I’ve often heard “I hired a sale rep, it didn’t work out, six months, $30,000 lost and no sales” I then ask “Why didn't it work?” The response is often, “He/she was the wrong person or he/she didn’t work hard enough or he/she didn’t know how to sell our value prop, etc.” I then start asking questions around “What did you do, from the day he/she walked in the door, to manage that person to success?” The common response “I don’t have the time” or “I don’t know how to do that”. As the IT Solutions Provider (ITSP) owner/president, if you are going to bring on board a sales rep (any sales function) you must commit to the fact that “you are equally responsible for the success of that sales rep as he/she is”. Here is my ITSP sales management 101,

1. Give yourself the formal job description as the Sales Manager and allocate and commit to the required time to do the job. I’ll add to this in a future blog.
2. Have a formal/written job description (exactly what the person is expected to do including sales activities, sales mgt reports, quota etc,) job requirements (the “DNA” of the ideal person) and comp plan (that meets your recurring revenue financial model, low risk for you and provides incentives for success). Ditto re: future blog.
3. Have a formal 90-day on-boarding program. The moment the person walks in the door the clock is ticking to make this person successful or cut bait. Have a written and signed 90-day plan that includes assimilation, training (including a comprehensive sales toolkit), activities goals, customer meetings, weekly review meetings and gates along the way. Ditto re: future blog.
4. Have a formal sales management-to-success program. This consists of regularly scheduled weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings that include review of sales activities, pipeline, forecast, accounts, territory plan and also includes training and coaching. These meetings are “never, ever canceled, postponed or delayed”. Managing-to-success is managing-to-numbers (yes sales it a numbers game) that I call Metrics-that-Matter (MTM). A set of simple reports: sales activities, pipeline, appointment, territory plan etc are required. Ditto re: future blog.
5. Have an “at a boy/girl” and a “oh no” program. Good sales people “thrive” on accolades highlighting excellent performance and conversely “hate” the spotlight of poor performance. Don’t be shy about advertising to your company both – it can spur some friendly competition. Ditto re: future blog.
6. Have an exit plan. Should the sales rep show early indications of not working out along the process (based on executing your sales management-to-success program and monitoring MTM’s) then you need to act quickly. A very professional and documented “get well” program that provides reasonable goals (activities, revenue etc) over a reasonable period of time including gates along the way is required. Ditto re: future blog.

Moral to the story - Unless you are committed to sales management don't do sales.

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