Every now and again I’m asked if I know of an independent salesperson or group of salespeople who would be “guns for hire”. “A” players who go out and hunt and bring in big ticket sales on a freelance basis. They wouldn’t be employees, just contractors.
It makes sense that I might know such people. Ideally they would be hot-shot and “Sandler-trained”. As the world’s largest sales training organisation, we here at Sandler are best-placed to either know or even create such a group.
It comes as a surprise to my contacts when I have to tell them that I don’t know anyone that fits the bill. After so many years and I still haven’t found them.
Why is that so? Well, in the first place I don’t train many “salespeople”. Most of my clients are account managers, engineers, channel managers, customer service teams, business owners, business directors. They all are revenue generators. Just not pure “salespeople”. Don’t mis-understand me, I do train salespeople. But usually they aren’t good salespeople. Their bosses have brought them to me because they have hired a small team that they can’t get enough money out of. When I get them to a level of being “good”, my client is delighted. Rightly so. But “hot-shot”? To have a “hot-shot” salesperson the organisation would have had to have hired an “A” player. And they would not have done that.
Let’s look at why most organisations don’t hire “A” players.
Firstly most business owners would not know how to manage one. Secondly they don’t know how to spot one. Thirdly they wouldn’t be able to afford to keep one if they ended up with one.
Let’s start in reverse order.
How much does a “hot-shot” expect to be paid in order to stay? Top UK salespeople expect to be able to earn well over £200k. So there’s a problem, straight away. The hiring organisation’s offering would have to have the ability to sell enough at a high-enough price point to justify that kind of commission. And if the top salesperson is earning well in excess of £200k, in most small businesses that means they are earning more than anyone else in the business. And that makes them rightly feel they are key to the business’s future. How can the organisation keep them motivated to stay if the salesperson is that good? And what would happen if the salesperson threatened to leave? How easy would it be to keep them accountable when they are that key to the business?
Most businesses owners don’t know how to identify an “A” player. Suppose the salesperson has done well in their previous position. They can even show you huge payslips. But does that mean they can reproduce the magic somewhere else? Were they previously in the right place at the right time, with the right offering, right systems, right team, with the right support? How can you be sure they can do it all over again in your organisation? What about their sales skills, their ability to prospect, their attitude, their experience in your field, their ability to pick-up on your offering and the problems that you solve, and their habits? Unfortunately most business owners don’t know they should be checking for all these or how to go about doing so.
And that leaves the biggest problem of all. How to manage an “A” player. How long does it take to get an “A” player up to operating speed in your new environment? What do they need to know and do by when? How do they need to be kept motivated and kept to account? The “A player” should see themselves as operating their own business within their sponsoring organisation. It’s their job to keep the organisation that pays their commission happy. Their number one client (their only client, really) is the one paying the bills. Consequently there should be no mis-understandings about what is required and expected by both sides. The organisation should require and expect their top salespeople to sell in a certain way, using a defined sales process and sales methodology and that is what should happen. Typically small businesses don’t have a sales process nor a sales methodology and don’t and can’t hold their people to account and are therefore at the mercy of their salespeople. In other words, most small businesses could not handle an “A player” if they hired one.
If the small business cannot identify, manage or afford an “A player” salesperson as an employee, how much better will they be when it comes to a freelance version? Out-sourcing the problem looks like a solution at first glance. Quickly it becomes clear that is not the case. Suppose the freelancer is “good”, just not “A player”. They will burn through your best leads, frighten off your good contacts, possibly turn off your existing clients. Good salespeople are really good at one thing in particular; assuring you that the pipeline is healthy. It might even be true. But a healthy pipeline doesn’t pay the bills. Paid invoices from happy clients do. In other words, if you are indeed going to out-source to a freelancer, you had better be sure they really are an “A player”. Anything else might shut your business. That means the organisation will have to be very good at identifying the real “A player”. And be on top of their game when it comes to motivating and keeping them accountable. Who would be their coaches? What training will they have?
By now you can probably see why there are so few freelance salespeople. They have to be very good in order to have the confidence to offer themselves out for hire, but there aren’t many organisations who could handle them. The freelancers would have to be confident that they can earn the right level of commission and have the right tools and support structures from the hiring organization. Ironically, if the hiring organisation had all those things they would probably want to hire employees instead anyway. It’s often precisely because those things are lacking that the organisation is looking to out-source in the first place.
This article has been explaining why it is unlikely that a small business will find a good freelance salesperson. So if the small business does not want to hire internally, what options do they have?
At this point I typically turn the spotlight on the people the business already has. Most small businesses under-rate the resources they already have. The directors, the operation team, the office support team are perfectly-placed to bring in revenue. In fact they probably already are. They just need to be aware of the opportunities they are producing and then get a lot better at closing them. Small businesses are too quick to hire salespeople. There comes a time when it makes sense to do so, but by then the whole organisation knows the sales process and sales methodology and can properly support dedicated revenue-generators.
The other option is to look at Channel Sales. There is often an outside organisation , already selling to the right people who would willingly sell the product or service.
Identifying and managing an external channel salesforce is a whole different heap of problems, one that we’ll look at in a future article.
