- Original Poster
- #1
Covid-19 has made me re-evaluate whether I still have the legs and hunger to be hitting the road selling our wares as I've quite enjoyed the slower pace in recent weeks. I look after the sales/commercial side of the business day-to-day and the aim is to make me redundant ultimately (albeit looking at 5 more years) and put an MD in as well but the latter will come later.
In honesty I have no idea what sort of package to offer or how I even go about structuring the role given there isn't much structure at all with me. I know what I want though and what we must have for me to step away, a self-starter and someone who has the initiative to run with the role. Has anyone got any experience of going from being the sole salesperson in their business to handing over the reigns and how they went about it and what sort of package they offered? And was it successful? Challenges?
I am thinking to attract anyone decent the package would need to be around min £40-50k base+ decent company car, usual perks + good OTE (uncapped?). Our sort of business can be big sales when they land but they aren't frequent. So monthly targets are pretty pointless, even quarterly would be pushing it IMO. For instance a good year for me is maintaining all my existing customers + picking up a couple of 6 figure accounts + a small handful of 5 figure accounts, very occasionally we may end up scoring big with a 7 figure account. The latter are few and far between but we almost always have 1-2 potentials in the pipeline being worked away on that can be 1-2 years to convert if successful at all. Because of the nature of the sales I've always preferred to handle myself figuring if someone came in it could be a year before they've even learned the products, built the relationships to be effective and started converting. If they're not up to it it could be 12-18 months before you realise nothing will come of it and best part of £100k spunked for nothing. I don't even know whether the role will appeal to certain salespersons used to the thrill of the chase, would they like this sort of sales where it could be 6 months of hard slog to pull in a single new customer (but that one customer could be massively profitable for the business)?
FYI, we cover the whole of UK and Ireland, customers all over and we do export quite a lot but all export customers are managed remotely (no expectation of visits). So the role is UK national travel required, probably travelling 2-3 days a week, 2-3 days home based. 75% customer account management, 25% new business development, some cold calling and generation of own leads required.
In honesty I have no idea what sort of package to offer or how I even go about structuring the role given there isn't much structure at all with me. I know what I want though and what we must have for me to step away, a self-starter and someone who has the initiative to run with the role. Has anyone got any experience of going from being the sole salesperson in their business to handing over the reigns and how they went about it and what sort of package they offered? And was it successful? Challenges?
I am thinking to attract anyone decent the package would need to be around min £40-50k base+ decent company car, usual perks + good OTE (uncapped?). Our sort of business can be big sales when they land but they aren't frequent. So monthly targets are pretty pointless, even quarterly would be pushing it IMO. For instance a good year for me is maintaining all my existing customers + picking up a couple of 6 figure accounts + a small handful of 5 figure accounts, very occasionally we may end up scoring big with a 7 figure account. The latter are few and far between but we almost always have 1-2 potentials in the pipeline being worked away on that can be 1-2 years to convert if successful at all. Because of the nature of the sales I've always preferred to handle myself figuring if someone came in it could be a year before they've even learned the products, built the relationships to be effective and started converting. If they're not up to it it could be 12-18 months before you realise nothing will come of it and best part of £100k spunked for nothing. I don't even know whether the role will appeal to certain salespersons used to the thrill of the chase, would they like this sort of sales where it could be 6 months of hard slog to pull in a single new customer (but that one customer could be massively profitable for the business)?
FYI, we cover the whole of UK and Ireland, customers all over and we do export quite a lot but all export customers are managed remotely (no expectation of visits). So the role is UK national travel required, probably travelling 2-3 days a week, 2-3 days home based. 75% customer account management, 25% new business development, some cold calling and generation of own leads required.
