What Today’s Online Sales Person Is Looking For!

So, you have your venture funding and you are ready to deploy “feet on the street.”  You call up your search firm and say “I need to hire 10 people by next month in Miami, New York, Chicago, etc.”  You sit back and expect a flood of qualified, if not elite, sales people to come your way.

It may indeed happen, but you need to know that demand for proven online sales people is extremely high, even in our somewhat deflated economy.  Even in down times, sales people are at a premium, and those who have a specialty will always have options.

So here are some things you need to do and know as you launch your search:

1) Know that you will be “recruiting” these people, as much as interviewing them.

2) They know what the competition is paying.  Don’t try and save a few nickels on base salary or commission percentage, as you ultimately will lose the best people.

3) have a clearly defined compensation/commission schedule.  Make sure that you can illustrate the percentage of people on your sales team who reached quota in 2007, and what their average w2 looked like.

4) tout the product/service.  Nothing worse for an online sales person to come in and find out their are back end, delivery or service issues.  You should be able to get the sales person interviewing as excited as they would get your potential customer

5) culture/stability sell.  Everyone in sales knows it is produce or you are out, but no one wants to work in a chop shop where turnover is 100% and it is a boot camp environment(I can think of numerous online companies that motivate with fear only)  Online sales people will be networkers, they will know people at your company, or former employees.  If yours is a draconian shop, most prospects will know it, and turn down offers.