Hiring A Coffee Salesperson
Cover Your Ears Kids, We're Talking About Sales: Hiring A Coffee Salesperson
Many owners hope to hire someone else to do sales before they've defined and codified their own sales process. As a result, their salespeople are often well intentioned yet misguided and aren't able to maximize their efforts.
Not everyone will have an inclination toward sales but either way, your sales people will need to be nurtured and supported along the way.
A common phrase we use around pomelo is, the growth of a roaster is directly related to the personal and professional growth of the owner. If we are not learning and growing ourselves, how can we help our team grow? If we do not have (at the minimum) a working understanding of our sales process, we will struggle to hire and support our salespeople well. Even worse, we will struggle to provide contextual feedback to help them improve at selling.
If you are looking to hire a salesperson, the most useful thing you can do is to become a good salesperson yourself. then, codify your process and approach. next, you need to become an expert at passing along this information to your salespeople and provide them ongoing feedback and support.
Invest in yourself, your business, and your business's future by learning sales yourself and mobilizing others to learn sales as well.
It's a miss as an owner to hire a sales person and put them into the wild without recurrent feedback, support and resources.
If they have an innate ability to sell that doesn’t remove the need for you to provide them with the resources and support to learn and get better. Conversely, if they don’t have the innate ability to sell but are looking to learn this, our job as owners is to still resource, support and provide feedback.
Set up a regular check in with your sales person. Don’t just have them report to you but open the floor for two way feedback and listen for the pain points. Seek to provide them with the tools they need to succeed and the support they need to do their job well.
Don’t hire someone and build this process, build the sales process then hire.