It’s going to be
frustrating, time consuming, difficult, and emotionally draining with a minimal chance of success.
Years ago, I created one of my first seminars: How to Find, Interview, Select and Hire a Good Salesperson. I was responding to the experience of my clients who were universally terrible at hiring a salesperson. Over the years,
I’ve taught that seminar to hundreds of entrepreneurs and sales managers. At the beginning of the seminar, I ask this question: How many of you had a good experience with the first salesperson you hired? No hands go up. Occasionally, someone will raise a tentative hand, but then explain. “Well sort of, but…..” and provide caveats to their tentative response.
Add that experience to my over 35 years of working with B2B salesforces, and I can unequivocally state that there is a 99% chance that you will have a miserable, time consuming, disappointing experience when you attempt to employ your first salesperson.
Your disillusionment may come during the hiring process as you find yourself being frustrated with your inability to find the right person. But, more likely, it will come a few months after you have made the hire, as you realize that the person you hired is not producing like you thought he/she would. And then your stomach begins to churn as you realize that you hired the wrong person.
There are lots of reasons for that miserable success rate. First, most first time hirer’s are blissfully naive. They have been a salesperson, or they have been around salespeople. “How difficult could it be?” they think. So, they blithely go forward with misplaced confidence, expecting that hiring a salesperson is just like hiring an administrative assistant or customer service rep. They don’t do a thorough job of
hiring a salesperson because they have never done it before and have overly simple ideas of the process.