4) Can you be certain that they won't use spam to try to promote you?

Well, from the tone of the original post it sounded more like he was looking
for somebody to actually do sales work... and not just advertise/promote his
services.

As for spamming... though frowned upon by some/many it might be what the OP
wants to do... at which point it wouldn't be a major concern to them.

"Augustus" <Imperial.Palace@Rome.com> wrote in
news:3aj274F67po16U1@individual.net: a whole bunch of stuff

very cogent explanation Agustus. i've been playing with what i refer to
as "markup". i have my costs, for some growth prospects I'm willing to do
a break-even, i'm letting my best prospect go for it: let her get out
there and sell us as high as she can and keep the difference. all she has
to do is not price herself out of the market.

you nailed our price point, we can't really do anything for anybody for
less than $2500USD right now.

before that the matter was...basically the same. I know my production
costs, i set margins, i tack on whatever percentage sales wants on top of
the job, the client takes it or they don't.

in one sense, it's not fair to sales. i make darn sure my production
people are fairly compensated "for every hour that you aren't on your
couch eating pizza", but not only can i see their work, i hired them (or
took them on for the job) on the basis of tangibles. with sales, all i
have is gut instinct. we have mouths to feed so there's just so much i'll
leave to gut instinct. on the other hand, i'm not holding a gun to
anybody's head. i'm confident in our product, the team is stronger than
six angry samoans, the person that takes us as a saleable product
believes in us and believes in themselves.

i don't think in terms of "salesperson" therefore, that's a lowly
description that i might as well fill. i think in terms of an account
executive, i had a good one a few years ago and i'm training another now.
i have a revenue sharing partnership in mind for her at the very least
and equity is not out of the question.

have you ever seen a really crack account exec at work? you buy their
rolodex as much as you buy them. a good account exec can have as much to
do with success as a quality product. i don't know how they do it but
suspect it has something to do with knowing what to order at French
restaurants.

let's face it, most of our sale points are useless technical gobbldegook
to the decision makers. the language of business is plain <insert your
native language here>, person to person, who are you, what do you do,
where do you want to go? but we are a custom solutions shop.

for an account exec, i don't consider technical expertise to be strictly
necessary, i look for presentation skills and a general apprehension of
corporate-business-speak. their primary job is to establish an emmitional
connection based on understanding of business challenges. their teeth
have to be whiter than mine, their eyes more focussed, their clothes
looking like they got dressed at Bloomingdale's, they are all American
even if they are from Sweden, they are, in short, everything i am not
when i've been up all night riding shotgun with the code crew and
stitching together solutions.

the one piece of advice i can refer on the custom side is this: seek
lifelong relationships with your customers and your people. pick only the
best, look out for them and the best percentage will look out for you.
form a vision in your mind of all of you attaining success together.
Priotize company objectives around human need if you can: who needs
braces? Who's kid is going off to college this fall? do we need to cover
for X because his mother is sick?

be challenging, demmanding, firm, but listen, learn from your people, and
when you dellegate authority, make sure you state the specific
acheivables for the job and let them do it. Support them, guide them, but
let them do their jobs. if they don't make the acheivables, it's time to
reevalute them or let that person

seek bhudda elsewhere,

for once without vitriolic sarcasm,

trevor

www.dataSpheric.com