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CompensationMaster Newsletter Article, March 2003 Recruiting the right people is an essential component of your
firm's success. Here are four strategies that can improve your ability to
recruit and retain the sales force you need.
1. Define your value proposition
In the same way that you sell the advantages of your product or service when
you talk to prospects, you have to sell your company to potential recruits.
You need to define a value proposition that articulates why sales
representatives should work for you rather than the company down the street.
What is different or unique about your firm? What do you do for your sales
representatives that other companies don't do?
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Do you offer more support? |
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Better training? |
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A higher commission? |
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Unique benefits? |
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A more experienced management team? |
Research what your competitors offer. Ask sales people what
they want. Then get creative. What can you offer that no one else is currently
providing?
Come up with a strong value proposition that sets you apart
from the other companies in your market.
2. Provide a career path
Show recruits that they can grow with your firm. Don't just sell what you have
to offer them now; explain what you provide when they reach the next level.
This is easy to do when you offer packages of support, training
and other services that are appropriate for sales associates at different
levels of experience.
For someone who is right out of college or new to the industry,
you might offer a full complement of training, marketing assistance, and
administrative support—everything needed to ensure success. A senior
associate might prefer more independence; she may want to do things her way,
without relying on the company for everything.
You want to structure compensation differently at each level,
creating commission plans that meet the needs of each group. If you do this
properly, you can recover costs at each level, so no one group ends up
subsidizing the others.
3. Offer different styles of
compensation
Your industry has a standard way of compensating sales representatives. Real
estate has traditionally used splits, manufacturer's reps are usually paid a
straight commission, many industries use base plus commission.
But just because everyone else does things that way doesn't
mean you have to.
When you limit yourself to one style of compensation, you are
limiting the number of people who will work for you. Everyone has a different
tolerance for risk. There are many people who would make excellent
manufacturer's reps, for example, who simply aren't comfortable being paid 100%
in commission.
If you can figure out a way to offer other styles of
compensation, you expand the labor pool from which you can recruit.
4. Prepare your presentation
The more you know about your competition, the more effectively you can sell
against them. Know what services they provide, and be prepared to compare
commission plans.
Compensation these days is so complicated that it's easy for
sales representatives to get confused. Many times you'll be able to show that a
plan that sounds better really isn't. Use Excel or CompensationMaster's
Recruiter to create a graph that shows the differences between the plans at
different levels of revenue, as well as a chart that lets them look up their
production level from last year to see how much they would have made working
for you.
Don't be intimidated if you pay less. Three-quarters of the
time, sales associates leave a company for reasons other than money. Explain
your value proposition; stress the services that you offer and the strengths of
your firm.
When you take advantage of these four strategies and
differentiate your business with a powerful value proposition, meet the needs
of employees as they grow, expand the pool of potential recruits by offering
different styles of compensation, and design an effective presentation for
recruiting, you supercharge your recruiting and are able to acquire the kind of
sales force your company needs to grow.
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