Recruiting Independent Sales Reps

Hello,

Apologies, in advance, if this is the wrong forum for this topic. I didn't see any other forums that focused on recruiting sales staff so I figured I'd try this one.

Some background... I'm an owner/founder of a start up company that will be offering what are considered to be enterprise class software solutions. We'll be ready to go to market in the next 2 to 4 months, after years of design and development. As part of moving through the start up process, we have a limited amount of up front funding, now, since it was spent on R&D, as planned. This being said, we now have an impressive product that I'll personally be selling, myself, in order to at least secure some small revenue streams. I'm not a sales person and don't pretend to be a good one but I do realize I will have to sell, in order for us to be successful. In the mean time, I'll be going through a new wave of funding to ramp up sales and marketing. While waiting for the longer term funding to come in, it was recommended that we explore the option of attracting and leveraging high quality Commission Only Independent Sales Reps (ISRs) as an option to start selling, establish some customers, and establish a more significant revenue stream than I could possibly bring in, myself. As I've never done this, I have a number of questions.

1) I've seen companies use ISRs to sell things like "hard" manufactured products, services, and things like shrink-wrapped software but I've never heard of ISRs selling enterprise class software. Are there ISRs that focus on this class of software?

2) If there are, what are the right ways to find qualified ISRs? Are there certain avenues that work better than others and if so, what are they and what makes them better?

3) Assuming I have the right way to find qualified ISRs, what are the right ways to attract them to my company and product?

4) I do realize ISRs take greater commissions and need to make a significant amount of money to overcompensate for the risk they take on. I don't have a problem with this, as I see them as potential partners to our success. It's not about the money, as I'm more concerned about bringing in stable customers to build a strong base. This being the case, aside from the commission issue, is there anything else I should be aware of?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Frank Guerino
Chairman & CEO
TraverseIT, LLC

Welcome, Frank.

My first question (please pardon my stupidity): What is enterprise class software?

I am not an expert on recruiting, by any means, but in my brief experience, I found it challenging to recruit quality commission-only sales people. Are you recruiting in a certain geographic area or nationally? How will you train them and do you have a specific sales plan for them to follow?

I received a decent response using Monster.com--in terms of quanity, but I didn't fare well for quality. Using the newspaper brought very little response at all. I believe there is a member, who posted quite a long time ago, who provides a website for recruiting sales people. I would have to do some digging on this site to remember who they were. Also I get email ads frequently from a website called IHireSales (or something like that). If you would like to email me, I will forward an ad to you. I have no idea about their effectiveness.

Good luck in your new venture.

Hi RainMaker,

Thanks for the quick response. To answer your question about Enterprise Class Software, I'll start with Shrink Wrapped Software. Shrink wrapped is what you get in a box, at the store, which you typically install on your desktop/laptop. Examples include things like MS Office, games you buy, etc. Usually small stuff with a price tag of no more than a few hundred dollars (sometimes thousands). Enterprise Class Software is more elaborate. It typically runs on back end servers and is accessed by multiple people at the same time. Some products, like ours, are meant to allow anywhere from a few users to tens of thousands of users to have simultaneous access to data, features/functions, and reports. The price tag for Enterprise Class Software is usually on the order of tens of thousands of dollars, for low end, to millions, if you can work out enterprise licenses with large corporations. Things like the total number of users typically influence the price. Well known examples include: SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Sybase, etc.

As for training, I or my staff will train them, personally, through web-based access to a demo installation we will provide. We are also thinking of leveraging tools like Web-Ex to help facilitate training.

To answer the question about region, we are in the NY/NJ area but will be supporting anything within a few hours of driving distance, such as Boston, DC, Philly, etc. We do have a potential rep in Toronto Canada that we're working on trying to secure.

As for the sales plan, please forgive my ignorance but what does this mean? I have a sales presentation that I, myself, will give and talk through with prospects. I would also expect my sales staff to use this presentation and the detailed notes for it. Is this what you're referring to?

Again, thanks for the information. I appreciate any and all assistance.

Regards,

Frank Guerino
Chairman & CEO
TraverseIT, LLC

Wow, Frank--that was a mouthful. Honestly, I have no experience in your field or your market, so I have little meaningful to share with you. Sorry. Wish I could help. I work the opposite end of the spectrum--small business.

So far, it sounds like you have a very well thought out plan. I would imagine that your ability to attract quality sales people would rest on your ability to convince them that you have quality product and that you are a serious company (even though new) with an offer to get in on the ground floor.

You implied that you do not have a sales background, but that you would need to be selling the product, yourself, in the beginning. Do you have a marketing background? The reason for this question is based on your description so far. You have a big league product with big plans (as opposed to a couple of programmers putting something together in their basement). I admire an undertaking of this magnitude, and am curious what your plan is for market penetration? Do you have contacts in the industry or are you jumping in cold?

Frank,

Since you're not 2 guys in a basement, it seems to me that you will need to get connected to the ISR community to find some quality individuals.

I did a search in Google for association independent sales rep and found more than one association, and articles on how to find independent reps. Industry associations are usually a great place to get educated in the ways of a particular industry. And, if there is a chapter of an association in your area, you can tap into the folks in the geographic area you're interested in.

I also did a search for independent sales rep and found sites such as RepHunter.net. I searched their database for software and found some technical reps. Also discovered, that the better search term there would probably be technical.

I don't have any knowledge of any of the companies or associations I found, but I think it would be a great way for you to start weeding out the good from the bad, and figuring out an effective approach for finding the reps you need.

Best of luck on your new venture. If you need marketing assistance, give me a call!

Kathleen

Great post, Kathleen.

Yeah, what Kathleen said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Great post, Kathleen.

Aw, shucks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RainMaker

You implied that you do not have a sales background, but that you would need to be selling the product, yourself, in the beginning. Do you have a marketing background? The reason for this question is based on your description so far. You have a big league product with big plans (as opposed to a couple of programmers putting something together in their basement). I admire an undertaking of this magnitude, and am curious what your plan is for market penetration? Do you have contacts in the industry or are you jumping in cold?

Hi RainMaker,

As with most technology startups, the CEO is usually out there pounding the pavement, just like all other sales staff. The premise is that until others can come up to speed, no one can really pitch it like the leader can. However, as stated earlier, I have no formal sales experience and will be learning that as I go along. The more I learn, the more I respect sales people for what they do and add to a firm's success.

To answer your question about marketing, I do have industry contacts and we have a very distinct number of specific markets we're going after, simply to focus and not spread ourselves thing. Most of it has all been planned out, far in advance, as it was all required for our business plan, which is pretty detailed when compared to others.

Describing our markets and our intent is all a bit much to write down, here, but if you're interested you can read about it in more detail on our company web-site. If you do, please excuse the appearance, as it's under construction and we're not actually opening our doors for business for another couple of months. Apparently the board guidelines prohibit putting our company web-links in the posts, so if you're interested it's simply our base company name, listed below, .com.

Again, thanks for your help.

Regards,

Frank Guerino
Chairman & CEO
TraverseIT, LLC

Quote:

Originally Posted by KSA-Mktg

I did a search in Google for association independent sales rep and found more than one association, and articles on how to find independent reps. Industry associations are usually a great place to get educated in the ways of a particular industry. And, if there is a chapter of an association in your area, you can tap into the folks in the geographic area you're interested in.

I also did a search for independent sales rep and found sites such as RepHunter.net. I searched their database for software and found some technical reps. Also discovered, that the better search term there would probably be technical.

Hi Kathleen,

I did the same. I had originally used a site called independent-sales-reps but had a very weak experience with them. After speaking with a number of companies that had used them, I found that their experiences were similar. BTW, this doesn't rule out the possibility that it was just our post/advertisement that wasn't good enough. But having received feedback from others who had similar experiences, I figured I should at least be wary of which ones I dive into and how I do so.

I came to the conclusion that before I should start digging into other sites and associations I would check with the members of this site, with sales professionals, to see if they had any experience in this area.

I personally like and agree with your beliefs about using associations. I figured I'd simply get some early feedback, ideas, and advice before I dove into any of them. I already lost advertising money on one and figured I'd see if I could weed out the bad from the good before I started spending on them, again.

Thanks for your assistance. I'll definitely try your advice.

Regards,

Frank Guerino
Chairman & CEO
TraverseIT, LLC

Recruiting Independent Sales Reps

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