Great salespeople are almost always already employed, so you have to recruit constantly, not just when you're desperate, and be ready to hire when one becomes available. Give top reps a reason to choose you: a generous comp plan and real earning opportunity, a growing company, respect for salespeople, a big mission, strong marketing support, a sales playbook that works, a drama-free workplace and a hot industry. Then screen hard. Red flags include job-hopping, mediocre performance everywhere, references they won't let you call, excuses instead of ownership, no self-awareness about weaknesses, and a gut feeling that you aren't excited to hire them.
While I'm an ardent believer in SYSTEMS and having a documented SALES PLAYBOOK, there's one ingredient in the mix that will make your life easier (or more miserable): the rep you hire.
If you hire the wrong person (someone who can't sell, won't sell, has a bad attitude, is stupid, lazy, etc.), no Sales Playbook or training will fix them. However, hire the RIGHT person, and they'll figure out how to milk the cash cow and drive sales in the door with very little to no management. But obviously, finding and hiring the right rep is not easy, for a lot of reasons.
Why Are Great MSP Sales Reps So Hard To Find?
First and foremost, all great reps are actively employed. That doesn't mean you can't find one. It just means 1) you have to be CONSTANTLY hiring, running ads and looking, and 2) you need to be ready to hire when they become available.
Over the years, I've been able to hire some GREAT reps because the company they were working for folded (or was bought); they took time off to have a baby or care for a family member and are back in the workforce; they were fired (yep, some GREAT reps get fired for all kinds of crazy reasons); they are being required to travel a LOT and will take a pay cut to just stay home; or their new boss or workplace has simply become intolerable from a bad-culture perspective.
I do NOT buy the "great reps are hard to find" excuse. They are difficult to find, but not impossible. They're hard to find when you only go looking once in a while.
Step 1: Be CONSTANTLY Recruiting
So, your first step in hiring a really TOP rep is this: be CONSTANTLY recruiting.
I've said this over and over again to so many MSPs, not only about salespeople, but about ALL key positions. Yet over and over again, they ignore my advice, wait until they DESPERATELY need someone, THEN start recruiting. At that point, your desperation makes you stupid, hiring someone who has one or two "red flags" that you choose to ignore because they're the best candidate you have available right now.
That's NOT recruiting. That's absorbing the leftovers of the marketplace that nobody else wants.
Step 2: Figure Out WHY A Top Performer Would Want To Work For YOU
The next step is to figure out WHY a top performer would want to work for YOU.
Pay Them Enough: DON'T BE CHEAP
Naturally, MONEY is a key component here. Great salespeople are like great clients: they have CHOICES and options. Just like you need a USP for your prospects, you need a good reason (or list of reasons) why a high-performance sales rep would want to work for you.
When you're small, you often can't provide the benefits offered by larger, more well-established companies, so you have to design a comp plan and OPPORTUNITY for them to earn that is generous, as well as a company culture and mission they want to be a part of. My biggest piece of advice is DON'T BE CHEAP. True, you can't pay someone so much that you're not making money. But it DOES fall on your shoulders to design a comp plan and position in your organization that is attractive to great reps.
Years ago, a dumb manager I worked for said, "I want my salespeople to be hungry," as the answer to why he was arbitrarily cutting my compensation. At the time, I was producing three to four times the sales of everyone else, earning what he said was a "lot of money" (just over six figures) for a 22-year-old kid with zero education or experience. His reason for cutting my ability to earn was purely based on the fact that he felt I was earning too much. I responded by quitting.
To this point, you want to hire people who are hungry, but you don't want them to STARVE when working for you.
This goes for ALL positions in your company. You have to pay people enough to take money off the table. If they cannot make enough money to pay their bills, or if they can easily make more money working somewhere else (and they're worth keeping), you have to figure out how to pay them more or they'll eventually quit, and you can't blame them for that.
How Do You Know What To Pay A Sales Rep?
If you want to know what to pay someone, the website Payscale is a great resource. Salary.com and Indeed are also great websites for understanding the pay range of a position you're hiring for. You might also employ a local recruiter who can help you understand what your competition for talent is paying.
Another easy (and free) way of understanding what others are paying is to conduct interviews with sales reps and ask them to lay out their compensation plan, asking them to tell you what they like and don't like about the plan. You can learn a LOT from interviewing sales professionals from other companies because the filters are often off, and they'll tell you inside information you cannot get anywhere else.
7 Reasons A Top Rep Will Choose You Over A Bigger Company
So, if you cannot offer pay in the top 20% of companies in your area, what can you offer in non-monetary benefits to get someone to work for you? Here's a list of things I used to offer when I was in the same position. Maybe you cannot offer these today, but you might have other benefits I didn't. The key is to build an ATTRACTIVE organization to work for and an ATTRACTIVE position. You can certainly "steal" these and make them your own:
1. We are GROWING. Great people want to know the company they work for is growing, not stagnant or financially unsound. I often told employees we were debt-free as an organization and growing no less than 15% year over year. That means more opportunities for career growth. You can offer this when you're small as well.
2. You are working for an organization that RESPECTS and APPRECIATES salespeople. This is a biggie. As a lifetime salesperson myself, I know firsthand what it's like to work for a company that disrespects salespeople. I won't screw with their comp plan or find ways to not pay them. This is a big thing for a lot of salespeople, because over and over again, companies find loopholes and creative ways to not pay their reps for commission earned. Don't be that company.
3. We have a BIG mission. An attractive part of working for us was our mission to help small to midsize MSPs transform their businesses and their lives. Great people want a company that truly cares about their clients and team (employees).
4. We're GREAT at marketing. Salespeople want a company that knows how to support sales and selling with great marketing. Otherwise, they know their job is exponentially more difficult. Will you give them leads? Will you provide sales support in the form of marketing campaigns, collateral, testimonials and lists? Will you give them the tools and resources they need to sell? This is another BIG reason great salespeople worked for us.
5. We have a great SALES PLAYBOOK and process that WORKS. Most companies only offer the two-part training of "Good luck" and "Hang in there." Yes, a salesperson should know how to sell; but they won't know how to sell IT services and YOUR specific company's services. You need to teach them who a great prospect is, how to open the conversation, good diagnostic questions to ask, what the common objections will be and how to overcome them, how to close the sale, etc. This is a LOT more than most companies offer and is very attractive to a rep who wants to start earning ASAP.
6. We have a DRAMA-free workplace. This is something I include in our job ads that is like catnip to great people. Most office environments are rife with internal politics, hidden agendas, dysfunctional and ego-driven leadership and ZERO systems and processes, which creates failures and unhappy clients. If I just described your organization, FIX THIS. Not only does it create incredible stress for you, but it also turns off good people from wanting to do their best work, making employees resentful, bitter and unwilling to do their best work.
7. We are in the tech industry, which is HOT. You are even more so. Even as a marketing company, we got a few points for serving a stable, growing and "hot" industry. Many industries are struggling right now, and their reps are finding it more and more difficult to sell and earn. Not so in the tech industry. Use this to your advantage in your ads and recruiting efforts.
You Can't Fake Any Of This
One final and very, very important point. You cannot fake the above. You might say it in the interview, but as soon as they show up for work on Day One, they're going to see you're full of shite and begin the process of finding somewhere else to work.
All of the above takes constant work and a commitment to keeping a great company and culture. You will have to fight daily for it. But once you have a GREAT company, I can assure you it gets easier and easier to attract and retain top performers.
Step 3: Avoid A Bad Sales Hire
A sales manager's job is to develop the sales team in quantity (hiring) and quality (performance). If you're a small company, it's very likely you are not only the sales manager but the sales department.
That's fine in the beginning, but at some point, when you finally get serious about growing, you'll need to start hiring salespeople. You cannot bootstrap the growth to $5 or $10 million on your own. Look, I'm a very good salesperson and I know how to group-close people on webinars and stages. However, there's no way I can produce the volume of sales we need for growth on my back alone, which is why I built two sales departments, one for the media side of the house and one for memberships and services. Those departments were the engines that kept the company growing and profitable.
I'm often asked questions about how to deal with dysfunctional salespeople, phrased as "sales management" questions. How do I motivate a rep? How do I get them to prospect? Can you give me accurate numbers (pipeline reports)? When do I know it's time to fire a rep? (The answer to this last one is…if you're thinking about firing them, you probably need to.)
If you want to eliminate or at least minimize your sales management headaches, then the critical first step is to hire the right people from the beginning.
16 Red Flags When Hiring A Salesperson
You will STILL have to manage them, lead them, train them and support them, BUT good salespeople don't:
- Show up late, disheveled or dressed messily.
- Jump around a lot from job to job and/or have big, unexplained gaps in employment. This is worse if they are trending DOWN in income and status.
- Make you feel they are hiding something. Trust your gut.
- Get belligerent or agitated with you during the interview. However, a really good sales rep DOES have ego and confidence, and that's a good thing. I want to see professional disagreement if you challenge them.
- Talk bad about their previous employer in an immature way. It's perfectly okay for someone to be critical, but they should do it in a professional manner.
And here are some more red flags:
- If they simply are mediocre at all their jobs. A top performer is consistently a top performer everywhere they go, EVEN IN BAD CIRCUMSTANCES.
- If they don't want you to talk to a previous employer and they don't have a legitimate reason as to why. An example of a legitimate reason for NOT wanting you to talk to their previous boss is that they left due to sexual harassment or are in a lawsuit with them for pay due.
- If their previous employer won't talk to you other than to verify dates of employment or simply won't return a call. Get your candidate to arrange the interview. (Here's how I run that reference check.)
- If what they said in the interview is grossly inconsistent with what their direct boss says.
- If they were given a book of business and didn't have to hunt. (Proceed with caution IF your sales role will require them to build a book of business entirely from scratch and cold prospecting.)
- If they make a lot of excuses for poor performance and don't take any ownership.
- If they cannot tell you their weaknesses or what they don't like to do or aren't good at.
- If you sense they have a giant ego and won't take critical feedback or follow your process.
- If they were a sales manager and not prospecting/closing, and the job is to be a rep. NOTE: If someone has been in a management role for a long time, it's often difficult for them to take a step back to being a rep.
- If they were self-employed for a long time or attempted to start a business and failed. First, it may be difficult for them to get back into a structured employee role. Second, if they started a business and failed because they couldn't make money selling their OWN services, how are they going to make money for you selling YOUR services?
- If you don't feel excited about hiring them. Trust your gut.
The Bottom Line On Hiring MSP Salespeople
Hire the wrong rep and no playbook will save you. Hire the right one and they'll figure out how to milk the cash cow. So recruit constantly, give great reps a real reason to choose you, and screen out the red flags before they cost you a year of pipeline.
Once they're on board, a great rep still needs a sales process that works and a closing meeting they can run the same way every time, starting with the seven steps to close an MSP sale. Before you hire, make sure the pieces a new rep needs are in place. The MSP Sales Playbook Checklist has a full section on what to have ready before your next sales hire. And if you want help building the playbook, the training and the management rhythm that make a new rep productive fast, that is exactly what my MSP sales training is built for.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find a good salesperson for my MSP?
Recruit constantly, not just when you need someone. Great reps are almost always already employed, so you have to keep running ads and looking, and be ready to hire when one becomes available, for example when their company is sold or folds, they return to the workforce, or their workplace becomes intolerable. Waiting until you're desperate leads to hiring someone with red flags you chose to ignore.
How much should I pay an MSP sales rep?
Enough that they're hungry but not starving. Design a generous comp plan and real earning opportunity, because great salespeople have options. Use Payscale, Salary.com, Indeed or a local recruiter to understand the pay range, and interview reps from other companies about their comp plans and what they like and don't like about them. If they can easily make more elsewhere, they'll eventually leave.
How can a small MSP compete with bigger companies for sales talent?
Offer what bigger companies often can't: a growing company, respect for salespeople and their commissions, a big mission, strong marketing support with leads and collateral, a sales playbook that teaches them how to sell your services, a drama-free workplace and the advantage of being in the hot tech industry. But you can't fake any of it. A rep will see the truth on day one.
What are the red flags when hiring a salesperson?
Job-hopping or unexplained employment gaps, especially with declining income; mediocre performance at every job; reluctance to let you call a previous employer without a legitimate reason; stories that don't match what their boss says; a history of inheriting accounts instead of hunting; excuses instead of ownership; not knowing their own weaknesses; an ego that won't take feedback; and simply not feeling excited about hiring them.
Should I hire a former sales manager as a sales rep?
Proceed carefully. If someone has been in a management role for a long time and hasn't been prospecting or closing, it's often difficult for them to step back into being a rep. Make sure the role and their recent experience actually match.
Should I hire a salesperson who used to own a business?
Be cautious. Someone who was self-employed for a long time may struggle to get back into a structured employee role. And if they started a business and failed because they couldn't make money selling their own services, it's fair to ask how they'll make money selling yours.
When should I fire a sales rep?
If you're thinking about firing them, you probably need to. The best way to avoid that situation is to hire the right people from the beginning, because no sales playbook or training will fix someone who can't sell, won't sell or has a bad attitude.