I got a call from a longtime friend and owner of a startup SAAS company for attorneys asking for some advice…

He wanted to know…

How do I get more sales?  How do I get my team to produce more?

He’s seen what I’ve done with sales teams inside of my agency and he knows that we’ve had plenty of experience selling to the same type of lawyers where he is currently struggling.

You see, my friend hired a sales hot shot to come in and sell for his company.  This guy is an all-star in the SAAS space.

This guy worked for a big-name Fortune 500 company and absolutely crushed sales there.  It really seemed like a no-brainer to bring on this guy.

He had tons of relevant experience

… high ticket sales

… managing a sales pipeline

… prospecting and keeping track of deals

… relationship building

… negotiation and deal-making

… managing others on his team

On paper, it makes perfect sense.  But, 90 days in?  No sales.  Nothing.

Appointments are irregular, and closing deals are nonexistent.

My friend’s experience in hiring a salesperson echoes my own experience with my first few sales hires.

I hired guys that “had sales experience” and I was SO excited to be able to have someone in my company that could sell that wasn’t ME!

But just like my friend, each of those hires ended in failure when I ultimately took back over sales 60-90 days later when there was NO traction.

It was so frustrating.  Why was this happening with guys that should have been able to do the job?

Here’s my theory:

There’s no such thing as a sales all-star.  There is only an all-star sales system.

You see, the guy my friend hired (and the guys I had hired) were successful in their roles in these other companies because those companies had designed specific sales systems for their salespeople to use.  It was the SYSTEM that worked, not necessarily the PEOPLE working the system.

Michael Gerber in his book, E-Myth says, “Systems run the business and people run the systems.”

So, effectively, my friend and I had both made the mistake of putting people into our company without a proven sales system for them to use.   I mistakenly thought that if I had the right people that they would somehow just already know how to deploy a system.

This is rarely the case.

In most cases, it takes a different skill set to design/test/prove a sales system than it takes to operate it.

For example, if you look at the Tesla car factory which is mostly run by robots… doesn’t it make sense that it probably took a different set of skills to design the robotic car assembly system than the skill required to actually run it?  I’m sure they are different roles, right?

But in our agencies, we often assume that a sales hot shot is going to have both of those sets of skills.  Sure, it’s possible, but it’s super rare.

So, what should you do?

First, if you feel tempted to hire a sales all-star (especially because of their past experience) recognize that there is no silver bullet to sales.  You have to have a sales system for them to follow.

Second, recognize that if you’ve had any small measure of success in selling your services to a client, congratulations! You have a sales system! But you just might not know how it works yet.

If you’re set on hiring a salesperson to fill a sales role, don’t expect them to come in and design their own system.  Document what it takes for you to find and close a deal and then be relentless in helping your salesperson model what works.  

It is possible to delegate sales.  If you don’t already have a sales process or want to copy mine, that’s a big part of what we teach in our coaching programs.  But, I’m happy to give you a sneak peek at it.

Drop me a message on FB and mention “sales process”. I’ll get you some resources you can study and see if it makes sense to bring them into your agency.