I am currently looking into hiring a full time sales and marketing agent. I know several of you have already made this step. I am looking for as much information on this process as possible. For those of you that have had success with this approach what was the keys to your success. If you have not what are the pitfalls to avoid. How did you set up pay. What type of business did you have them target. Any key training material that you can suggest? Currently I am planning on paying $9.00 an hr letting him use a company care and giving 10% commission. Do you guys think this is adequate, too little, or too much?
Just curios, how much (daily) would you expect the rep to sell on average? I don’t have any idea what one would sell but I would think that they would have to sell at least $400 worth of services a day to make a living. That would put a rep’s yearly gross at 28k if they could maintain those numbers. Hopefully someone will have the number that they can share. I would like to know these things as well.
I would pay a little more hourly and start off part time, maybe a stay at home mom. See if it is a good fit.
In other words, if your sales person sells a $1000 job but they bid it so that you only made $50 and you pay a commission of $100……You are getting the short end of the stick. ( $-50 )
If they sell a $1000 job and the profit is $300 and you pay $100 in commission then you are doing alright.
I always try to set it up so it’s advantagous for the sales person to sell jobs at the prices you want, instead of just sell to attain a big gross sales number. Most of us know that you can sell every job you bid if the price is low enough, and you want to encourage your sales people to maintain the pricing structure you desire.
Retired older folks are a good resource as well. Maybe one with a construction or window sales background
This would be a great way to do it. However, I dont think you will find many sales people to do this. The other side of the equation is its not their problem you might be slow or the guys took too long and decreased profit.
This comes with training and advising your sales people what your pricing methods are. It takes time and some mistakes will be made.
Also I would suggest that if you are a salesperson then represent your company that way. If the owner can sell there is no better way. I never felt that I was a great salesperson, a better manager. So I hired sales and managed operations.
This process is very hard and soemtimes you wont see immediate results. Relationships must be built and it takes time. Sure there is low hanging fruit out there that can be plucked but to really have sales established time will need to take place and good work from operations. That is tuff to swallow at times when you are stroking checks.
I couldn’t agree more Mike !
It takes time, and everyone’s business is different. If there was some plug in formula that would make everything work perfectly, then everyone would be doing it successfully!!!
Building relationships and controlled and measured management is essential.
One of my dealers has a salesperson that has a base of 25,000 and 5% of totla gross sales each month. With that the expectation is that he is producing at least 3 times his annual salary each year.
We offer many services so it isnt hard for him to do in his market. However, to just sell window cleaing might be tough to pull down those numbers depending where you are located year after year.
Thank you for that info.
3x 25k is 75k, is that for “new” work? Signing this work up for repetitive cleanings? Or something else?
Does someone else sell it the 2nd and subsequent times?
I am trying to figure out how a profit is made.
A long time ago a large company told me that they paid their GM 7% of gross sales (for sales and management of a high rise company).
A big difference in these numbers.
This is why I say at first it is tuff to swallow. If you only have a 75,000 biz then paying a third of that hurts. However as time goes by that biz should be growing. This particular scenario does about 5 times that figure and growing because that salesperson is active. That is not that hard to swallow. Its about 12% of gross.
