Training helps create this comfort zone at Huff ‘N’ Puff, a five-year-old Renewal by Andersen contractor based in Schenectady, N.Y., that has 11 salespeople, all of whom are under 35 years old. “We do a lot of training, and not just product-based or company-specific stuff,” says Joe Feulner, Huff ‘N’ Puff’s sales manager. “We get involved with them on a professional and personal level, and are offering them a career path. We present them with an ability to grow, and to feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves.”
SHOW ME THE MONEY Any conversation about salesperson retention inevitably rotates back to two topics: time and money, and how the management of both plays a key role in a company’s ability to hold on to its top reps.
Most home improvement company owners appreciate that their sales reps are people, not machines, who sometimes need a break from the action to sustain their productivity. “Burnout is part of this business,” says Love, who allows all of her reps to take one 30-day leave of absence over a selling period (the parameters of which she didn’t disclose). Windowizards, in Bristol, Pa., also encourages its salespeople to take time off, and over the course of a year they’ll be out anywhere from 25 and 50 days “to recharge their batteries,” according to sales manager Stu Rosenthal.
In late February, Rosenthal was in the process of hiring four more reps to add to his 16-person sales team. Reps stay with Windowizards for many reasons, he explains, including the four to five leads per week the company feeds them and name recognition — built through many years of media advertising — among Philadelphia-area homeowners. Rosenthal also points out that his company is unusual among replacement contractors in that it provides reps with company vans and reimburses all work-related expenses.
There’s no getting around the fact that compensation plays a major role in salesperson retention. “The No. 1 key is to pay them correctly, and to make sure the salesperson isn’t losing what’s owed him,” Harris says. But contractors note that reps have come to expect more than what they can earn up front. Renaissance, for example, which makes its reps pay for all of their expenses, nonetheless offers what Jarvis calls a “multifaceted” bonus program, based on volume, demo percentages, and net closing percentages, which allows a rep earning $100,000 in commissions to make another $30,000 in bonuses.
A productive rep at Fick Bros. can make 20% above commissions in bonuses, says Fick, who recently put in place a program that increases a rep’s commission rate by a percentage point after he’s been with the company three years. He introduced this program, he says, in response to a comment from one of his guys last year who thought that after proving he could be consistently productive, said, “I should be driving a Lexus.” Says Fick: “Salespeople who have been with a company for a while start thinking they are entitled to more privileges.”
The longer reps stay at K-Designers, “the greater their potential for profit,” says Burgess, because they get a bigger piece of the sale. And at Dial One, reps are eligible for a monthly bonus with five different tiers, the highest of which — platinum — puts $2,000 in their pockets. However, Dial One also holds its sellers accountable for their productivity by posting their results on two lists: one, called “Money Makers,” ranks them by sales revenue per lead received (NSPLI); the other, called “Death Valley,” shows the number of measure calls that reps convert into presentations. “Even though they always say they don’t, good salespeople want to be managed, and want that structure,” Gindele says. —John Caulfield is a freelance writer and editor based in New Jersey.
PICK A WINNER
Personality tests are favored to spot a salesperson’s potential.
Salesperson retention starts with hiring the right rep in the first place, and for an increasing number of contractors, separating good sales applicants from bad ones is becoming more science than art.
Type-A salespeople have common traits: aggression, self-confidence, competitiveness, even money lust. Most contractors prefer reps with prior industry experience, and at least one, K-Designers in California, avoids reps who have hopped around from job to job. There are some contractors, such as Rhonda Love, sales director for Renewal by Andersen of Colorado Springs and Denver, who will hire “greenhorns” because they have fewer wrinkles to iron out. “I can teach them how to close,” she says.
Love is among those who favor using personality profiles to assess an applicant’s sales aptitude. These tests, she says, “show me who’s trying to ‘game’ the system, and who’s genuine.” For more than a year now, Dixie HomeCrafters, the Chamblee, Ga.-based company with around 200 reps, has been using the Harrison Assessment System, a Web-enabled exam that can provide results within five minutes. “I’ve been in the sales business for 25 years, and this is a best sales tool I’ve ever used,” says Hugh Harris, Dixie’s CEO. “It digs deep, man, and gets down to what I want to know about a salesman.” Harris says this test weeds out about 60% of applicants. “Everyone says they want to make money, but this test shows that some of them couldn’t score in a whorehouse with a handful of hundreds.”