The time is ripe – you felt the need to hire an additional salesperson and extend your sales department. But here’s a trick. What is your “why”? What was the main incentive behind this decision? Which problem do you want to solve?

While all these questions might seem obvious and straightforward, in essence it’s critical to clearly understand the answers. Depending on those, it will lead you to either success or failure. 

When it won’t help

Before making any investments, you closely analyze all pros and cons of the decision. What are the risks associated with it. How long will it take to secure a return on your investments. Hiring a salesperson is that same investment you make for your business. Simply because it’s an asset whose main purpose is to generate revenue. But not always we see it this way. 

That’s why there are important points which you should always take into consideration. Let’s look at them. 

Market situation

Do you take regular health check ups to prevent any issues from happening? Or go to the doctor only when it gets bad? And what about your car? Do you do the checks regularly? Or wait until it starts falling apart? 

While we all want to stick to the first option, it’s in human nature to solve the problems and not to prevent them. 

Slightly different but similar rule works with sales. When everything is great, the market is high and sales keep on working, it feels natural. And if the market goes down – the first intuitive solution – get more salespeople. 

On the one hand, it’s logical. Because the sales are about probabilities. The more sales people – the higher is the probability of success. It would be a wonderful world if everything would be as simple as that. 

But on the other hand – you have to face the truth. 

When the market is down and recession hits hard, hiring additional people won’t make it any better. So you have to find out the answer to the first question: What is the state of the market? Am I trying to raise my stakes while throwing darts in the dark? 

Find the answer and adjust your expectations respectively. 

Goals

Following from the first point, the next critical aspect you need to define – which problem exactly you try to solve by hiring additional people. And what are your final goals. 

As previously mentioned, if your major challenge is adjusting to the worsened market realities, extending the team won’t make it better. Of course it may bring results, but it’s quite unlikely you will be happy about them after all. 

To make it work, you need to have clearly defined goals. One of the simplest approaches you can use – SMART (so the goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based). If your decision fits into those – give it a go. 

Investments

Apart from being an investment on its own, new salespeople require additional budgets to be allocated to make it work.And not only budgetary ones are required, but also time. Are you ready to provide it? 

Taking a new salesperson onboard and expecting them to find their way through on their own won’t work. Quality onboarding and business training are critical to make new team members get up to speed as fast as they can. If no one from the team is able to dedicate their time – it won’t work. And at the end of the day you will remain unhappy about the results. 

The same goes for all the instruments and means required for an efficient sales process. Travel costs, software tools, overheads. All that matters. 

Strategy

Is there a clear vision on where the company is moving and how? Does everyone know about it and adhere to the plan? Or everyone plays their own game to secure as much revenue as possible?  

If there’s no specified strategy on how to achieve the goals you set up for your business, hiring additional salesperson won’t move you closer. It will only make it worse by adding more chaos. 

So start from formulating the plan. There is a high chance that after putting all the pieces together, it will be possible to start its implementation with already existing resources. 

Analytics

What is your current conversion rate? Which one would you want to achieve? What’s the average sales cycle duration? Average deal size? Margin? 

I really hope you know the answers to these questions. Because if you don’t – how do you know if an additional salesperson can make any impact on the overall results? 

Analytics is an essential part of any sales team. Cause if you don’t ground your strategy and decisions associated with it on data, how do you know their effectiveness? 

And if you don’t know how well your current team moves, how do you plan to assess your new team member? 

Without a reliable analytical framework you won’t be able to assess the effectiveness of a new team member. And their impact on overall business progress. Making for just making never works. So be sure to have one before hiring an additional salesperson. 

Processes and operations

Processes are smaller tactical steps which your team takes to achieve the strategy implementation. It’s obviously important to keep them in a good state. Cause without good processes in place, nothing more strategic will work. Operations are your building blocks – the basis, on which all the other levels are built. And if there is no unified tactics, bringing in a new team member will only make it worse. 

There will be so many questions to manage: Where do I start from? Which tools do I have to use? How should I manage my accounts? Which data should I register in CRM? And many others. 

At the end of the day, instead of getting a needed team reinforcement, you both will end up frustrated and unhappy. So be sure to make your processes work before that. 

So how do I make it work? 

In order to avoid disappointment and feeling bad about your investments, you have to keep the points listed above in mind. Be sure to have the answers to the 6 basic questions before hiring an additional salesperson. 

When you should go for it

Given all the previously mentioned points does not mean that there are no cases when additional salesperson might be a good reinforcement. They definitely exist. So let’s take a look at such a situations. 

Expansion

Taking over new markets is always a challenge. Especially if your resources and people are limited. Furthermore, your knowledge about the target region might be limited. So hiring a person who either has an experience with it or is local might be a good option to consider. 

Entering new markets always require local business environment understanding, having network, knowing local cultural peculiarities, communication style and traditions. So it’s important to have someone proficient in that. It does not necessarily mean that it only should be a local person. It may also be someone who has previous experience in the target region. And bringing a new team member with such a background will facilitate the expansion substantially. 

Inbound enhancement

You noticed your team being swamped with inbound inquiries – lucky you, well done. And while it’s indeed a very positive situation, there are still drawbacks. Starting from too long a time to process the inquiries and up to increased load and pressure on the team. In the end it might result in deteriorated brand reputation and people’s burnout. So taking on additional resources in such a situation is a logical next step. It will help to speed up processing time, optimize the load and reinforce existing processes.

Bring in expertise

The world changes fast, so do sales. In order to stay relevant and up to date, your sales team needs to constantly evolve. Training takes a lot of time, and in some cases it might be insufficient. That’s why it’s another case when hiring an additional salesperson might be a great solution. 

Different people have different backgrounds and experiences. If you mainly operate in SME space and want to win more enterprise clients, the person with such an expertise and relevant network will be a huge reinforcement. Or if your team has mainly worked with inbound pipelines and has never dealt with outbound, taking on someone with the needed experience will make it faster and smoother. 

Build up new verticals

Developing new business verticals is hard. And quite often it requires the knowledge and skills in the field which your current team might not be proficient with. If you, for example, want to add product offering to your service business, you might need additional people who know how to sell it right. Or if you want to adopt new technologies within your tech consultancy – the people with technical background could be a great addition. 

Summary

Hiring an additional salesperson requires advance planning and existing processes analysis. You have to be sure that there is a clear strategy, reliable processes and strong analytical framework in place. It will help you to make a new person’s onboarding process smooth and efficient. Moreover, you need to understand your final goals and set your expectations appropriately. Because if not – the only result you will achieve will be disappointment. For both of you. Furthermore, new people imply investments – budgetary and timely. So get prepared, do your homework and if you really see the need – make it work.