How do you hire sales people?

[Guest70495]

Hey guys,
I have built my own business from scratch, hustling and handling all parts of it myself, for over 6 years now.
My business is simple: I run an ad agency (solo) for small business that delivers them leads for the service they are offering directly to their phone via SMS.
I built the entire system myself, run ads myself and I acquire my clients and close them personally via phone.

Working 6 years, you get a lot better at closing leads. I have a closing rate of around 20%.
But, the problem is I grab clients in entirely opposite timezone from where I reside and doing it for 6 years has taken a big toll on my personal health.
Basically staying awake and working when the sun goes down until it comes up.
So, I decided it's time to delegate.

But, here's the big problem.

I have sunk A LOT of time and money into looking for people who can handle the sales and closing part of the business.

I close my leads by giving them client story and case studies, after that it's easy to convert them. I have 6 years of client stories and experience I can fall back on for every possible scenario. But, to find someone who can replicate that? I am finding it near impossible.

I gave them closing resources, 20+ of my client phone conversation recordings and overview of my business to study on my hourly clock, but none of them could deliver.
Not to mention none of them are remotely interested, even though I offered them a massive bonus per converted lead. For reference, I've even hired someone who charged $270/hour on UpWork to have a go at 13 of my leads, he billed me for 6 hours and converted zero. I called the same leads back and closed a guy.

Where I live, I have no hope of finding someone who can speak above the 4th grade English level, so I cannot mentor them over the shoulders.

I feel like I've hit a ceiling with this. I cannot delegate so I cannot scale my business, I have explored every possible option.

Does anyone have a similar experience? How do you overcome this? How do you find actual hungry guys willing to put the work in trying to hire online?

 

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[MHP368]

Whats the supply of your leads? , Does it matter if they close below 20% or could you just bruit force the problem?

In other words perhaps the problems at the opposite end with the system you utilize to turn "suspects" into "prospects"

You could have white label salesmen who you never meet (since you say you close over the phone anyway)

And frankly , an entry level pharmacy rep starts at 20 bucks an hour with some bonuses and maybe a paid for car.

How many salesmen exactly have you tried before getting frustrated and posting here?

For 270 dollars an hour you could have a swarm of amateur salesmen take a crack at things. So how many have you actually tried? And again , is their a bottleneck in the clients you get to the point of a phonecall? What's that system look like

 

[Guest70495]

Whats the supply of your leads? , Does it matter if they close below 20% or could you just bruit force the problem?

In other words perhaps the problems at the opposite end with the system you utilize to turn "suspects" into "prospects"

You could have white label salesmen who you never meet (since you say you close over the phone anyway)

And frankly , an entry level pharmacy rep starts at 20 bucks an hour with some bonuses and maybe a paid for car.

How many salesmen exactly have you tried before getting frustrated and posting here?

For 270 dollars an hour you could have a swarm of amateur salesmen take a crack at things. So how many have you actually tried? And again , is their a bottleneck in the clients you get to the point of a phonecall? What's that system look like

I am good at running ads, so I bring in clients through ads. I then talk to them and pitch my service over phone and close them.

I hired 7 phone reps through UpWork, 4 through Reddit and 6 through Craigslist. I gave them at least 20 leads to close. That's 340 leads among them total. So far only one of the hired guys closed a single lead and I gave him another crack at 20 more twice after that and he couldn't close a single one after the initial one.

Since every lead is valuable, I cannot afford to give them anymore as a trial. Those leads are all warmed up with my own tried and tested funnel and my content and consensually submitted their phone numbers willing to get help.

 

[akotu]

I would highly recommend reading the book Built to Sell by John Warrillow.

It's about a guy running an ad agency and is facing burnout due to not being able to scale/hire the right people. Seems like you are in a very similar situation so you should be able to get a lot of value from reading this book.

One takeaway from the book is to create a productized service and to hire people who are good at selling products, not services. These people will be better able to figure out how your product can meet a client’s needs rather than agreeing to customize your services to fit what the client wants.

 

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[MHP368]

Ok so lets start with the process. You run ads. What does your copy say? Can you post it for critique? We have pretty good copywriters here and maybe they can chime in.

So you dont get refferals ot message people on a social network ot send emails? Could you?

Where are your suspects eyes? , Because if youre profitable paying 270 an hour (how long does a sales call take btw?) At a 20% close rate that means youll make money paying 135 an hour for 10% , 67.5 for 5% and so on. Do you see where i'm going with this? What if you had 50 prospects a day? Now would you care if you had a bunch of highschoolers in a boiler room phoning them for ten bucks an hour? If one person was closed every two weeks what would your business look like in a year?!

So thats the angle of not making "leads" so valuable.

Now , i'm not trying to be insulting , i'm not some big shot sales guru. Lets put ego aside for a moment.

Is it possible that a 20% close rate after all these years is actually pretty bad? , So you run an ad and then in one single phonecall you qualify the lead (this is a decision maker , they have the money for your service and you get them to tell you the process they for making bying decusions , which allows them to send you money right then at the end of the call instead of having to "think it over") and you have a dialogue about their pain points and how your service specifically eill meet their needs?

Or do you try to wow them with features and benefits?

Because to me that seems like it should be 2 seperate phone calls or a phone call and a meeting (you mentioned the time zones? But its all over the phone?) , First call qualifies the lead and exposes the pain , you let them talk about whats wrong with how they do it now so they sell themselves. Once youve established this person is a legitimate prospect , they can afford ehat you offer and have divulged of their own accord that they have a problem that needs solving. Then you move on to a second call that lays out the details of how you will srrvice them and you close them.

Break ot up like that and maybe you can just do the initial warm up qualifying calls and your salesmen will have better close rates (or you yourself)

Lets use a metaphor. Say you go to the doctor for a yea5rpy checkup. Youre a bit peeved about the waste of time and the cost but you do have a bit of an ache in your side for a few weeks youd like them to check. Doctor does some assesment and so forth , leaves the room and comes back and says "do you have any family history of kidney disease?"

You just went from mildly interested and a little bit peeved about wasted time and cost to fully focused with a cleared schedule and a blank check didn't you?

Again , I can't judge your lead generation process nor your sales method but on the first note , the math seems pretty clear , if it was raining leads it wouldn't matter if you sent them to amateurs closing 1 in 100 , and if you properly qualified prospects and got them building their own mental story about how bad the problem they face is they'd br trying to shut you up and just sign the contract already! Because they'd br so concerned about the pain and suddenly here you are to take the pain away.

So , food for thought.

One last thing , maybe at the beginning of the call lay out the ground rule "ill take a yes or a no but not a maybe"

Edit : and at what point are you discussing the price of your service?

 

[million$$$smile]

My thoughts are you have to seek out the top sales people competing against you.

You have to 'sell' them on working for you rather than your competition.

The best are already usually hired.

 

[Guest70495]

My thoughts are you have to seek out the top sales people competing against you.

You have to 'sell' them on working for you rather than your competition.

The best are already usually hired.

This is honestly the best idea, I am thinking LinkedIN would be the best place to find my competitors employees and then send them an INMail with my proposal?

I will update this with how it went, thanks a bunch.

@MHP368

The math laid out like that is really helpful. I will try implementing your tips.


@akotu

Thanks, will give it a read.

 

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[Kevin88660]

Hey guys,
I have built my own business from scratch, hustling and handling all parts of it myself, for over 6 years now.
My business is simple: I run an ad agency (solo) for small business that delivers them leads for the service they are offering directly to their phone via SMS.
I built the entire system myself, run ads myself and I acquire my clients and close them personally via phone.

Working 6 years, you get a lot better at closing leads. I have a closing rate of around 20%.
But, the problem is I grab clients in entirely opposite timezone from where I reside and doing it for 6 years has taken a big toll on my personal health.
Basically staying awake and working when the sun goes down until it comes up.
So, I decided it's time to delegate.

But, here's the big problem.

I have sunk A LOT of time and money into looking for people who can handle the sales and closing part of the business.

I close my leads by giving them client story and case studies, after that it's easy to convert them. I have 6 years of client stories and experience I can fall back on for every possible scenario. But, to find someone who can replicate that? I am finding it near impossible.

I gave them closing resources, 20+ of my client phone conversation recordings and overview of my business to study on my hourly clock, but none of them could deliver.
Not to mention none of them are remotely interested, even though I offered them a massive bonus per converted lead. For reference, I've even hired someone who charged $270/hour on UpWork to have a go at 13 of my leads, he billed me for 6 hours and converted zero. I called the same leads back and closed a guy.

Where I live, I have no hope of finding someone who can speak above the 4th grade English level, so I cannot mentor them over the shoulders.

I feel like I've hit a ceiling with this. I cannot delegate so I cannot scale my business, I have explored every possible option.

Does anyone have a similar experience? How do you overcome this? How do you find actual hungry guys willing to put the work in trying to hire online?

I am in financial sales in Singapore.

Where are you based and where are your clients based?

I can try answer from the pov of a sales person. A competent sales person usually want to join a big organisation with a proven product/solution in a proven demand, with reliable after sales service provided by the company. So that they have to just focus on prospecting and selling...and let the company take care of the rest.

If you want to compete for sales talent as a small business entity, you have to look for entrepreneurs, not just sales people, but entrepreneurs who want a bigger piece of the pie compared to what a big organisation can offer for a sales person. Short term rewards just as commission or pay per hours might not be enough to a salesperson because even if the sales person can have the opportunity to make a lot of money in a short period of time, they are always not sure if your company will be around 12 months later.

My gut instinct will be try to find a hungry young man who is passionate in business/entrepreneurship and teach him how to do sales. Offer him a long term profit sharing package if he can prove himself. If you do an open offer here at this forum I am sure there are a lot potential candidates.

 

[ZCP]

honestly, how many people have you tried?
keep trying ..... poach (as @million$$$smile ) said
make it 'a F*cking fantastic place' to do sales ....

and key, no one is going to be as fired up working in your business as you are. their frame of reference is different. communicate what selling for you can do for them and their goals and fulfillment

 

[sparechange]

read the EMYTH why most buisness's dont work, the last few chapters talks about hiring and managing people

 

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[BizyDad]

I've been in a similar boat. Whenever anyone else does sales for me, there are issues with over promising in order to get the close. I prefer to be understated and under promise. Much easier to over deliver that way.

I know you said your key bottleneck is hiring sales people. But if you're up from sundown to sun up, are you really spending most of your time on sales?

Have you considered outsourcing the doing of the ad campaigns?

I ultimately decided to keep control of the sales process, and trained people to do the other work. It has actually worked out quite well, though there were plenty of mistakes made along the way.

And if you're handling sales, I would assume you can target people in a time zone where you live, which keeps you to a more normal work day. Worst case, you take your evenings to two sales appointments, and you're not up all day and night.

Hope this helps.

 

[Johnny boy]

A sales page: 24/7 salesperson who works for a couple of cents per hour and never makes mistakes and can handle a thousand leads at once. No sick days. No training. No payroll taxes. No management issues. No HR department.

 

[Andy Black]

I’m in the same boat.

I hired a career salesman and mentored him for months. in hindsight he didn’t stand a chance because I mould the offer based on what the prospect needs. If the offer was exactly the same from one prospect to the next then he’d have been able to sell it. As it was, I was trying to get a salesman to be a consultant.

Do you have a salespage for your offering, with a buy-now button? My gut tells me you’d benefit from going through the exercise of making your CTA a buy-now button instead of a book-a-call button. Even if you didn’t launch that page you’d have to standardise your service and then work out (and test) a standard way of selling it.

This is holding me back from scaling my own business. I’ve even cancelled my paid plans for Calendly and Zoom to make it harder for me to schedule calls, and thus have to come up with another way of doing things.

Saying that, if you still wanted to outsource the sales calls then may I suggest you stop looking for a salesperson and find an experience digital marketer instead. What if someone is in the same boat as you where they can’t scale because they do the sales side *and* do the technical side? Maybe they want to focus on the sales side and not do the technical builds and optimisation anymore?

Also... what about getting whitelabelled by agencies and freelancers? Or giving them an affiliate commission?

 

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[Andy Black]

A sales page: 24/7 salesperson who works for a couple of cents per hour and never makes mistakes and can handle a thousand leads at once. No sick days. No training. No payroll taxes. No management issues. No HR department.

^^^ This.

It’s not a simple thing to create a sales page that converts visitors into customers/clients without our involvement.

We have to dial in getting the right visitors to the page, and a steady stream of them.

We have to work on the copy to convince people to part with their money without a phone call.

Most importantly, our actual offer will have to become standardised.

I’ve done fine over the last 10 years doing consulting calls that result in prospects signing up.

The downside is that my offer isn’t standardised enough to scale (without adding a headcount of consultants ... aka building an agency).

If I was forced to sell from a salespage then I’d be forced to standardise the offer.

I think that’s the biggest benefit of creating a salespage with a buy-now button. It forces us as business owners to come up with a scalable offer.

 

[Guest70495]

I’m in the same boat.

I hired a career salesman and mentored him for months. in hindsight he didn’t stand a chance because I mould the offer based on what the prospect needs. If the offer was exactly the same from one prospect to the next then he’d have been able to sell it. As it was, I was trying to get a salesman to be a consultant.

Do you have a salespage for your offering, with a buy-now button? My gut tells me you’d benefit from going through the exercise of making your CTA a buy-now button instead of a book-a-call button. Even if you didn’t launch that page you’d have to standardise your service and then work out (and test) a standard way of selling it.

This is holding me back from scaling my own business. I’ve even cancelled my paid plans for Calendly and Zoom to make it harder for me to schedule calls, and thus have to come up with another way of doing things.

Saying that, if you still wanted to outsource the sales calls then may I suggest you stop looking for a salesperson and find an experience digital marketer instead. What if someone is in the same boat as you where they can’t scale because they do the sales side *and* do the technical side? Maybe they want to focus on the sales side and not do the technical builds and optimisation anymore?

Also... what about getting whitelabelled by agencies and freelancers? Or giving them an affiliate commission?

My problem is the same, the thing I pitch is quite dynamic, no two people have same issues and I make solutions for them on the fly and back them up with a similar client case study from the past.

Also, about handling the ad part, that doesn't need outsourcing or delegating. I spend like 5 minutes a day MAX to manage all the ads for clients most of the stuff is automated and I receive a notification only when things break and they haven't broken in a long time.
I do not take high time investment businesses anyways, running ads for small businesses doesn't take more than 30 minutes man-hours total, which I am not willing to delegate as I've perfected the process with experience. Teaching it to a person experienced in digital marketing to delegate is just like giving him the keys to copy my entire funnel and backend management.

A sales page: 24/7 salesperson who works for a couple of cents per hour and never makes mistakes and can handle a thousand leads at once. No sick days. No training. No payroll taxes. No management issues. No HR department.

I've tried a sales page, but like I said my offering is dynamic and the conversion rate was abysmally low. I couldn't even break even on that.

 

[Andy Black]

Teaching it to a person experienced in digital marketing to delegate is just like giving him the keys to copy my entire funnel and backend management.

You could teach someone like me WHAT your system does, and WHY it works. I wouldn't need to know the intricacies of HOW. I'm sure there's many digital marketing folks who want to move away from the coal-face and prefer the sales side.

I've tried a sales page, but like I said my offering is dynamic and the conversion rate was abysmally low. I couldn't even break even on that.

See if you can make an offering that isn't dynamic?

 

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