Of course you want more sales! Everyone does. But hiring a new salesperson who can produce on par with your most successful salespeople is one of the most difficult hires to make. And the truth is, you might not even need to.
Before you invest a ton of time and energy into launching a search, why not review your current sales team and re-hire the high performers you already have? It may sound counterintuitive, but with a slight shift in thinking and strategy, you can easily increase the productivity and ROI for your top salespeople.
Why should you “re-hire” someone?
Think of your most successful salesperson. When she first came on board all she had was time. Time to prospect, time to make sales presentations, time to close deals. Wasn’t that an exciting time for everyone?!
Over time, that success has come other demands on her time. Now she’s spending more and more time taking care of the business she’s built and less and less time on prospecting, presentations, and closing. In reality, she might be spending only 10% to 20% of her time on sales-related activities.
You want to keep increasing sales, so you decide to go looking for someone else just like her. Someone who can prospect, present, and close on par with what she was doing a few years ago. The problem is, those people are hard to find, and success at that level is hard to replicate.
What’s the solution? Instead of hiring someone to replace her sales revenue, hire someone to take on her non-sales related work. You know, all of those things that are taking away from her ability to keep selling. Hire someone to take those responsibilities, and you’ll get your old salesperson (and her numbers) back in no time!
How to make it happen
Take inventory of all of the demands on your top salesperson’s time. Wherever you find tasks and activities that don’t have to do with prospecting, presenting, and closing, package them together to create a job description for the new person you want to hire.
Based on how prolific your salesperson is, this may still be a very high level position. Perhaps even a relatively expensive one. However, it should be easier to fill and execute with predictable success. But the main advantage is that it will free up your proven talent to get back out there and start prospecting presenting, and closing deals again.
Imagine what your best salesperson could bring in if you were able to give her back the 80% - 90% of her time that is being taken up with non-sales related issues. Even if you only recapture 50% of that time, it will be a huge return on your “re-hiring” investment.
The next time you find yourself wishing for another top salesperson, take a moment to stop and think about it. Do you really want to launch a search for your company’s next great sales talent? Or should you be thinking about your current star performers instead?
Re-hire your best salespeople by giving them the support they need to live up to their full potential, and soon you’ll have all the sales you need!
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