After 20 years, Barbara, an imaginary business owner, took a “buyout” from her Vice President position because of a merger. She now owns a profitable marketing services business. She is competent, talented and gets remarkable results for her clients with her exceptional creative and administrative team. However, she needs to add a sales person to continue to grow. She wants someone who can take the referrals they get, plus the responses to their own marketing efforts, and turn them into profitable clients.

Should she hire an “experienced” sales person, or promote someone now on her staff?

Some pros to hiring an experienced sales person:

• The person comes with experience, maybe even in your industry, and a contact base that should generate some new business.

• The experienced person can “hit the ground running,” because they already know how to sell.

• The experienced person can bring expertise to the organization, which will help grow business.

Some cons to hiring an experienced sales person:

• The experienced person will cost you more because of their experience.

• Their experience may cause them to avoid profitable segments of your market because of preconceived notions like “They never buy our kind of service.”

• The experienced person might not fit your organization’s culture.

An experienced sales person, particularly one changing industries, may have developed habits or attitudes that are inappropriate and unproductive. Rarely will a top producer be let go, unless their additional sales volume is not worth the cost of keeping them in the organization.

Why not offer someone in your existing team the opportunity to grow into a sales position, and ultimately into your Vice President of Sales?

This has advantages:

• The new sales person is a known producer and respected by your team.

• S/he knows and likes your culture, and works well with your team.

• This person will cost less. They can continue at their existing salary, looking forward to bonuses or commissions to increase their income as the sales come in.

• Sometimes they can help train their replacement as part of the package.

But there are some disadvantages to this approach:

• The other staff might not support the change due to jealousy or fear of additional work for them.

• The person you move into selling might not be prepared for the unique pressures of the sales profession, or

• S/he might have a negative view of the sales profession which has not been communicated to you.

• You may have some significant difficulty finding a competent replacement.

One key to success when promoting from within, is to watch your people carefully to see who really cares about understanding client needs before trying to provide services. Professional selling is about uncovering needs and, if you can help, showing how your service or product meets those needs.

Building People to Build Business

J. Mark Walker