Post Type: Training
By: Lief Larson
If the economic outlook has put your sales hiring plans on ice, you are not alone. Thousands of businesses ranging from SMBs to Fortune 100 companies have recently implemented hiring freezes impacting not only their sales department, but also their sales growth targets. Yet, does this really mean you have to stop expanding your sales team? Let’s delve into an ingenious sales hiring alternative worth exploring.
An emerging strategy is to open-source aspects of your sales to contingent sales professionals. Like other areas of the economy that are tapping into crowdsourced labor, sales are an area primed for innovation. Gary Flake, a Microsoft Technical Fellow and former CTO of Search at Salesforce, Inc., called this this the “elastic sales force model.” The premise is that a slice of your sales playbook includes tapping into a virtual, fluid, cloud-based sales team that can be scaled up or down based on mutually beneficial incentives and outcomes. Let’s look at how this model works and can be implemented in your business.
First, you build a profile around the specific sales opportunity. Say you sell blue widgets, you describe your product, features and benefits, your proven sales approach, unit economics, your ICP (ideal customer profile), then you publish the sales opportunity profile to the open market along with a bounty (i.e. a flat fee or commission %) for a specific set of results. Then, independent sales contractors (e.g. 1099ers, people moonlighting in sales, et al) apply to rep with your business. After reviewing and vetting the salesperson you enter into an SRA (Sales Representative Agreement) and approve them to rep for your business; this acts as the guardrails and passport to sell on your behalf. Lastly, you compensate them based on their ability to drive leads, referrals and sales, which you approve before compensation occurs.
This liquid sales force model is a modified and modernized version of the conventional commission-based sales force development approach. It is generally low-risk, low expectation, yet high opportunity. It can reduce or eliminate the need for deploying large sums of upfront capital. Plus, it has additional benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked. For example, it can help your business learn faster by identifying new customer segments, verticals or geographic markets that previously went unnoticed or untested. Also, this model can permit you to see which specific salespeople perform, thus identifying and substantiating potential future W-2 hires in a try-before-you-buy, ROI-based filtering system.
Salespeople, both newbies and veterans alike, are attracted to the plasticity of this model for various reasons. The leading motive is that it supports them with hybrid or remote work options that can be done fractionally and on their own terms. In an era of changing labor force dynamics many workers are clamoring for autonomy. So, the level of flexibility inherent in this model can be a major attractant. The new paradigm isn’t about where you work from or how many hours you put in, instead the economics are primarily driven by quantifiable results. Another reason salespeople gravitate to this model is because it allows them to sell holistically and synergistically. Often these salespeople come pre-loaded with tacit and explicit knowledge, product/service category expertise and enthusiasm, specific named relationships, customer accounts, sectors, or territories that they already sell into and wherein your products will be non-competitive, aligned and even complimentary. However, if you don’t open-source elements of your sales to the crowd, it’s lost opportunity for both you and them. Therefore, it requires moving away from a walled garden mentality and toward an ‘anyone can sell my products/services’ mentality.
At first blush some sales, operational and executive leaders will look at this decentralized sales force model cynically or even as an existential threat. It’s a fair reaction because, without sufficient vetting of candidates who are supported by training curriculum and adequate sales collateral to empower your elastic sales force prior to mobilization, the odds of success diminish wildly. On the other hand, there’s a strong likelihood that there exists a constellation of distributed salespeople who have an interest in selling your goods or services, but merely lack your empowerment before they can’t self-identify and self-actuate. Once you detect and approve them, train them or let them shadow your sales managers, you will put them in a position to make magic happen.
In conclusion, having a hiring freeze doesn’t mean you have to stop expanding your sales footprint. By open-sourcing and crowdsourcing aspects of your sales, you can tap into new learning and sales growth without deploying new capital. This starts with a willingness to make elastic sales force development a part of your sales playbook, empowering salespeople to tell you they want to sell on your behalf, and then enabling them with the training to produce results.
About the Author:
Lief Larson is the co-founder of Salesfolks (salesfolks.com), a platform for building and scaling an elastic sales force. Salesfolks is used by tens of thousands of salespeople and businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies. It is designed to attract, manage and scale cloud-based, on-demand sales teams.