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Lousy Salespeople and Great Salespeople - Line Item or Investment?

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: Lousy salespeople are a line item but great salespeople are an investment. It's actually much worse than that. The line item on your lousy salespeople is only a fraction of what they really cost. Don't believe me? Then answer these three questions:

Lousy Salespeople and Great Salespeople - Line Item or Investment?

Lousy salespeople are a line item but great salespeople are an investment. It's actually much worse than that. The line item on your lousy salespeople is only a fraction of what they really cost. Don't believe me? Then answer these three questions:

1. Do you have any sales ghosts? A Sales Ghost is any salesperson who failed or under-achieved, is no longer with you, but continues to haunt you.
2. How much have your sales ghosts cost you? Take just 2 minutes, complete our simple Sales Ghosts Calculator, return to this article, and post your number as a comment. Then we'll all see just how much the average has changed in the last couple of years.

Would you like to perform a more comprehensive analysis along with some what if scenarios? In addition to calculating recruiting, turnover, and related development costs, you can calculate increases in sales and margins based on reduced turnover and more. Click to receive a free download of our Sales Ghosts Spreadsheet.

Great salespeople are more than an investment. They are a great investment. Where else can you invest $100,000 and get a short-term return of 10:1, 20:1 or 30:1? And, when you're investing in great salespeople, there is relatively little risk. Why? Every salesperson brings you something! Even a great salesperson who fails will manage to find enough business to cover the costs...

I wrote an article for the AlisterPaine.com Blog called How to Predict and Prevent Sales Turnover. It's different from the articles I've posted here in the past month on that topic because it has a case history, and discusses all of the reasons why new salespeople fail, as well as the conditions that you must have in place for them to succeed.

How many of those things are you doing right?

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Article Tags: blog, calculator, case history, fraction, ghost, ghosts, li li, margins, related development, risk, sales turnover, salespeople, salesperson, scenarios, spreadsheet, target



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