Can anyone help me please?

here is the story, i have a wonderful product/service for our potential clients, i sell at least 10 sales per week i have been doing sales for 4 years which i know isnt that long but i am very successfull with everything i put my heart into, i am having a problem hiring sales reps to do the job, let me rephrase that, experienced sales reps and area managers to work with me and push the service, my own clients tell me that they would have to be stupid to not use our service, i am not streatching the trueth here, why can i not find good reps i pay commissions and 25% residuals which if equals if a rep where to make 16 sales per month would end up giving the rep 75k/year in commissions and residuals i am lost here and dont have an answer? and we live in north dakota where thats really good money? we have a great reputation and have alot of larger companies using us including a inc 5000 company here

any advice would be much appreciated thank you?

also i have to say i am new here, but this site is by far the most benificial site for sales that i have ever read, its nice to be in a community like this

thanks again guys

Mike -Mike22

Hi Mike, welcome to the SalesPractice community.

I have a couple questions:

1. Would you mind sharing what your product/service is?

2. Is your challenge that you're not getting good sales candidates? Or is it that you are finding good sales candidates that but they aren't accepting the job you're offering to them? Or is it that candidates are accepting the job offer but then are not meeting your sales production expectations?

Skip Anderson -Skip Anderson

It's a simple matter of proper training, Mike. You can take any rep and train him or her to be successful. So it's a question on whether you want to put the time and effort into doing this? -Wonderboy

thanks for the response guys, well what our company does is we work with contractors and construction companies, we get them work for the season, we list thier business on tv, on our website, we advertise all over like local news papers, radio stations, tv, direct mailing, phone books, ect. to attract work for these companies. we only take on 6 contractors/companies per category the reason for that is we need to be able to take care of those guys that are with our service before we even think of taking on anymore clients, trust me its a full time job alone just in itself. the service works great and we keep our clients pretty happy, we do all this and all that we charge for our service is , you guys are probably going to laugh at me for this, $99/month. as you can see im not greedy and i truley want to help these companies, otherwise i would be charging more.

as far as the finding sales reps, i hired one guy that had no experience, i worked with him for about 2 weeks and coached him after that and he was doing really well until the rail road recruited him, i recruited an insurance sales guy, i have been working with him for a week and he doesnt want to really listen to my sales training, he is quite a bit older than me which i think may be the case, i know if he would listen to my advice he would be a heavy hitter with our company, the other reps dont really produce anything, i guess the big thing is do i hire experience or new blood, i hope these questions arnt to dumb, but i am looking at it and i think to myself "i have an awesome service, its easy to sell or for me it is, why cant these guys sell it? its a win win for everyone who joins our business family i dont get it." maybe i am looking for reps in the wrong places. but it is a simple service to sell and we arent asking a whole lot for it, does that answer your questions? -Mike22

Recruiting, Training and Retaining employees is a bit more complex Wonderboy.

Good question and one that many managers have to consider. May I ask, what is your recruiting plan? -SpeedRacer

just to be honest speed racer, i am only a little fish in big shoes, i had no idea this business was going to take off like this, i really dont have a recruiting plan other than the paper and referrals and the paper is running non-stop i have some national companies wanting me to expand and fast because we save them large sums of money and time and in turn they give us all their work to give to our cocntractors thats why im in this bind the one company we have has sent us a little over 800k in work to us for our clients this season. the only sales training or mentoring i have had has been by authors of the books i have read and still read, and by trial and error, that is on the sales end, on the business end i have 2 mentors that help me with the nuts and bolts of the operation.
my primary goal is to get a rock solid sales team put together as quickly as i can, and in return for the reps that help me i compensate them as much as i possibly can financially -Mike22

Have you considered formulating an ideal employee profile to benchmark each candidate against? This is like an ideal customer profile but for employees. If you don't know what you want how will you know when you've found it? ;) -SpeedRacer

Excellent, Speed, that is exactly what I was going to recommend and then I noticed you already posted this response.

Skip Anderson -Skip Anderson

That's a terrific suggestion.

I personally have felt that the biggest trait I would look for in a prospective sales employee (or any category) is the abilty to follow instructions. One of the things I've inserted into the recruiting/interview process is to the subtle inclusion of an "assignment". An example would be some paperwork to be filled out with very specific instructions, and ones that I would verbally discuss before they completed it.

The reasoning is simple. If you have a selling format that is working for your company, you need new people to follow that format. -Joe Closer

Mike22 what are the three biggest challenges your new hires face to becoming successful selling your service? -BossMan

A great assignment would be having the candidate put in writing what they intend to do (how will they prospect/how will they sell) to be successful in their new position. -Jolly Roger

thanks for the insight, i think that is a great idea jolly roger and guys, i havent done that yet, well the next thing is normally when we try to recruit we end up with non experienced reps which is ok i like training them to be productive, but when we get experienced reps in it seems like they have a hard time usining our sales program, the sale is low dollar high volume type of sale, and the majority of the reps i get, experienced reps that is, they dont know how to ask for the sale, in that i mean they just dont ask for the sale. when i try to explain to them they tell me they are when infact they are not. the other day one of my reps told me he had 21 clients he presented and said they were interested, i asked how many he sold, he said none. how does that happen? i asked one rep in his younger years how many women were interested in him, he told me there were plenty, i asked how many he dated, he responded, only the ones i asked. there you have it i told him haha, i guess the largest problem i have is getting my reps to ask for the sale and be comfortable with doing so, the presentation i have and the phsycology formula i have behind it is proven
this is the formula i train with

framed Question + conformity+ reward of gain(beni's)+ fear of loss & sense of urgency+ closed ended closing question= sale

pretty much everytime a rep can get through that its a sale every time it seems,

how do i build sales confidence in my reps i am very positive and encouraging with them but i think the main thing is they are lacking the sales confidence to close the sales

sorry if i am asking too many questions here and i do appreciate all of your help on this

thank you,

Mike -Mike22

Okay, Mike, so let me ask you this: which of the following best describes your challenge:

1. Employees who lack of knowledge about how to close (if so, they need training)
2. Employees who have a lack of willingness to learn or follow your system (if so, they need supervision in the form of positive or negative rewards).
3. Employees who have a lack of ability to do the job successfully (if so, you need different employees).
4. Lack of prospects (if so, you need better marketing)
5. Employees who don't comprehend your expectations (if so, you need to better define your expectations).

Skip Anderson -Skip Anderson

well i think you hit my entire problem on the head with every question there, its seems like the people that i catch interest have no ability to sell and certainly havent the personality, but the biggest 2 are willingness to learn our sales process, and the willingness to close, my largest issue that i have now is i have a guy that has been doing insurance sales for about 26 years and i can not get him to convert to our sales process i know that if he would just listen and apply it he would be a huge heavy hitter, the other one is he cannot believe all the people he has presented with no sale and either can i, the only answer is, is that hes not asking for the sale, im not over doing it when i say our service is awesome, we are in a new to this area and he is 2 weeks new to this type of sale, maybe i am expecting too much from him this soon but newbees i have trained in have made at least 5 sales by the first week, that is if i have properly selected the newbies, maybe i should just move forward, but i genuinely want to help this guy, he has the ability and i have been trying to pull it out of him to help him utilize it, the other problem was how do i find trainable experienced reps most will not listen to me? -Mike22

Mike22, when it comes right down to it, how important is it to you that you hire experienced reps?

In your posts, it kind of sounds like being trainable is more important to your business model than is being experienced. If being trainable is truly the most important quality that you desire, then you might want to consider focusing on that quality, and forfeit experience in your new-hires. Often, the most experienced salespeople are the least trainable.

If your experienced reps were having success, then I might suggest that you get out of their way and have them go to it in their own style with their own selling methodology, but it sounds like they are not having success. And you said you know they can be successful if they would just follow your system.

All the experience in the world will not make someone trainable.

So if being trainable and being willing to follow a system are the most important qualities for your new-hires, you need to verify in your hiring process that you're hiring the right kind of people. -Skip Anderson