What Does It Cost To Make A Sales Mis-hire?

Think about how much time and energy it takes to hire a good sales person. Think about how much it costs to carry a good salesperson on your payroll, and then think about the amount of revenue needed for your company in order to help you accelerate your sales. Finally, add in the opportunity costs for your company if during a given period, particularly a long one, instead of selling a million dollars a year, you have an under performing rep. When you add in all of these factors, its very costly to make a mistake when it comes to hiring sales people.

This is why hiring sales people is best left to the experts and why bringing in a good recruiting or search firm to do this kind of work makes absolute economic sense to your company. Most people resist bringing on recruiters and executive search firms because they dont want to have to pay the fees. What are the fees for hiring a sales person? Well, the range is between twenty and thirty percent of the base or total annual salary, which typically means you could be paying a fee of somewhere between $10,000 and $40,000 in fees. Contrast those fees against the actual cost of salary, benefits, travel, and training time, particularly during the time when youre waiting for a new salesperson to come up to speed. Analyze how many months it typically takes before you can see results from a new salesperson. Is it 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 months? A lot of that depends on the sales cycle and learning curve in your particular market.

The rule of thumb for the ramp-up of a new sales professional to hitting their sales target is typically the sales cycle, plus the learning curve, plus 3 to 6 months.

Suffice it to say that you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and potentially lose millions of dollars in sales if you make a mis-hire. By contrasting that with making a successful hire and the fees associated with doing it right through a good sales and marketing recruiting firm, you quickly find that it makes good economic sense to outsource your sales and marketing recruiting. The return on investment in making such a decision cannot always be assured versus doing it yourself, but often times it can.

If you dont consider yourself to be an expert in the hiring process, consider brining in an expert to help you out. What youll find is that the value really equates to an insurance policy for your companyone that many companies, particularly in this market, are finding to be a worthy investment.

Cube Management helps companies accelerate their sales, by providing the Sales & Marketing talent they need to grow their business. Cube is a leading recruiting and consulting partner to mid-market and emerging growth companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. We work across the spectrum of Sales, Marketing and Business Development, providing holistic solutions that drive revenue and profit success. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process and People, to produce great results. Download the Cube Management Recruiting Guide and the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide.

Hiring a Sales Team for Your Flea Market Business
Most people begin selling at the flea market to either empty out their garage and attic, or build a part time second income. ...

Which is Better Hire a Salesperson or Invest in a Sales Assistant?
What does it cost to hire a good salesperson? Many companies spend about one fourth the annual salary of a salesperson on job...

Hiring the Best Sales Athletes
The principal driver of sales productivity is the quality of an organizations salespeople. The best sales strategies slide i...

6 Common Mistakes in the Sales Hiring Process
Is lack of sales results, more sales training costs, months ofr unearned salary and damage to your companys image orr reputat...

Why Sales And Marketing Recruiting Is Different
Our company specializes only in hiring sales and marketing people, from front line contributors, to mid-level and all the way...

Hire the Right Sales Manager
Although every organization is different, hiring a sales manager is not as simple as it looks. In fact, the wrong sales manag...

Creating Value Out Of Indecision - Helping Your Sales Staff Get There
I have a question for all of you Sales Managers out there. What will it take? What will it take to turn the new or mediocre s...

Managing the Sales Floor in a Box Store
One of the most difficult things to do is to manage the sales floor of a large box store, especially when the corporate offic...

The 7 Reasons Your Non-Profit Needs a Virtual Assistant
Having worked in non-profit organizations in three different countries, I have seen the benefits and drawbacks of non-profits...

After Measures are Set, You Must Track their Actions
In one of the performance meeting a couple of days ago, the operation manager was questioned on his performance in his operat...

What You Should Do For Bat Mitzvah Entertainment
Once you are ready to hire the entertainment for your Bat Mitzvah in Manhattan one thing is for sure and that is that you wan...

A Better Way to Get Quick Sales Results
A Better Way to Get Quick Sales ResultsArticle Body: New business ventures and emerging companies face a number of critical...

How to Avoid a Cloned Sales Force
When I accept a consulting assignment, I insist on administering psychological tests to each of the managers and salespeople ...

How To Effectively Manage Salespeople Who Are In Remote Locations
If your organization has field sales personnel spread across the country or across the globe, its very important that you pro...

Hiring and Training of New Sales Staff
How do you train your sales personnel? Perhaps a better question would beDo you train your sales personnel? As silly as thi...

Managing an RV Sales Lot
It is not easy to manage and RV sales lot because the sales lots are so large and people can easily come up and start walking...

Motivational Sales Speaker explains the #1 Key to Effective Sales Interviews
Sales Management: Do you have a sales management interview process that defines which sales candidate has the best Right to W...

Opening A Dollar Store - Focus on Cost Reduction
Are you opening a dollar store? If so never lose sight of the importance of cost reduction. In fact cost reduction should tak...

Does Your Sales Training Program Address Your Sales Performance Issues? Part 2
In Part 1, we went over the steps to uncover sales performance issues and decide which are applicable at a high priority for ...

Parties For Children
Parties! We all like them, we have all at some point hosted or attended one and no doubt realised the costs and pressures inv...