Guide to Hiring Effective Sales Staff

Do you have any thoughts on how we can grow our sales base outside our local market by hiring a sales team? What incentives should we offer to attract quality sales personnel?

Answer:

Recruiting sales reps for other geographic territories: As you have experienced, it is very difficult for startup and other small businesses without predictable sales and/or with limited capital resources to attract and retain skilled sales staff on a 100% commission pay structure. While you may be able to recruit sales staff in this high unemployment environment, you will have difficulty retaining 100% commissioned employees unless they can quickly generate sales and commission income. You can continue to use newspaper and industry publication want ads and Monster and other online job boards to recruit commissioned sales reps in other areas; however, a sales affiliate program or technology industry manufacturer’s reps may be other recruiting methods you can explore.

Example technology sales affiliate programs:

Manufacturer’s reps:

Example state and Internet job boards and services:

Business networking websites:

Sales staff incentives: Time off and other noncash fringe benefits can motivate certain employees; however, these incentives may not be available at a small company with limited capital resources. Also, with a 100% commissioned sales employee, you may need to consider a higher commission percentage and/or a form of equity compensation to provide a stronger financial incentive. To help consider incentives and a reasonable compensation structure for your company, you can use classified ads, other local job market information, and the Internet to locate numerous websites with salary surveys and other employment information. The following are example websites:

Sales staff compensation:
Best Ways to Pay Your Sales Staff: businessweek.com
Sales Compensation Articles: typepad.com
Sales Rep Commission Schedule: startupnation.com
How Employee Compensation Works: howstuffworks.com

Salary survey tools:

Example employee equity plan information:

Employee motivation:

Published: May 29, 2013
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Angela Cordle

Angela Cordle is the EVP of Tarkenton Financial, a leading insurance marketing firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. In this role, she serves as the Human Resources Director, overseeing the provision of HR services, policies, and programs for the company. She also serves as a BizCoachingOnDemand.com consultant, bringing practical and experiential knowledge of HR best practices to small businesses.