Once you have your business up and running, you may be wondering when you should bring on various members to your team, including when to hire your first sales rep. There are various factors that can influence your decision, such as the type of business you have, what resources you have, and what your financial goals are. In this article, we discuss some things to consider for the best time to hire your first salesperson.

Strong Established Sales Process

Having an effective sales process that your new sales reps can follow is essential to their success. Here are some of the key elements of your sales framework that each of your reps need to learn:

1. Company mission and brand.
2. Details about your products or services.
3. Details about who your ideal target customers are.
4. How to communicate with prospects at various stages of the customer journey. This may include using phone, email, or text messages, for example.
5. How to use the company CRM system.
6. How to measure success.

Established Client Base

Before hiring your first sales reps, it’s important to already have an established client base that is helping to support the structure of your business. Having at least several well-paying clients shows that you have an offer that is sellable. And since you were able to sell to your clients, you can replicate this success with a sales team.

Good Process for Generating Leads

When you have enough consistent leads coming into your business, that is a good situation to be in for starting to hire a sales team. It is recommended that you have various methods of lead generation so that you are not dependent on just one method. You can combine these methods to help create a strong pipeline. For example, you might start by emailing prospects and then follow up with them via a phone call or by connecting with them on social media. You can optionally hire a sales development representative to do this type of work, and then when a prospect is ready for a meeting they can be passed onto your sales team.

Knowing Your Value in the Market

Once you know the value of your product or service in the market, compared to competitors, you can highlight the unique benefits that you offer. This also means that the sales reps that you hire will be in a better position to sell what you offer based on what makes your company different. It’s also important to establish an effective customer support system before hiring sales reps because offering quality support is one of the factors that can strongly influence the buying decisions of customers.

A coach can help you with developing your sales team hiring process. Get in touch today!