How to afford a Salesperson !?

[PorterComp]

We have been in business for 8 years 4 months. We are an office one two. My wife and myself. She is my bookkeeper and office manager, I do the rest.

In my mind, I know you have to spend money to make money. I know that you have to SELL in order to grow. The problem is that I rarely have time to go out and sell...nor am I any good at cold calling. (I'm sure this is/was a common problems among us techs) Usually once I have a recommendation and get my foot in the door, I can pick up and retain the customer. I have had thoughts of hiring a part time salesperson to assist me in finding new customers.

A salesperson sounds like a fantastic idea...they could go out and sell our services and we would get tons of new contracts and be making all kinds of money and take over the city! Sounds good...but in reality everyone still has to get paid.

So my question is how do you/did you get started with adding a salesperson and be able to afford it? Do you pay a commission on contracts? How about hourly work? How does that work in our industry? It doesn't see like it would work the same as in retail.

 

[Mainstay]

Consider hiring a technician. Give yourself some breathing room on the-day-to-day work, build in redundancy for the days you get sick or hit by a bus, and once they are fully up to speed you can now divert your efforts towards business development (retaining new clients, expanding services provided to existing customers (managed services), exploring advertising initiatives, etc.

I would also steer away from sales of things, my experience is that it is always a low profit margin and has additional concerns like returns, faulty parts, etc.

We are just back into sales and we are focusing on business-class systems only. Nothing cheap.

If you are going with a sales persona, have them sell Managed Services or something highly trackable, like re-sell A/V or off-site backups (something with a commission structure built in). I am finally starting to get some commission going off of O365, and it is nice.

 

[HCHTech]

Consider hiring a technician.

I'm not an expert, but this is how I have approached this problem. YOU know your business best, and YOU are the best spokesperson for it. When you're small, you need to get enough help, so that it frees up enough time so that YOU can do the salesman job.

Plus - it forces you to do it so you can have enough money to pay for that new tech you just hired!

 

[PorterComp]

I have thought about just hiring another tech, but I cannot afford a full time tech, nor even a part time hourly or salaried tech. Unless they wanted to work for commission, I doubt I could find anyone to do the work. Especially since there would not be much commission right now either. It is a double edged sword.

 

[Tech Savvy]

I have thought about just hiring another tech, but I cannot afford a full time tech, nor even a part time hourly or salaried tech. Unless they wanted to work for commission, I doubt I could find anyone to do the work. Especially since there would not be much commission right now either. It is a double edged sword.

If you live near a college many students would jump at the opportunity to work on some real life problems. I know I did. Maybe try picking one of them up by posting some fliers around the campus or talking to their campus life person to try and get an add in the newsletter. This is ideal because they can do work on call so you're only paying them for what they are doing. Plus they get not only money, but some good experience. I did this before, and paid the kid $25/hr. I was still making money, and I only needed to jump in if it was something he could t handle.

Plus a lot of students are pretty good with little guidance, check lists and procedures for ordinary jobs. And troubleshooting is where they have the fun.


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[Markverhyden]

Getting to the next level, the first employee so to speak, causes a lot of small businesses concern. In the end you have to make a decision. As we say on this side of the pond, time to fish or cut bait.

But to begin, have you put together any type of business plan @PorterComp? Evaluated the competition as well as potential market? You can hire the best sales, technical, what ever employee. But if the market will not support it nothing will work.

One way to start is to get your wife to start compiling a list of potential customers. Requires no outside work in the beginning. Just a 1-2 page summary of each business. For additional boots on the ground look at your local high schools, etc. Many will support students doing intern work.

Make a marketing/sales campaign calendar. Pen in a few hours a week to this effort and stick to it. Do not allow other demands to distract you.

 

[GTP]

I think it's important to recognize your market, as @Markverhyden previously stated. Concentrate on that and work out a strategy aimed squarely at your target audience.

 

[carrcomp]

@PorterComp There's an important question to ask yourself. I do agree that money well spent would be in hiring a technician, and teaching them to upsell.

How is your workload right now?

If you did hire on a part time tech would that free up time to focus on the business, marketing and new customer acquisition?

 

[HCHTech]

It's easy to fall into the money trap when you are all by yourself in the business. When you have a great month, you naturally take more out. After all, it's you that is busting their butt to do well, right? You deserve it. Then, if you have a bad month, you take less because you have to, then when you have a good month again, you take more to make up for when you took less - it's all a mind game that you have to fight.

I don't know your financial situation, so I won't presume, but I'll tell you what I did. I converted to an LLC and started paying myself a salary. I treated myself more as an employee and less as an owner. It was damned hard, I'll tell you, but it was for the best. That forced me to focus on my expenses and spending. It also let me set a goal. When I get to X amount of average profit, I'm going to hire someone. and that's what I did. It gave me the confidence that I could actually afford it.

Which made me immediately face another battle. When it's your business, you are used to just doing everything. It's harder than you might imagine to delegate tasks and start scheduling your new employee for calls even when the customer asks for you. Sure, the tech will make some mistakes that you wouldn't have made, but guess what, that's how they learn - that's how you learned, right?

Pretty soon, you'll find that it starts to work - you will have more time. Go ahead - take a day off or two, it's been a long while. After that, though, be brutal and schedule marketing time - put it right on your calendar, and don't give in to scheduling over top of it when the customer calls with not-really-an-emergency but asks "could you possibly do it today?" Your schedule is your schedule - it's important to stick to it.

 

[TenYardFight]

I have thought about just hiring another tech, but I cannot afford a full time tech, nor even a part time hourly or salaried tech. Unless they wanted to work for commission, I doubt I could find anyone to do the work. Especially since there would not be much commission right now either. It is a double edged sword.

Then your aren't charging enough.

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[kwest]

Your first step is to stop working for your business and start working on your business.

4.5 years ago I hired my first appt. I never answered my phone before and just returned voicemails that were left. I was too busy fixing computers. I was a mobile service and using my cell phone.

Now I have two retail locations and 5 employees. I still do the bigger jobs but they handle everything else. I still don't cold call. Adwords is my only advertising and it keeps us busy.

If you are business only then maybe hire a sales person. But they will just sell the first appt or a meet n greet and you will have to come in and close the relationship. Why pay someone for the initial meeting.

 

[JonnyRT]

This is a really interesting thread, as it seems to be an issue we all face - not enough time to grow the business, but not enough business to hire someone to provide the owner with more time.

There's another thread from a few months which might be useful, the second reply suggests starting a journal to track your time to see where you're actually spending it - this might give you some ideas about where to find the time you need "to go out and sell".

https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/hiring-person-4.71540/