Looking to Hire a Dedicated Sales Staff, Need Industry Insight

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Hey All,
We have been growing rapidly and expanding in not only capabilities and products but also in our client interactions and its getting too hard to manage with just me at the forefront. We are ready to hire a dedicated Sales person(s) and was wondering what industry standards are for pay and pay structure, perks, etc?

We have been kicking around a $30,000 Base + Scaled Commission, with all Travel and Approved Expenses paid for. This is based on the local polling of shops we currently deal with. What does the rest of the industry do?

 

[Snook]

We don't currently have a sales person, but I am also interested in any feedback on this post. I think your compensation seems good, but really depends on location like cost of living. Looks like Mesa Arizona. Good luck and hope someone posts some good feedback on this one.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

For us this is the hardest position to fill as it's the hardest to budget for and recruit for.

 

[vincesigns]

If you are the owner and are bringing in the business now please consider hiring a Project Manager to assist you instead of hiring a salesperson. A very good PM is much easier to find and your customers will generally be very happy to deal with the PM. This leaves you with more time to focus on selling to new clients,

 

[Geet Faulkner]

Depends on what you are selling... large commercial signs?... commission and expenses (a good sales person from the sign industry can live very well on that.)
A Mom and Pop quicky sticky banner shop?... create a production manager position and keep your face in front of your cash... I mean customers.

 

[equippaint]

It sounds like you are in the range for the base. Car allowances are pretty standard, usually about 500/month plus fuel. Id keep the expense reimbursements tight, really no reason for a rep to be spending much. You'll have to determine a commission level that will put total compensation in a decent range if you want to attract a good rep, Id say 80-100/yr.

Before you hire a rep, you should really have a good sales plan ready and adopt some sort of CRM system like salesforce. This way if the rep leaves, you have a good database for a new person to work from. This will also help you manage the rep which is really important. Dont just give them the keys and tell them go do what you do like many places. Most reps are very wasteful with time and are very poor planners.

Another thought is to figure out how much direct mail or other means of targeted advertising that you can get out of 80k/yr. Skip the rep and spend 3/4 of that on a well thought out advertising plan. Then take 1-2 days a week yourself to go followup on leads and call on new customers that you have targeted. You should plan your calls, map them out to be efficient, research the people a bit and also use a CRM program just like you would expect a rep to do.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We are not a large commercial electrical sign shop, but we aren't a small quick banner shop. We are currently selling roughly 1.1million a year, our main clientele is the fair and event industry but have started growing in to another industry I can't really talk about due to NDA. The Hard thing for me as the business owner and managing member is I'm responsible for 600 - 800K of our sales yet I'm struggling to keep up with my business tasks and focusing on growth. This is why we are looking for dedicated sales to keep growing new client leads and development, I don't think a traditional PM would work in this case unless they were a hybrid inside sales and PM.

 

[CanuckSigns]

What is your current role in the business? do you handle any production, or are you mostly handling the front of house things such as bookkeeping, customer service, sales?

What role do you want to have in the business? do you enjoy getting your hands dirty in the back or would you like to be more client facing?

I agree with some of the others that finding a sales rep who knows the industry is going to be tough, I have heard horror stories of sales reps who go sell a job while working for you, and take the job to a bunch of other shops to see who will give them the highest commission for it. you have to really watch some people.

What about hiring a receptionist or similar who can handle invoicing, screen phone calls, quote smaller jobs and would free you up to focus more on sales? Or hire a lead production manager who can oversee the shop and make sure it runs smooth while you are focusing on other parts of the business.

One final thought on hiring a sales rep, can you handle the increased workload that a good sales rep will bring in? If you plan on paying them $100,000 year in base pay plus commission, expect to see your sales double, can you handle that without risking your current clients and reputation?

 

[Gino]

What is your current role in the business? do you handle any production, or are you mostly handling the front of house things such as bookkeeping, customer service, sales?

What role do you want to have in the business? do you enjoy getting your hands dirty in the back or would you like to be more client facing?

I agree with some of the others that finding a sales rep who knows the industry is going to be tough, I have heard horror stories of sales reps who go sell a job while working for you, and take the job to a bunch of other shops to see who will give them the highest commission for it. you have to really watch some people.

What about hiring a receptionist or similar who can handle invoicing, screen phone calls, quote smaller jobs and would free you up to focus more on sales? Or hire a lead production manager who can oversee the shop and make sure it runs smooth while you are focusing on other parts of the business.

One final thought on hiring a sales rep, can you handle the increased workload that a good sales rep will bring in? If you plan on paying them $100,000 year in base pay plus commission, expect to see your sales double, can you handle that without risking your current clients and reputation?

Exactly my thinking. Many other things are gonna need to change..... and quickly.

 

[brycesteiner]

One final thought on hiring a sales rep, can you handle the increased workload that a good sales rep will bring in? If you plan on paying them $100,000 year in base pay plus commission, expect to see your sales double, can you handle that without risking your current clients and reputation?

This is a good question for the OP. My thoughts are increasing your sales is what you want but will it increase your profit? If you are paying out $100,000 for a rep you need to get a minimum of 4 times that to cover all expenses and pay and does your building size, machinery, workers. To get the extra work, will you have to lower prices? Can they handle this extra work, or will you need to hire more, to keep up? Just be careful on not getting caught in a downward spiral.

Are you already financially successful, loans paid, buildings and machines kept up well, employees getting increases in wages regularly, etc? If so, you are already in a good position and increasing may just be more headaches for you and good employees that you may not really want.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

To be Fully transparent, may be i'm missing something which is why I asked. I'm one of the owners (Managing Member) and my brother is my partner. I handle everything but production and now design since we have a designer. I used to do all the printing, design, and most of production... I would prefer to do that but ultimately since my dad passed I've had to steer the ship. I love everything about what I do but the sales. My Brother oversees all of our production and manages our 2 production employees while I manage our designer and business development contractor. The only thing we don't own in a building and that's next.

To the question about capacity, we are only at 25% right now and showing a 58% profitability on 1.1mil, we have 4 Latex Printers and with this additional roll project will be adding possibly 4 more and a New FB750, a Flatbed Cutter/Router, and Flatbed Applicator. All of our equipment is bought and paid for we have no debt, and our employees are good at what they do, just bored out of their minds most days.

On our most prevalent product we are 20% less than our competition, on wraps and others we are right in line, for panel prints we were on average with other printers in our area but now we are the only printer within 35 miles with a flatbed.

I guess maybe I can look at other roles to fill, I just ultimately wanted to move myself out of sales as I hate it.

 

[CanuckSigns]

To be Fully transparent, may be i'm missing something which is why I asked. I'm one of the owners (Managing Member) and my brother is my partner. I handle everything but production and now design since we have a designer. I used to do all the printing, design, and most of production... I would prefer to do that but ultimately since my dad passed I've had to steer the ship. I love everything about what I do but the sales. My Brother oversees all of our production and manages our 2 production employees while I manage our designer and business development contractor. The only thing we don't own in a building and that's next.

To the question about capacity, we are only at 25% right now and showing a 58% profitability on 1.1mil, we have 4 Latex Printers and with this additional roll project will be adding possibly 4 more and a New FB750, a Flatbed Cutter/Router, and Flatbed Applicator. All of our equipment is bought and paid for we have no debt, and our employees are good at what they do, just bored out of their minds most days.

On our most prevalent product we are 20% less than our competition, on wraps and others we are right in line, for panel prints we were on average with other printers in our area but now we are the only printer within 35 miles with a flatbed.

I guess maybe I can look at other roles to fill, I just ultimately wanted to move myself out of sales as I hate it.

Thanks for clearing that up. I would say that if you do not enjoy the sales aspect of the business, then it makes sense to hire someone for that, I don't have any personal experience with having a sales rep, but I wish you all the best.

One thing in your post that struck me as odd, you say you are only running at 25% capacity, but you have 4 printers and potentially more coming, but only 3 production employees, I don't know what kind of products you sell, but it seems that you may run into a bottle neck if your product require lots of "table time" such as trimming, mounting hemming etc. I know in my shop with only 1 printer, our biggest bottleneck is when it comes to manpower, so while you may be running your equipment at 25% capacity, are your employees able to handle it if you double their workload?

Your numbers sound really good to me, doing 1.1 million in sales with only 5 people is very impressive, especially if you don't touch big electrical jobs. How big do you want to take the business?

 

[brycesteiner]

I love everything about what I do but the sales. My Brother oversees all of our production and manages our 2 production employees while I manage our designer and business development contractor. The only thing we don't own in a building and that's next.

To the question about capacity, we are only at 25% right now and showing a 58% profitability on 1.1mil, we have 4 Latex Printers and with this additional roll project will be adding possibly 4 more and a New FB750, a Flatbed Cutter/Router, and Flatbed Applicator. All of our equipment is bought and paid for we have no debt, and our employees are good at what they do, just bored out of their minds most days.

I guess maybe I can look at other roles to fill, I just ultimately wanted to move myself out of sales as I hate it.

Numbers sound really good and with that you can afford to hire and it won't be much of a gamble. Your machines must barely run at all. I have 1 Mutoh and we run it quite a bit but certainly not 100% (a couple days a week it runs most of the day and then the other days it probably runs 1 or two jobs). It can easily keep up with all our work. The backlog is certainly man power for us. We don't have a sales person, but I really don't need one as our work has been selling itself quite well. It sounds like yours probably is too.
Are you overstaffed in your production area? Your designer must be pretty maxed out if filling work for that many production workers.

If you get a salesperson you may be back in helping with design which, by the sound of it, you like.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

We are getting more printers based on a very specific type of project, it doesn't take much manpower just machine capacity.

We are at 25% total capacity between printing and finishing. Our cutter router on average only runs 1 hour a day, our printers average 10hrs of printing each a week. Most of our production labor is loading/unloading machines or mounting/masking on the flatbed application table. We could double our workload and they still wouldn't be pressed or needing extra help.

As for where I want to take the company, ultimately I just want a well oiled machine without much intervention, people who know what they are doing, and clientele that is always growing and changing. I hate stagnant work and I can't physically be driving it all. I pay our guys pretty well and try to reward them throughout the year with bonuses, constantly buy them lunch, give them raises based on growth. If we can double next year and keep on an upward trajectory I'll be happy.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

I have 3 positions I want to try to add/fill by next year. Sales is just the first, a office admin and another designer would be second and third not in any particular order.

I worry at our current rate we will hit a wall if we can't keep feeding the bear.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

So do you guys feel a project manager/inside sales would be a better choice of employee?

 

[brycesteiner]

So do you guys feel a project manager/inside sales would be a better choice of employee?

Honestly, It sounds like you are filling that position now. perhaps you were right about finding a sales manager.