{"id":380,"date":"2014-10-07T22:10:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T22:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/illogical-hobbies.flywheelsites.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2014-10-07T22:10:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T22:10:44","slug":"five-reasons-design-firms-should-not-hire-salespeople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/five-reasons-design-firms-should-not-hire-salespeople\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Reasons Design Firms Should Not Hire Salespeople"},"content":{"rendered":"
Over the 15 years I owned Newfangled, I made the mistake of hiring a salesperson more than once. The idea of a dedicated employee whose job is to find clients and who operates mostly on commission was too attractive an opportunity not to bite on. But it never worked out. There are many reasons why a design or marketing firm should probably not hire a salesperson. I\u2019ll give five below.
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But before I give those reasons, I need to make an important qualification regarding the distinction between sales and marketing. Sales, properly speaking, is a process of qualification, persuasion, and negotiation that takes place after a prospect indicates their interest in your services. Sales therefore should be distinguished from marketing, which consists of the efforts we make to find opportunities for selling. So if you need a salesperson to help you qualify, persuade, and negotiate an abundance of leads that you can’t handle yourself then yes–maybe you should hire someone for sales. (Although I’d suggest considering an existing employee with proven client-facing skill, who knows your services inside and out, for that role.) <\/p>\n
But most of the time, when owners of design and marketing firms are thinking about hiring a salesperson, they do so in the hopes that this person will generate new leads and find new clients. That activity, properly speaking, is what marketing is for\u2014and hiring a salesperson before you’ve addressed some key issues in your marketing usually is an exercise in futility.<\/p>\n
Here are five reasons why hiring a salesperson before addressing marketing usually fails.<\/p>\n
For all these reasons and more, I found that hiring a salesperson for the purpose of finding new business or generating leads was never very effective. If you are struggling with new business, the solution is more than likely to give more attention to marketing and the hard work of positioning your firm. Hiring a salesperson just won\u2019t get that job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the 15 years I owned Newfangled, I made the mistake of hiring a salesperson more than once. The idea of a dedicated employee whose job is to find clients and who operates mostly on commission was too attractive an opportunity not to bite on. But it never worked out. There are many reasons why […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rewardingtoil.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}