In Episode #12, Bruce and Bill are joined by Sr. Vice President, Rick Matus for a conversation on hiring new salespeople. It's a wide ranging discussion and touches on many areas to consider if you're thinking about growing your team.

  First: Hiring and Recruiting - Where do you find new Project Developers? - What attributes or traits do you look for?  - How important is “fit” in deciding to hire a new employee?   Bruce, Bill and Rick discuss onboarding and training a new hire. Finding the right candidate is critical, but much of their success will come from a comprehensive training program: - Start big picture with a broad overview of the organization, it’s history, culture, policies, and process - Expose them to systems within the business- estimating, CAD, CRM, etc. - it’s tales daily interaction for some period of time and it will be 6- 12 months before this person is working on their own - Leverage the team, have others share their expertise and start to build a relationship. Shadowing other salespeople and observing what they do is very helpful - Set expectations, give homework, establish deadlines- develop lots of small hurdles to get a read on their progress/ ability to do the job   Case is a big company with  tools and resources that aren't available to everyone. They discuss ideas about how a firm with fewer resources might think about hiring a new salesperson: - Be patient! This is going to take 6- 12 months. Are you prepared for this investment of time and money? - Have a timeline for specific milestones just like a remodeling project - Spend the time to document your process or have the new hire do it. You have to have a repeatable process to get predictable results. - Have a chart or document that outlines roles & responsibilities for various “client facing” roles can also be very helpful   As the episode wraps up, They share lessons learned along the way: - Allow this person to fail, they will not get everything right the first time.  - You learn through practice. - Some training needs to be self directed. They need to be actively engaged and search out answers to their questions. - They need confidence in sales! If a new person knows what to do, when to do it, fits with the team, has empathy for the client, and understands your process, they're going to do just fine.    If you have questions, comments, or thoughts, send them to us at [email protected]