Keeping track of a few contacts in your head or on a few scraps of paper may work if you are working with a relatively small number of contacts, but once you start to expand and work with more than a handful of potential leads and clients you will probably want to start using a CRM Database (Customer Relationship Management Database).
The one we use with our Sales Professionals and Sales Managers as well as in our real estate investing business is called Highrise. It is a deceptively simple, but extremely powerful contact management system.
Keep Your Data Clean
Before we get into some of the basics for dealing with your contacts, I will point out that garbage in means garbage out so keeping your data clean and neat is important. Only add contacts that you plan to follow up with again or that are meaningful to you. Use standard formating for addresses and phone numbers. For example, we prefer the phone format of (xxx) xxx-xxxx when we have phone numbers in our system.
Add New Contacts
The most common way for me to add a new contact is to reply to an email that I received from a someone that I want added to my database (or emailing someone for the first time). With Highrise it is easy for me to blind carbon copy the dropbox email address for my account from my email account and that will do two things. First, it will automatically create a new contact in my Highrise account for that account AND, second, it will attach that email I just sent to the new contact.
Once I have sent the email, I go to my Highrise account and fill in any additional contact info that I already know for the contact like phone number, address and website address.
I also classify the contact using tags. For example, if it is a potential sales professional inquiring about a sales job, I might classify them as “Managed By James Orr” and “Sales Professional Applicant” as well as “CraigsList” if I found them via CraigsList. I can use these tags later to help me sift and sort contacts when needed.
Follow Up With Contacts
After I have set some tags, I think about when the next time I will want to have my next interaction with that contact if they do not reply to my contact with them. For example, if they do not reply to my email, when would I want to follow up. If they do not return my call, when would I want to call again. I then create a task in Highrise telling myself when I would contact them again (tomorrow, this week, next week, later) and what I would be doing (email, call or whatever). My most common duration between follow up is about a week.
Of course, if they contact me before my task comes due, I will log their contact (either by blind carbon copying my reply to their email to my Highrise dropbox or with a note about a phone call or meeting) and update the task to address my next step.
If I do not hear from my contact before my next scheduled follow up, I can use the tasks section to remind me who I need to follow up with, about what and when.
Using this type of system allows me to keep track of who I need to follow up with, when and to document all notes about our past interactions easily. I strongly recommend that you adopt a similar model for your own business.
Until my next post,
James
Have you ever thought: if only I could have a commission based sales professional that would make sales calls for me, my business would explode? Or maybe you’ve wondered: is there someone out there that I could pay for bringing in quality new business to me on a pay for performance basis? Well, you can. I will share with you three proven ways to find the perfect commission based sales pro (or two or three or more) to help take your business to the next level by massively increasing your sales team.
In our business we produce and sell a variety of marketing products and information for a large number of industries and have a commission only sales team that sells corporate sponsorship for each course. Each of our Sales Managers is empowered and encouraged to build up their own commission only sales force that they can help make sales of their own. These are the three methods that I use, they should be using and that you too can use to find key members of your sales team.
First, post commission only sales jobs on the major job and classified ad websites.
Posting legitimate, well defined job postings on job and classified ad websites is an easy to implement, cost effective strategy to find potential sales professionals to help your business’s sales.
Why should you consider doing this? It is easy to do. After you take the time to really formulate what you are looking for and write the brief job description, it takes just minutes to get a job posting up and once it is up, it takes even less time to refresh it every few days to keep it toward the top of the list. For a well written ad, you should expect about one response for a commission only position each time you post it. Sometimes you’ll get no responses, but most of the time you will get one inquiry.
Another reason to use job and classified ad websites is that it is extremely cost effective to use them. Many of the classified ad websites like CraigsList.com, Kijiji.com and Backpage.com are free to post jobs for most cities. Some of the larger cities will cost you a nominal fee. If your sales position is a telemarketing based position that can be done from anywhere like our sales positions are, you could run the ad in any city and only select cities that do not charge a fee. If you stay in compliance with the job or classified ad websites policies and you have a telemarketing based position, you could run your employment ad in several cities to get a larger pool of applicants.
Second, use social networking websites to get the word out that you’re hiring.
Don’t forget to update your social networking websites like FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace to let them know what you are doing and that you are looking to hire a professional sales person to help out with sales. You may be pleasantly surprised to realize that a super star sales professional you know that you thought was happy in their real estate or mortgage broker business is disappointed in the slow real estate economy and may be seeking an opportunity elsewhere. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers and telephone book sales reps have been a great source for us.
Keep your social networks engaged in the little victories and challenges you are facing with finding your sales team. By giving mini-updates frequently you may catch people that missed your earlier messages because they were not active and checking their account at the time.
Finally, consider outsourcing the hiring role.
Being a strong advocate of outsourcing, you should consider using key outsourcing sites like ODesk.com, Guru.com and eLance.com to outsource, ideally for a flat fee paid on the sales professionals first sale for you, to help find and select a sales professional for your sales team.
There are human resources professionals that are making their knowledge, skills and expertise available for a small success fee on a new hire for you. Structure a win-win-win arrangement where you pay the person helping you do the hire from the first sale or two that their referred sales pro makes. By setting it up in advance like that means everyone wins.
In conclusion, I strongly recommend both other business owners and especially our Sales Managers utilize all three of these strategies to grow a sales team that can be used to massively improve their sales.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Are you a sales professional and interested in learning more about our sales job?
If you’ve been looking for the best part time sales job but have been frustrated browsing job websites with the amount of garbage there is out there, you are not alone. A large and growing number of sales professionals are just as frustrated as you are with the nonsense and games that many businesses are playing. Can’t a true sales professional find a legitimate, part time sales position that pays a fair wage, gives you a flexible schedule and treats its key sales team members right? Yes, but you may need a few tips to help you clear through the nonsense and find the right sales opportunity.
First, use the quick sort to eliminate all the jobs that obviously don’t meet your personal criteria. If you are not interested in a certain business type of industry, cross those off your list and move on. That’s the easy step.
Second, avoid companies that are charging an upfront fee of any kind. That includes everything from an initiation fee, orientation fee, application fee, human resources fee, job placement fee and whatever creative fee they are calling it. Few things are more annoying to legitimate companies than sleazy businesses that are making their money collecting up front fees instead of adding value to the marketplace by growing a legitimate sales team.
Third, if it is not in writing, it is not real. I wish the world could work on a promise and firm handshake, but unfortunately it is just not realistic to expect that today. Make sure you get your employment agreement in writing stating exactly what is expected of you and especially important is your compensation.
Fourth, will the business be offering on-going support and training? Training is a component of many sales jobs that new sales professionals tend to discount and/or overlook. The experienced sales professional understands the importance of sharpening the saw, continuing to learn and grow in their sales skills and puts a high value on training provided by the company they are selling for.
Fifth, if you are looking for a part time position today you may still want to consider whether there is an opportunity for you to grow in the position. Is there a way for you to earn residual income? For example, can you grow a sales team that you manager and are paid on their sales? Could you increase you hours or even go full time if you wanted? Better to find out up front than to discover later than it is not a good fit.
Sixth, will they allow you to telecommute? We’re living in the 21st century folks and I would be wary of companies that subscribe to 19th century practices of herding employees into dimly lit buildings and cubicles to produce each day. Look for a company that allows you to work from the luxury of your own home office if that is important to you.
In conclusion, there is an ever increasing amount of part time sales jobs out there and, yes, there are a few truly great ones. Use the tips above to help you sort through the non-opportunities to find the right one for
you.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you are looking for a great part time sales job, consider looking at our sales professional position.
I was recently asked by our new Sales Manager about tips for posting employment ads on CraigsList to hire a Sales Professional for our business. Having run a national real estate investing business that was constantly looking for real estate agents, mortgage brokers and other professionals to work with and having posted quite a few ads on CraigsList looking for those professionals, I thought I would share with you some of what my experience has been.
What about posting frequency?
First of all, to share with folks that are new to CraigsList and to remind those that are already familiar: it is extremely important to be listed near the top of the results page so you need to relist your ad as frequently as allowed by CraigsList’s terms of service.
What to include in the ad?
Next, here are some tips about what to post in the ad: first of all, having ads that have website addresses, in my experience, will tend to decrease your response rate. Exceptions abound with that generalization though as having a link to a large, publicly traded company could actually improve response rates. For most small business owners running ads to hire for a sales professional will likely be better served by running their ad with minimal information about the company name.
There was a time when I included my telephone number in employment ads, but I have since stopped doing that for a number of reasons including people calling without actually reading about the job and I’d spend time repeating what we included in the description. Removing my telephone number, actually increased response by email.
Once you get in touch via email, immediately try to get them on the phone (especially if they are going to be doing telephone sales). Build your relationship on the phone at that point.
How about the compensation?
Should you include how much the job pays? How much about the job compensation should you include? Well, here are some generalizations: for sales positions, if it includes a base salary (which our jobs typically do not), you will tend to increase response by including that. You may find that you get a larger number and a different type of person replying to those ads: someone looking for any job that has a salary and not serious sales professionals. If your sales job has some type of variable pay schedule like a commission only position, I would prefer being careful not to over-promise. Over-promising on pay will boost response, but at a huge cost in reputation and very likely a huge cost in keeping great people around long term.
What type of response might you expect?
In a mid-sized city (approximately 100K population like my city of Fort Collins) from posting a single ad in the sales section you might get one response each time you post the ad. Sometimes you won’t get any responses. In very rare cases you might get two responses. You will not be overwhelmed with responses posting an ad for that type of ad.
With a smaller response, we can and should really focus on really connecting with candidates that you’d actually want to work with to show them they are part of a small team that really is committed to helping them succeed.
Conclusion
To summarize, when posting ads for hiring a sales professional on CraigsList, I recommend shying toward the side of under-promising to keep a reasonable chance of keeping people after they inquire. I would not include a website address or a phone number in my ad for most cases. I’d be more likely to include a phone number than a website address though. However, I would want to get on the phone with a candidate that looks promising as soon as possible to start building a relationship. I’d also keep reminding myself to have patience… getting one or two responses per post is reasonable in most cases.
Until my next post,
James
