Dan Martell - How To Hire a Sales Rep

00:00:00.000 Hey there.

00:00:00.500 I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor,

00:00:02.240 and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.560 In this episode, I'm going to share with you

00:00:05.520 how to hire a world-class salesperson, really just

00:00:09.040 somebody who's amazing, that can hit their quota.

00:00:11.880 And be sure to stay at the end where I'm

00:00:13.160 going to share with you how to get access

00:00:14.800 to my signature Rocket Demo Builder process

00:00:18.320 to help you double your close rates and reduce your sales

00:00:21.600 cycle.

00:00:22.720 And let's get into it.

00:00:30.000 In my career, I have hired dozens of salespeople.

00:00:39.800 I recently just hired a new salesperson last week

00:00:42.340 and in their first week, they closed their first deal.

00:00:44.760 That was, they came on Wednesday.

00:00:46.640 Friday closed their first deal.

00:00:47.800 Monday, they just closed their second one.

00:00:49.640 I said, ring the bell, right?

00:00:51.240 They were all pumped, emojis, emojis, emojis.

00:00:53.360 For some reason, this guy just loves emojis, millennial.

00:00:56.400 Anyways, I wanna share this strategy with you

00:00:59.600 because a lot of my coaching clients run into this issue

00:01:02.480 when they go from founder-led sales to sales team-led sales.

00:01:05.880 And it's really just this angst where they want to make sure

00:01:08.840 that they don't waste their time and money

00:01:10.540 hiring a salesperson that just can't do the job. 0.89

00:01:13.340 And what I've learned in creating this process

00:01:15.940 I'm going to share with you guys is that if we do it right,

00:01:18.260 we get predictable people that show up

00:01:21.080 with the right characteristics and values

00:01:23.020 and communication styles so that we know,

00:01:25.360 based on our customer market,

00:01:27.660 Like, who's going to resonate best with them?

00:01:29.740 And I made, literally, I hired a guy,

00:01:32.760 wasted almost $80,000 in paying him a base salary.

00:01:36.140 And all he did, early days, when I was in my early 20s,

00:01:39.000 all he did was saying, I'm beating the bush.

00:01:40.500 I'm beating the bushes.

00:01:41.820 I'm going to create opportunity.

00:01:43.580 We're still working the deal, working the pipeline,

00:01:45.620 and all that.

00:01:46.120 And I was too young to know any better.

00:01:48.660 What I decided to do was educate myself.

00:01:51.160 And I read all the sales books, everything

00:01:53.420 from Chet Holmes, Ultimate Sales Machine,

00:01:55.280 to Jeffrey Gittimer, to Brian Tracy, you name it.

00:01:58.680 I've read over probably at this point 50 plus sales books

00:02:02.920 and I've taken all of that, put it into the training

00:02:05.280 that I use with my coaching clients, with my own business

00:02:08.100 and I'm gonna teach it to you today.

00:02:09.860 Number one, profile.

00:02:11.600 Here's the coolest part of the world we live in today.

00:02:14.400 Well, not the coolest because the internet's pretty cool

00:02:16.060 and a lot of other stuff are cool.

00:02:17.400 But one of my favorite parts is the fact

00:02:19.180 that we have enough knowledge about default behaviors

00:02:22.200 that we can actually profile individuals

00:02:25.700 that before they come into our business

00:02:27.200 and understand if they're going to be a good fit for a role.

00:02:29.840 So I'm not going to share what specific profile tool

00:02:33.160 you should be using.

00:02:33.900 You can ask below in the comments and people will jump in.

00:02:37.380 But for me, what I love the best is

00:02:40.200 that I can profile my best salespeople

00:02:43.380 and use that aggregated profile to actually hire the next.

00:02:47.380 And again, what I've learned is different industries

00:02:49.760 have different needs from a salesperson.

00:02:51.960 If you're doing pure outbound, you have a different requirement

00:02:55.300 for that kind of person than if you're doing pure inbound and

00:02:57.940 more of an SDR type role or kind of inside sales.

00:03:01.480 So you want to profile.

00:03:02.740 Now here's the key.

00:03:03.340 Some of you are saying, well, I don't have any salespeople,

00:03:05.140 Dan, and you're trying to teach me how to hire salespeople.

00:03:07.780 Perfect.

00:03:08.380 Here's what you do.

00:03:09.280 Find anybody, ideally in your network.

00:03:11.440 If you don't have a network, go search Dream 100, Dan Martell,

00:03:14.780 and learn how to build your own network.

00:03:16.660 Find somebody that has salespeople that you know really

00:03:18.780 well, profile them, and then use that in your pattern match to

00:03:21.960 find the next level of people, okay?

00:03:25.000 Because it's in that that you can get rid of 99% of the noise

00:03:29.200 because guess what, great salespeople know how to sell you.

00:03:32.540 And the worst thing you want to find out is you got conned.

00:03:35.300 You got, you literally had the guy that showed up and ended up

00:03:38.840 in your business because he was a great, he had a gift of gab

00:03:41.340 but he literally had no sales skills whatsoever to actually

00:03:44.240 do what you needed him to do.

00:03:45.680 So profile them.

00:03:46.880 Number two, top of the funnel.

00:03:49.380 One of the most important things for any hire,

00:03:51.580 specifically salespeople, is you need to get as many people

00:03:55.180 applying for the role at the top of the funnel.

00:03:58.080 How do you do that?

00:03:59.080 You make sure your job application page is very fun

00:04:02.800 and it sells the opportunity.

00:04:04.660 So make sure that you understand what motivates salespeople

00:04:07.800 and put that copy in your sales page, your application page.

00:04:11.200 Number two, it's like sub number two.

00:04:13.600 So it's like A, let's go A and B because this is step number two.

00:04:16.400 A is application page.

00:04:18.800 B is use your team.

00:04:21.080 One of my favorite things to do is ask them

00:04:23.060 if they know any people that are in sales.

00:04:25.020 Go into their LinkedIn.

00:04:26.360 Sit next to them.

00:04:27.240 They're next to you.

00:04:28.220 Hey, open up your LinkedIn.

00:04:29.220 Search sales.

00:04:29.840 Look for a degree connection.

00:04:31.140 Look through the people they already know and say, hey,

00:04:32.920 do you think they would be great?

00:04:34.060 Can they apply?

00:04:34.760 Because the good thing about salespeople is they're always

00:04:36.540 looking for the next best product that's

00:04:38.300 going to have the highest velocity of sales

00:04:40.240 so they can increase their commissions.

00:04:42.720 So that's really valuable.

00:04:44.540 And then for me, it's look inside your own network.

00:04:47.700 So if you have an email list, you'd

00:04:49.260 be surprised how many times you're working.

00:04:50.840 you might have customers that would love to sell your product

00:04:54.020 because they're the biggest evangelists,

00:04:55.380 the biggest champions for you already out in the market.

00:04:59.180 Why not get paid to do that? 0.84

00:05:00.680 I was recently talking to a candidate that applied for,

00:05:03.720 we've got another salesperson we're hiring,

00:05:06.080 and he goes, look, Dan, the truth is,

00:05:08.160 I already promote you at every one of the dinners I host.

00:05:11.120 It would just be really amazing if I could do that

00:05:13.560 and be aligned with that outcome.

00:05:15.300 And I was like, whoa, you do dinners

00:05:17.600 and you talk about my coaching?

00:05:18.940 And he's like, yeah, because you've

00:05:20.140 taught me so much about how to really think about my business.

00:05:23.620 And I was like, that could be a really cool sales channel.

00:05:26.860 Imagine if we hosted dinners, you invited people,

00:05:29.760 you work for me, and then we kind of use that as lead gen.

00:05:32.260 He's like, that would be amazing.

00:05:33.880 That's the opportunity from within your network,

00:05:36.440 clients, customers, you already have.

00:05:37.780 But we want to add to the top of the funnel

00:05:40.120 so you have a bunch of applicants.

00:05:41.780 Number three, video.

00:05:44.340 I think that anybody, and this has

00:05:47.140 been proven through, Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in

00:05:49.880 Blink, that we can tell so much based on somebody's

00:05:53.880 interactions from communicating with them.

00:05:56.540 We can't even explain it, but we can tell.

00:05:59.220 So one of the first things every applicant needs to do is

00:06:02.420 submit a video answering questions.

00:06:04.820 Because for me, and I don't, I'm not involved in the

00:06:07.660 recruiting process till the very end because we have a very

00:06:09.860 structured thing called the Talent Pipeline that I actually

00:06:12.360 have created and I coach my clients on.

00:06:14.500 And my team executes the Talent Pipeline.

00:06:16.540 So, but the first step is every applicant for the sales rule

00:06:19.780 has to submit a video answering specific questions

00:06:22.640 and through that, we can get rid of a lot of noise.

00:06:25.620 We can get a lot of people that think they're really great

00:06:27.660 at sales that we know that if they were talking

00:06:29.880 to a customer, they would be confused.

00:06:32.060 They wouldn't be able to respond.

00:06:33.260 They just don't have the right tonality.

00:06:35.160 Not good or bad, just not a fit for us.

00:06:37.220 So make sure that you ask for a video.

00:06:39.260 Step one, use that to qualify them to make sure

00:06:42.700 that you don't waste a bunch of time.

00:06:44.140 I mean, doing 15 minute phone calls with a bunch of,

00:06:46.400 a dozen candidates, that could take up two days of your life

00:06:49.640 when literally watching a three minute video

00:06:51.580 can help you save all that time.

00:06:53.380 Number four, test project.

00:06:55.280 So one of the things that's really important,

00:06:56.980 once you find somebody, they go through the process,

00:06:59.140 video, interview with the team, profile assessment, et cetera,

00:07:01.540 you're now at the test project.

00:07:04.120 We wanna make sure that we throw them into the deep end.

00:07:07.660 So what we do is we give them an email address

00:07:09.280 for our company, we send them a dozen leads,

00:07:11.220 and over a two week period, we see how they perform.

00:07:14.360 How did they communicate?

00:07:15.760 And yes, we give them some training and our VP of sales

00:07:18.360 will coach them to make sure that they have some support.

00:07:21.160 But at the end of the day, I want to see how they respond

00:07:23.600 just natively, inherently.

00:07:25.360 What are their default habits?

00:07:26.840 What is their communication flow?

00:07:28.740 What do they do without any training to let me know

00:07:31.740 if they've got the foundation that we can build upon

00:07:34.980 and even see if they can get some deals?

00:07:37.180 Because that's super exciting.

00:07:38.980 I see too often, literally, I was talking to one of my

00:07:40.980 coaching clients the other day and he was like,

00:07:43.380 yeah, we've had this VP of sales for a while.

00:07:45.120 How long? 11 months.

00:07:46.280 How many deals have they closed? One.

00:07:48.500 Wow. Here's a question.

00:07:50.000 How many deals could you have closed in that same time period?

00:07:52.560 Probably a dozen.

00:07:53.660 All right, I'm cool the founder selling 20% better

00:07:57.500 than a salesperson, but not by a factor of 10.

00:08:00.840 There is an issue there that we might be able to fix

00:08:03.440 in this next step, but make sure that you fix

00:08:06.300 the test project upfront so that you can evaluate

00:08:09.340 true simulation of a work environment

00:08:12.720 with the salesperson so that you can see

00:08:14.620 if they've got what it's gonna take.

00:08:16.220 Number five, sales playbook.

00:08:18.620 Here's the reality.

00:08:20.440 If you expect somebody to come in and you just say,

00:08:23.860 figure it out and give them leads to start closing deals,

00:08:26.940 then you will be dramatically disappointed.

00:08:29.700 And the reason why is sales is not something

00:08:32.940 that just happens, it is a process, it's repeatable,

00:08:36.100 and if you do it right, it's scalable.

00:08:38.240 So what I recommend, okay, and this is what I teach

00:08:40.380 my clients, is if you're still the founder doing this,

00:08:43.700 and I have a very structured template that I teach.

00:08:46.060 But if you're the founder, just grab everything

00:08:48.000 you're doing today and put it in a Google Doc.

00:08:50.080 I'm talking about your email templates.

00:08:51.740 I'm talking about your objections.

00:08:53.420 I'm talking about the talk tracks

00:08:54.880 that you're using on demos.

00:08:56.780 If you're using my Rocket Demo Builder,

00:08:58.840 take the framework that I teach and your answers

00:09:02.720 to those questions to guide the prospect through

00:09:05.560 to make decisions.

00:09:06.460 What's your follow-up sequence look?

00:09:08.100 Write those things down.

00:09:09.520 What training inspired you?

00:09:10.860 What books inspired you?

00:09:11.960 What YouTube videos inspired you?

00:09:13.800 What are you doing to succeed as a founder selling?

00:09:17.360 Put it in your sales playbook.

00:09:19.160 Everything from the avatar, the product suite,

00:09:21.880 the offer, the pricing, the how to deal with objections,

00:09:25.440 how to deal with the competitor set.

00:09:26.820 Everything should be at least in a Google Doc

00:09:28.840 so if you hire somebody, they can hit the ground running.

00:09:31.680 I see this too often.

00:09:32.780 They're just like, you know, we didn't really train them.

00:09:35.420 We just said figure it out.

00:09:36.660 That, you know, you might think just because you're a startup

00:09:38.700 that you can get away with that.

00:09:40.060 You can try it.

00:09:40.780 It's not the way I like to build companies

00:09:42.580 because I wanna get results.

00:09:43.580 If I'm gonna invest time, even if they're on pure commission,

00:09:46.380 okay, and it doesn't cost me anything,

00:09:48.520 my time is very expensive.

00:09:50.560 So we wanna make sure that we invest time and money

00:09:53.660 to support our teams to be able to get to productivity

00:09:56.660 and quota as fast as possible.

00:09:58.400 And the way to do that is you need to have a sales playbook

00:10:01.700 that outlines all the things that I just mentioned

00:10:04.200 that you give on day one once they're ready to start with you

00:10:08.180 that you use to have them self-train, educate,

00:10:11.340 understand their product, and really get inside the mind

00:10:14.100 of the customer.

00:10:14.780 Too often, in today's world, customers

00:10:17.660 are showing up in your sales pipeline way more educated

00:10:21.320 than your sales reps are on your own product, OK?

00:10:24.920 And that's a scary thing.

00:10:26.600 So you might even have in your sales program,

00:10:28.800 go read all of our Capterra reviews,

00:10:30.500 go read all of our customer case studies,

00:10:32.680 go read this, et cetera, because all of that

00:10:34.760 becomes context and ammunition that your sales rep

00:10:37.820 can use to overcome and to help persuade customers

00:10:42.860 or what I always think is enthusiasm,

00:10:46.000 just like give enthusiasm for their,

00:10:48.100 like the opportunity for them to solve their problems.

00:10:50.640 So you want to do that in a sales playbook.

00:10:52.940 So really quick recap, how to hire a salesperson

00:10:55.480 that can hit quota extremely fast.

00:10:57.200 Number one, profile them so that you only recruit people

00:11:00.640 that are like your top performers.

00:11:03.280 Number two, focus on top of the funnel.

00:11:05.420 Number three, video applicants only.

00:11:08.800 Number four, the test project to simulate the real world work.

00:11:12.800 And number five, sales playbook.

00:11:15.560 As I mentioned beginning this episode,

00:11:17.100 I want to share with you my Rocket Demo Builder.

00:11:19.760 It's a framework I created where I go over the five hot

00:11:23.240 principles that you're going to need to know about even doing

00:11:26.400 great product demos that will help you close twice as fast

00:11:29.580 and shorten your sales cycle.

00:11:31.040 And I even go over the nine box model of the questions

00:11:35.080 in the flow of the Rocket demo to take it from an hour,

00:11:38.720 an hour and a half down to 30 to 45 minutes.

00:11:41.580 And I'm talking about credit card customer on the call.

00:11:44.620 Click the link below to download your copy.

00:11:46.520 And if you like this video, be sure to hit the like button.

00:11:48.560 Subscribe to my channel if you're new.

00:11:50.500 And leave a comment letting me know what was the most valuable

00:11:53.600 aspect of this video.

00:11:55.940 And I would love to challenge you to live a bigger life

00:11:59.000 and a bigger business.

00:11:59.840 And I'll see you next Monday.

00:12:01.800 Ready? How to hire a salesperson that can hit a quota. 1.00

Dan Martell - September 09, 2019

How To Hire a Sales Rep

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