How do you motivate a professional sales force?

Small Biz, Big Smart Sales Force

• How can a small company hire honest, reputable sales people and how much do these mystical people get paid? My husband and I own a small medical company that is rapidly expanding. We offer services used in the OR and provide both the equipment and the technician for each service offered. Think biologics and blood managment. We currently have about twenty employees in the field and are very tiny fish in a gigantic pond. We are struggling to find the right candidates for our technician positions - they are strong clinically but lack the sales drive or they are entirely too agressive to be taken seriously by the surgeons. The sales aspect of the job is perhaps 70% of the position though the clinical technician aspect is necessary not only to physically provide the service, but to get the rep in front of new surgeons. We have tried hiring LPNs, EMTs and spine reps - all fine, but not the ideal we seek. We would like to find people who are competent and confident. We need them to be able to have intelligent discussions with surgeons about fairly complicated stem cell science, so obviously they must be intelligent and quick thinking. They also MUST be comfortable being present in the OR during surgeries and comfortable around a sterile field. It would do me no good at all to have a brilliant sales person who passes out onto the sterile back tables and trays. (We've been there, it's really No Good.) My questions are; where do we find candidates and what kind of compensation are they likely to be looking for? Should we W-2 them or 1099? Commission structure? (I have seen the previous commission AskMe's which have been illuminating for me.) Salary? Take me through this step by step because based on our current employees, I am Doing It Wrong. Throwaway email - [email protected]

• Answer:

  The best sales people know the product they are selling and believe in it. Or, at least, they are able to convince themselves, and hence others, that they believe in it. Do you offer your employees training? Do you provide them with sufficient resources to learn about the products you are selling? What do they do if they have questions about the products? Do you have a central database that they can query for information about the products? Make the sales people's job easier and they will perform better. You say you're a small fish in a large pond. What do your larger competitors do to train their salesforce? What's the industry best practice? What can you do to emulate your larger competitors, given the budget constraints that your smaller size likely places on you? As for compensation: There are different ways of compensating salespeople. 1) Base salary plus commissions. 2) Base salary against which commissions are charged until the base salary is recouped (called a "drawdown" 3) Commissions plus bonus for hitting target. 4) Base salary + commission + bonus 5) Equity incentives Etc. Lastly, medical sales seems like the kind of industry for which headhunters were created. Why not find out who the big headhunters in your industry are and ask them what qualities they look for in candidates that they field for open positions?