Activity

Hiring Your Sales Team

Context

Now that you know the importance of a professional sales team for your venture, you need to hire the right
people for your sales team. You also need to create an incentive plan to keep your team members motivated. In
this activity, you will:

1. Create a Job Description for hiring salespeople for your venture

2. Create an Incentive Plan for your sales team members (optional)
Advanced Course in Entrepreneurship

Instructions:

1. Regroup into your practice venture teams of five to complete this activity.
2. Create a Job Description for a salesperson using the table given on Page 3. You have 60 minutes to
complete this section.
3. Go through the tips, best practices, and resource links from Page 6 onward before creating the job
description.
4. In this document, we have also provided a template (on Page 5) to create an incentive plan for your sales
team members and an example of a filled up template on Page 4. Filling up this template is optional. To
fill this template, think about the targets for your team members and set them in a way that they are
hard to achieve but are achievable. Set the commission percentage in a way the team members feel
motivated to make sales.

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Here is an example of a job description of a sales representative. Go through it, research some more on the
Internet, and create one for your own business.

Example of a Job Description

Position Title Sales Representative
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Desired Date of Joining 10th January 2019

Department Sales
Accountable to Founder/ CEO

Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Business Administration/Any

Required Qualification
other equivalent degree

Required Experience 1 to 5 years in a sales profile

We need a results-driven sales representative who will actively seek out and
engage customer prospects. He or she will provide complete and appropriate
Job Summary
solutions to every customer in order to boost the growth of the company,
customer acquisition levels, and profitability.
 Present, promote, and sell products/services based on logical discussions to
existing and prospective customers
 Present a cost-benefit and needs analysis to existing/potential customers
 Develop and nurture good business and customer relationships
 Proactively reach out to customer leads through cold calling
 Prioritize and resolve customer problems and complaints to maximize
Key Responsibilities
satisfaction
 Achieve sales targets and outcomes within schedule
 Coordinate sales effort with team members and other departments
 Analyze the territory/market’s potential, track sales and status reports
 Keep abreast of best practices and promotional trends
 Continuously improve through feedback

 Proven record as a sales representative

 Excellent knowledge of MS Office
 Familiarity with customer relationship management practices and the ability
Desired Skills and to build productive business professional relationships
Experience  Highly motivated and target-driven
 Excellent selling, communication, and negotiation skills
 Ability to prioritize urgent tasks and manage multiple customer relationships
 Ability to create and deliver presentations tailored to the audience needs

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Job Description
Position Title

Desired Date of Joining

Department

Accountable to
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Required Qualification

Required Experience

Job Summary

Key Responsibilities

Desired Skills and

Experience

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Hiring Your Sales Team

This section is optional. You can go through with it if you want to. The incentive plan for a salesperson can
depend on factors such as the industry, geography, and the size of a company. However, most industries and
geographies follow a basic tenet for incentivizing salespeople – combining the fixed salary with a variable
incentive plan.

Here is an example of an incentive plan for a sales representative. Go through it, research some more on the
Internet, and create one for your own business.

Incentive Plan
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Pay Mix (Basic

70/30
Pay/Variable Pay)

Annual Base Salary $7,000

101%-110% of Target – 110%

Annual On-target
$3,000 Additional Incentive Plan 111%-120% of Target – 115%
Pay (Incentive)
120%+ of Target – 120%

Annual Pay on Max Annual Pay on

$10,300 $10,600
Exceeding Target Exceeding Target

Territory Name Central America Annual Sales Target $5,00,000

Discretionary Sales
Up to 2% of Gross Profit
Commission

Performance Period Annual

Payout Frequency Quarterly

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Incentive Plan
Pay Mix (Basic
Pay/Variable Pay)

Annual Base Salary

Annual On-target
Additional Incentive Plan
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Pay (Incentive)

Annual Pay on Max Annual Pay on

Exceeding Target Exceeding Target

Territory Name Annual Sales Target

Discretionary Sales
Commission

Performance Period

Payout Frequency

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Hiring Your Sales Team

Tips and Best Practices - Build a Professional Sales Organization

In the early days of a venture, founders usually take up the responsibility of sales. However, the need to build a
sales team arises when the number of customers increases or when the product or service starts getting a lot of
attention.

One of the major parameters of success for a venture is how much revenue it generates, and a professional sales
team helps achieve your target revenues. Once you have ascertained the need for a professional sales team for
your venture, you have to start hiring the right people. As a professional sales team is pivotal to the success of
your venture, one of the founders should lead the sales team and focus completely on sales.
Advanced Course in Entrepreneurship

A good salesperson should have the following qualities:

1. Customer Empathy – A successful salesperson needs to listen, understand, and empathize with a
customer’s problem. A quick test for this is to check whether he or she understands your questions well
and can rephrase something you said.

2. Good Communication Skills – A good salesperson should be able to strike and continue a conversation.
You can observe if the person can have a two-way conversation or just keeps talking. Conversations help
build relationships and, in turn, help make a sale.

3. Product Understanding – A successful salesperson should be able to understand the product or service
well and be passionate about it.

4. Willingness to Learn – A salesperson needs to be trainable. When interviewing a candidate for a position
in sales, try to gauge if the person is trainable or fixated. It is important for a salesperson to keep learning
to keep up with the changing customer needs and market.

5. Resilience – A good salesperson also needs to be resilient and be able to take rejection in his or her
stride.

Selling for a new venture may be difficult for professionals who are used to selling for well-known brands. The
obvious solution is to hire representatives who have worked in startups that offer similar products or services.
However, it is a good idea to hire a mix of experienced professionals and fresh graduates with a knack for selling.
When planning for hiring salespeople, you also need to plan for when you need them to join. So for example, if
you have set a sales target for January, you need start looking for potential candidates in October, the previous
year. This is to account for the time you will need to look for and select candidates and also to account for the
fact that experienced candidates may have to serve a notice period with their current employer for a month or
more.

You also need to create an incentive plan to motivate your sales and marketing team. The incentive plan for a
sales team needs to be a mix of fixed salary and sales commission. The fixed salary is for a lead measure or, in
other words, for generating leads and meeting customers. The incentive is for a lag measure or for being able to
make a sale.

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The incentive plan for salespeople often differs from one industry to another. You can research on job search
portals or salary comparison websites such as salary.com and glassdoor.com for competitive incentive packages
for salespeople.

You also need to have a contingency plan ready in case there is an increased demand for your product or service.
If your sales team is motivated and ambitious, it can achieve its revenue target before the end of the stipulated
period. In such a scenario, you need to have the option of a new sales target with the additional commission to
keep your team motivated.

As the leader of your sales team, you need to help your team members achieve their targets. You can follow
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these tips to help them:

 For new sales team members, make sure you have an onboarding plan ready. Introduce and familiarize
your sales team with your sales plan, your company policies, and any tools that they may need to use.

 Review the progress made by your sales team on a monthly basis. Encourage your team to set up
individual sales plan documents in a shared location such as Google Drive. You can review the documents
to see if the individual team members met the requisite number of cold calls, emails, and customers
meetings they had targeted every month. Also, you should review their pipeline for the upcoming
months. This process also helps new team members pick up in case an existing member leaves the team.

 Review the individual sales plans to see if they are able to meet their target number of sales. In case
your sales team members are consistently unable to meet their targets, revise the targets. Perhaps the
targets were too ambitious and not practical. In case most of the team members are constantly beating
their sales targets, you need to raise the bar. It is possible that the target was too low hanging and the
team is capable of achieving more.

 Encourage the sales team to demo the product or service during customer meetings. A video as a demo
can be used during the early stages of the sales funnel.

 Organize for refresher training programs for your sales team. Your sales team works on the field on most
days and may not know about all the changes and updates other teams are making to your venture,
product, or service.

You can have daily calls with each team member to review their plans for the day and track their progress. Your
team members are likely to face a lot of hurdles and rejections in their everyday work life. You need to listen to
their problems and see if you can help them with any solutions. You also need to take corrective actions
wherever required and inspire them to achieve their goals.

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Resources:

If you want to learn more about how to build a professional sales organization, browse through the following
links:

 https://www.saleshacker.com/sales-compensation-plan-blueprint/
 https://www.propellercrm.com/blog/build-sales-team
 https://growtheverywhere.com/sales/creating-successful-sales-team/
 https://medium.com/swlh/a-founders-guide-to-leading-the-sales-team-2db521901919

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https://www.handshake.com/blog/building-a-sales-team
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaLt-HyELTs

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