HIRE FOR DRIVE Terry Streich, owner of SilverMark Inc. for 32 years, is in the middle of making such a transition. Last spring he hired a salesperson for his Minneapolis company, and for the first time is attempting to be a sales manager.
For Streich, the decision to replicate himself wasn’t rooted in feeling over-stretched. He was more interested in developing a succession plan and girding against a weak economy.
“I’m wondering, ‘How are we going to manage to stay viable until things pick up?’” he says. “I don’t need a salesperson to handle the volume we’ve got. I want more volume and a broader base of connections than I’m able to go out and get by myself.”
Having made the decision, Streich’s first challenge was hiring the right person to represent his company. That’s where things became tricky.
Many remodelers say that of all the positions to fill, the sales position is the toughest: Though there’s no shortage of salespeople for hire, they are often entirely wrong for the job.
“People knock on your door, but most of them aren’t any good,” says Gary Marrokal, president of Marrokal Construction, in Lakeside, Calif. “They all tell you a great story and present themselves the best they can.”
“It takes a certain personality to do the sales job well,” says Daniel Stebnitz of Stebnitz Builders, in Delavan, Wis. “We’ve hired people in the past who were outgoing but who couldn’t close the sale. To do the job well, you need to be smart and fast-thinking, communicate well — the perfect blend.”
Marrokal sums it up this way: “If sales was easy, it would pay minimum wage.”
As for where to find the right person, Stebnitz has had positive experiences using different sources. His first sales hire was a former client whom he recognized as being a good fit for sales. He has also plucked salespeople from his production management department, with good results. His advice: Look internally first, then outward. For example, would any of the salespeople working for your suppliers be a good fit?
Because Streich was seeking a salesperson to broaden his network, he chose to cast his net in unfamiliar waters rather than recruit from his current circle. His initial foray into interviewing candidates made him rethink going it alone, though. “I didn’t know how to evaluate these people because they were all ‘selling me.’ I didn’t know what I was doing,” he says.
So, with a few recommendations from peers, Streich hired a headhunter, who ran an ad that directed people to a battery of online personality assessments. Of the 250 people who answered the ad, 25 snagged an interview with the headhunter, who then whittled down the list to 3 for Streich to interview. He hired 1 of them, an interior designer with retail experience selling home furnishings.
Despite having no remodeling sales experience, this woman’s background and assessment profiles “indicated that she had the drive, resilience, and attitude of a successful salesperson,” Streich says. Specifically, her personality behavioral assessment showed her to be results-oriented, ambitious, competitive, and driven to make money, as well as having strong interpersonal skills and not taking it personally when people say “no.”
DOCUMENT A SYSTEM Streich’s next challenge was training the new hire — coaching her on everything from “What goes in first, a tile floor or cabinets?” to “What’s the correct response when a client offers you a cup of coffee?” (Answer: “Are you having some?”)
For many remodelers, donning the trainer hat requires the biggest mental shift. The dozens of little things that Streich knows and does every day, without even thinking, he now needed to teach someone else. “I know what I do and how I do it,” he says. “But I had no idea how to go about coaching. It eluded me.”
Here’s where having a sales-training manual in place — with the entire sales system written out step-by-step — can make all the difference. Some remodelers even say that hiring a new salesperson without such a system is a recipe for failure.
“My advice,” Frost says, “is to figure that part out up-front. Come up with a document that identifies what you’ve been doing all these years. Put it in outline form, with a checklist of things you can teach and hold someone accountable to. If you don’t have that, it’s going to blow up on you.”
In his case, Frost estimates that it took a year and a half or so for his company to assemble a strong working sales system. Drawing from a range of resources, he and his team drafted, reviewed, tested, and tweaked until they arrived at a systematic sales process.