How to Find the Right Salesperson for Your Small Business

Transcription:

Jim Fitzpatrick:
George, thanks so much for joining us on the show once again.

George Deeb:
Yeah, Jim, thrilled to be here.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, and happy new year, I might add. Here we are now in 2022. It seems like these years are flying by. And we’re now coming out of the second year of COVID and businesses are still not a hundred percent or back to where they were back in 2019. However, that being said, business and the economy seems to be rolling right along, record stock market out there and so many businesses are telling us that there’s shortage of maybe product, but certainly not of customers. So there’s a lot of companies out there, a lot of small businesses that are looking to add salespeople to their team, to take care of the market that’s out there for them. And so you mentioned 1,024 types of salespeople. Explain the 1,024.

George Deeb:
Yeah. You know, it’s funny. To me, I’ve come up with 10 different skillsets that you need to assess in coming up with a good salesperson. And there’s kind of two options for each one of those skillsets. So if you have two choices and you have to make 10 of those decisions, two to the 10th power is 1024. So it’s finding that right one salesperson that checks off all of those boxes.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And that is so incredibly hard to do as managers out there and companies and businesses, it’s so hard to find somebody that does actually check all the boxes. You might bring someone in and say, “Well, their skills are a little bit lax, but man, they got a great attitude and a great personality, and we know they’ll be great in front of customers.” Or you might get somebody that isn’t great on the personality side, but they check all of the other boxes. They’ve got the product knowledge down and they’re very well organized and they’re in on time. So it’s very difficult for today’s entrepreneurs and business owners to really find that right fit that’s going to work for them. So let’s, if we can, let’s run through these 10 different skill sets and considerations that you’ve outlined here. Number one is inside sales versus outside sales. Talk to us about that.

George Deeb:
Yeah, to me, they’re really obviously two different things. An outside salesperson for the most part is a road warrior. They love to travel. They’re traveling to clients’ offices and selling at the clients’ locations. Whereas an inside salesperson is working inside your own office and is talking to clients inside their own facility and very little travel involved, so that’s the primary difference there. And you want to make sure if you’ve got somebody that’s going to be on the road all the time, that they’re going to be happy traveling, because if they’re not happy traveling, they’re going to be miserable traveling and then they’re going to quit and you’re going to have to rehire somebody down the road.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. What are we calling the salesperson today that doesn’t come into the office and really isn’t a road warrior, but they’re now working from their home and without any supervision or without the benefit of maybe the showroom or the excitement of the fellow salespeople in an office setting and now they’re in their house working?

George Deeb:
Yeah, I guess the word we’ve come up with that is a virtual salesperson. They’re working from their house. The skill sets there might be a combination of inside and outside sales. Inside is they’re working from their home. That’s no different than working from your office. Outside meaning that you’re typically fill this as a gap until your clients are ready to have in person meetings again. And if the clients are willing and open to in person meetings, you should be willing and open to go back to your normal outbound process.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure, sure. What do you do when a salesperson comes in, needs a job, wants a job, wants to come to work for you and your requirement is you got to come in each day. We’d like to see you. We want to have meetings with you. We want to have one-on-ones. We want to do a little bit of training, but it’s really an office based job. And that person says, “Well, I’ve always worked on the road and I’ve been successful that way. But yeah, love to join your company.” Should that be a red flag?

George Deeb:
Well, speaking to this point, if they’re not going to be half be working in the office and you need them to be in the office, it’s not going to work for both parties. So you got to come up with a solution that kind of works for both parties.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So number two is hunters versus gatherers in terms of working leads.

George Deeb:
Yeah, a hunter is really good at cold calling and tracking down their own prospects and kind of developing opportunities from nothing. A gatherer is just the opposite. Some marketing department is generating leads. Those leads get handed to the salesperson and then the salesperson converts those leads into sales. And the skillset sets are really different. Some people are just not happy with the mundane and the boring, repetitive nature that comes with cold calling and they want somebody else to have to deal with hunting leads for them. And you just got to make sure that the person you’re hiring is to be happy in the role that you’re asking of them.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. And all of this can come out in an effective interview to go down this road, to try to find out what motivates that individual salesperson and what programs they’ve been on or what environments they’ve been working in previously. Right?

George Deeb:
Yeah. I think what you just talked about through the interview process, the whole point of these 10 concepts in this discussion is that these are the 10 questions you need to ask them. Need to assess your own business, need to assess what your opportunities are and what you’re trying to accomplish and make sure that that candidate fits your model. If you’re trying to put a square peg in a circular hole, it’s never going to work.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. I agree. Number three is selling into enterprise versus small sized businesses.

George Deeb:
Yeah. It’s a really different exercise selling into the enterprise. When you’re selling into Fortune 500 size companies, oftentimes it’s a much longer sales cycle. It’s much more relationship building, lots of wining and dining and schmoozing those accounts, and it’s different. And when you’re working inside of a big organization, there’s oftentimes many decision makers inside of a big company, and you got to not only romance the person to department one, but in department two and department three at the same time. And you got to make sure you know how to work the organization, not just work the individual.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, no question. And then big ticket products versus small ticket products.

George Deeb:
Yeah. This goes hand in hand with the enterprise concept. Typically when you’re selling into enterprise, you’re selling much more expensive, bigger ticket products. And the bigger the ticket, the bigger the budget is required to afford that product. The more decision makers are going to have to be involved to approve that product. So you want to make sure that someone is good at kind of working organization and has the attention to detail and the organizational skills to nurture that lead over time to kind of work them through to closing because selling bigger ticket products is typically harder.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, for sure. And you’ve got here simple products versus consultive selling.

George Deeb:
Yeah. I mean, let’s pretend a simple product is a pencil. Everybody knows what a pencil is. It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to understand what you’re selling somebody. If the product you’re selling them is this complex new piece of software and it’s got a lot of features and functionalities and moving parts to it and you have to actually educate them on why they need this tool, how it’s going to improve their business, how it’s going to them more revenues or lower their costs or replace their current processes, somebody’s got to walk them through the software and show them the key advantages and features that will help improve their business.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, for sure. Direct selling versus reselling. What do you mean by that?

George Deeb:
Yeah. I mean most salespeople are direct sellers for their own companies, but there’s a whole group of salespeople out there that are resellers that are basically outside reps that are representing dozens of companies as they’re out there selling. So I have another business in the restaurant industry. Let’s say you have a restaurant industry sales rep. Well, when he’s out there talking to the restaurant, he’s got a relationship for furniture. He’s got a relationship for the kitchen products and the utensils and the food, and he’s representing a bunch of different businesses.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I gotcha, okay. And then early-stage company versus established company. Talk to us about this one.

George Deeb:
Yeah, this is an important one. In later-stage businesses, those companies tend to be very organized. They’ve got their processes completely figured out. They’ve got their systems completely figured out. You’re fitting in within their formula, and it is very easy to kind of jump in and everything’s organized and simple and the training is very efficient and it’s simple. In a small business, most startups, as an example, you’re still figuring it out. You’re figuring out your go-to-market strategy. You’re figuring out whether there’s a good product-market fit and the customers are going to want to buy the product. You’re figuring out what the process is and how many touchpoints you need and how complex the sale is. And you’re still learning and getting your own process and system off the ground.

George Deeb:
So in an early-stage business, you need somebody that’s flexible and fluid, can think on their own two feet, can contribute ideas on how to ideate new processes and new system improvements or whatever it is. The situation I’ve run into in the past is if you have a big company guy that you throw into a startup environment, they sometimes struggle because you don’t have it organized, and they can’t get the training materials figured out, and they got to figure it out on their own. And you want to make sure you’re getting the right person in the right role.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I couldn’t agree more. And they’ll turn and say, “Well, who in the company handles this?”

George Deeb:
Exactly.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
And it’s like, “You do.” “Well, wait a minute. The last company I was with had an entire department that handled this and I could just throw it on that individual’s desk and they’d take it from there.” So I agree, I think this is a common mistake that many small startups will make, because they’ll say, “Hey, we’re a tech company or sell computer or whatever and we were able to get this guy from IBM or from Apple,” or something like that. And while the resume sounds great and that big brand sounds great to bring into your company, to your point, it could be troublesome because they did have a person or a department to handle every aspect of that process or those situations that come up. And that’s just not the case in a startup. So it really seems to me that there’s got to be a lot of time spent with that big name person that comes in to say, “Look, we’re trying to figure this out ourselves every single day and every day is a new day. We’re learning. We don’t know what we don’t know. And are you okay with that?” Right?

George Deeb:
It’s interesting because I’ve run into this problem myself, especially earlier in my career. I got romanced by those big brand names, your Oracle technology guy, your Kellogg’s marketing guy. And even if in the interview they say, “Oh yeah, I’m cool with the startup environment. I think that’s exactly what I want.” You got to peel the layers of the onion back there to make sure they’re really going to be good with that. Because oftentimes they’re saying whatever they think you want to hear to get the offer, and once they get started, they’re miserable or you’re highly disappointed with the performance. You’re going to have to change down the road, and that’s twice as expensive and twice as cumbersome to kind of have to fix that mistake.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. And this is an area I think for small business owners to not put on a front, that “Oh no, no, we’re a great company and we’re a startup and we got all things covered and we figured it out and we’re moving head.” This is a time to be very humble and say, “Look, let me, let me pull back the curtain for you here and show you what the real deal is before you make that leap from your company into a startup situation or even from your couch into a startup situation, so we can address all of these issues.” Show them the good, the bad and the ugly. Because it’s only going to come out, it’s probably going to come out in the first 30 days where they turn around and say, “Wait a minute. I didn’t know you guys didn’t have a such and such,” right?

George Deeb:
Yeah, for sure. That point about communicating the ugly is probably the most important thing to communicate when you’re making these hiring decisions, because you want to flesh them out right from the start. You do not want to take the time to recruit them and train them and onboard them to get them into a role that they’re going to ultimately be miserable with. You got to punch them right in the face with the worst part of your story so that they know what they’re getting themselves into and there’s no surprises for them down the road.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. I had a situation, I don’t mean to spend a lot of time on this one point, but I think it’s one that certainly small business owners need to hear, I had a situation where we did bring in one of those big name individuals. And over the course of the first 90 days, they were in, the individual let the other new team members and let the other members on our team, and it was a new business, let them know how under organized we were and how underdeveloped we were and how we needed more marketing and how they did it at this other company. The other company had been in business 25 years. And all of a sudden these people started making a way to my office saying, “Well, did you know that we’re supposed to have a this and a that and an X and a Y and Z?” And I’m like, “Where is this coming from?” “Well, it’s coming from Bob who used to work there. And he said that we’re doing it all wrong and we should have people in all these places.” And I just thought to myself, not only is Bob not working out, but now he’s a cancer to everybody else.

George Deeb:
He’s bringing the whole organization down with him.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. So be careful, small business owners,, in that case. So you have here and I love this one, want to talk about this, doers versus managers.

George Deeb:
Yeah, a doer is someone that’s got an actual quota that they got to close sales and they’re responsible for selling. That’s their whole job. That’s all they do is sell. They’re the person talking to the clients. They’re converting those clients into transactions. A manager, a sales manager is typically managing a team of salespeople. So maybe there’s 10 people that are selling in your company and that one sales manager is managing that team of 10. It’s very different skill sets, knowing and being happy being a seller versus being a manager. And I’ve run into a mistake in the past where I tried to put a manager back into a sales position and they failed miserably because even though they were a highly successful manager, they didn’t like the mundane of having to go back and cold call a hundred clients a day. And it’s just not really what they wanted to be doing. So you want to make sure that you’re not putting a manager in a sales position and not a salesperson into a manager position.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Boy, I couldn’t agree more. That one, again, like the one before it, that’s a very, very important factor there because we see it all the time where somebody will say, Well, I hired a sales manager to handle my sales.” And they think that, that person’s going to go out and sell and knock on doors or make things happen. And I will tell you, if it comes right down to it, I’d rather go with the doer and try to create a manager out of that person later on down the road if your company needs sales right now, and you’re on a limited budget and maybe you can’t afford both, I would go with the doer then the sales manager. Because all you’re going to do is add one more salary to your executive staff and that individual has nobody to manage and they’re not selling, you’re in trouble. Give me a salesperson that somebody can oversee or what have you and maybe split the responsibilities among the other team members, but somebody’s got to be out there selling your product every day.

George Deeb:
And those salespeople have the relationship chip with the customers. The manager doesn’t right. The manager’s just work in the team. So if you’re smart and you’re hiring, you’re not only filling the sales skillsets you’re looking for, they’re bringing Rolodex of relationships from your industry that you want to be speaking to and they can help you accelerate your revenues.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. Competitive market versus non-competitive market.

George Deeb:
Yeah, this is a big one. I mean, if you’re a first mover in a space and you got a cool new edgy product, it’s relatively easy to sell. You’re just going to walk into a room and people are going to love it. You’re going to get that person onboarded relatively simple. If you’re in a competitive market, you’re up against a hundred other players and space, that’s a much harder sell. Now you got to be really clear on what is it about your product or service that’s better than the other nine products or service. And on the flip side, what is it about those 99 competitors where they’re failing? You got to ask questions on who do you think you’re competing against so you can actually highlight their weak weaknesses to your clients so they know not to use the other third party and to use your product instead because you solve the problems that they present.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s right. Yep. And number 10 is lone wolves versus team members.

George Deeb:
Yeah, this is a big one. This is kind of speaking to the personality fit and making sure they’re going to fit within the organization. If you have a team that’s an inside team and they’re all going to be working in the same office and going to lunch together and need to have a good personality fit, that’s a really important thing. If this is the person that’s going to be a road warrior and on their own and they’re not going to have to interact with a lot of other people in the organization, then maybe some of those personality issues become less of a problem because they’re out of sight out of mind kind of thing. So just make sure there’s a good personality fit if it’s required for the position.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
There’s no question about it. My wife and I, whenever we hire somebody, we say, “Look, we can train to the skillset. We can show you the new way to do something or our processes or what have you. The one thing that we can’t do is we can’t instill a great attitude in you every day. Hopefully you’ve got one.” But it’s so vitally important that when you come in each day and those employees come in, especially in a smaller business, it’s so vitally important that that employee that you’ve hired has a good attitude. I take that over even a superstar salesperson that comes in and says, “I’ve sold everything in the world and here’s my W2 from last year and I’m highly successful.” But you really detected bad attitude. That person is not right for your company, believe me. And typically what you’ll find are those superstar salespeople can bring a negative attitude to the team. And they think that they’re the best person on the team and therefore everybody’s going to bow down to them each morning. But it’s a real danger zone. Have you seen that before?

George Deeb:
Yeah, for sure. That person can become the cancer inside the organization or the pariah that nobody wants to work with. At the end of the day in the hiring business, you’re hiring culture as much as anything else. It’s more important to preserve the culture of your organization than it is to bring in that one rock star. Because if he brings the whole house to cards down, you’re in big trouble.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. And let me save this, all eyes are upon you as a leader to not make that mistake and say, “Well, I’m going for the sales or I’m going for the money rather than the right fit in terms of building the culture in your company.” Because everyone else is going to see that. Say, “Ah, you know, in this case, Jim, isn’t really, he talks out of both sides of his mouth. He wants to build a great culture, but he’s bringing in somebody that we know isn’t the right fit strictly because they can make a few more sales each month.” That’s a culture killer right there. Isn’t it?

George Deeb:
Yeah, for sure. And you got to make sure that you’re fixing the problem. Hiring is not a perfect science. You think you checked all the box and you get it started and it’s not working. If they’re not working out, you got to get them out, fast. That helps maintain the culture, and doesn’t just keep them bringing the whole organization down.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
I couldn’t agree more. I think we don’t spend enough time hiring in the hiring process and checking things out and coming in with three or four different individuals that they can come in and interview with and really taking your time. I mean, it’s a major, major step for small businesses to put someone on the payroll and bring somebody in. And then of course we wait too long to let them go. We buy all of their stories or we know in our heart, this is not going to work out, and so do all of the other associates in your businesses. And they’re waiting for you to show some leadership and pull the trigger. I say, pull the trigger, but you know what I mean.

George Deeb:
Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Make that cut. And they’re depending on you as a leader to do that. But sometimes, those leaders will drag their feet simply because they’re using their heart rather than their head. And they’ll say, “Well, let’s give the person another 30 days. Let’s give them another 30 days.” Before you know it, they’re there six months longer than that person should be, and doing damage every one of those days. Right?

George Deeb:
Yeah, for sure. And then let’s not forget that a salesperson is your source to revenue and without revenue, you don’t have profits. You don’t have profits, you don’t have a business. So getting these hires right are absolutely critical and you want to make sure that you don’t make any mistakes and you don’t have a whole lot of churn in the organization. You’re constantly having to re-recruit and re-train because that’s time consuming and it’s expensive and it slows the organization down. You want the right salesperson in the position, wants to be there for the long term, you’re not constantly refilling those shoes month after month.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s exactly right. Well, George Deeb, Managing Partner Red Rocket Ventures. I want to thank you once again for joining us here on the Atlanta Small Business Show. As you know, our viewers and subscribers get so much out of your visit with us. So thanks so much for all you do for the Atlanta Small Business Show. I very much appreciate it.

George Deeb:
Great seeing you, Jim. Happy new year.

Jim Fitzpatrick:
Thank you, you too.