When to hire the first seller
Hire the first seller when you can describe the job on one page and when more inquiries arrive than you can answer well. If you cannot, fix the process first, because a hire only repeats it.
Where it goes wrong
Olga ran a small renovation company and did the selling herself. In March she was tired, a friend recommended a salesperson, and she hired him in a week. By June he had closed two small jobs and left. She concluded that salespeople do not work.
What had failed was the job. It lived in her head: which inquiries to take, how to price a visit, when to call back. Nobody can copy what is in someone else’s head. She hired a person before she had a job to hand over.
Check the demand
Count inquiries for four weeks and how many got a first reply within a day. If you answer all of them well, there is no gap yet, and a hire would only add a cost. If good inquiries wait, there is a gap, and you can name its size.
Include the inquiries you decline. A job you turned down for lack of time is a lost sale, exactly the kind a seller would have taken.
Write the job on one page
What the seller does each day, which inquiries they own, what a good week looks like and what they do not do. If you cannot write it, you are not ready to hire. The page is also the first thing a candidate reads, and it filters out people who want a different job.
The next chapter is about this page. Write a rough version now, even if it takes an evening, and keep it next to your inquiry count.
How to write it: the next chapterCount the first 90 days
A new seller costs a salary and your time. As a planning figure, not a benchmark, expect to give about an hour a day in the first month. That hour is the real price, and it comes out of work you are doing now.
Decide whether you have that hour before you post the job. If you do not, the better first step is to remove something from your own week, or to postpone the hire until you can.
Decide with a date
Set a date to decide and two facts that will decide it: for example, inquiries waiting longer than a day and a finished one-page job description. If both are true on the date, you hire. If not, you move the date once and write down why.
Before you add anyone, the free team health check shows how the team works today. It takes ten minutes, and you get a plain starting picture.
Take the team health check, freeDo this week
- Start a tally today: one row per inquiry and the time of its first reply. Review it in four weeks.
- Write a rough one-page job description.
- Set the date of the decision and the two facts behind it.
A 10-minute check of how your sales team works today, area by area.