Hiring Your First Dedicated Salesperson: When Did You Make the Leap?

Question

We’re approaching $2M in annual revenue, and up until this point, our office team has handled sales alongside their other administrative responsibilities.

As we continue scaling, I’m considering creating our first dedicated sales position and potentially promoting someone internally who’s already familiar with our company, services, and clients.

I’m curious how other home service business owners approached this transition!

At approximately what annual revenue did you hire your first dedicated salesperson?

Did you promote from within or hire someone with an established sales background?

And how did you structure their compensation and performance expectations?

I’d especially love to hear from those who promoted internally. Did having someone who already understood your business outweigh bringing in someone with outside sales experience?

homeownership · Answer

I don't have employees yet, but if I were in this position, I'd lean toward promoting from within. Someone who already understands the business and has established relationships with customers brings real value. I'd consider a 90-day trial with clear sales goals and a base salary plus performance incentives. That would give both the employee and the business an opportunity to evaluate whether the role is a good fit.

pestfreecanada · Answer

The things I don't like about a sales-only person is it adds a non-revenue call to someone's day. I would be making two stops at a location, and one of them isn't making any revenue. Also, if the sales person isn't from your industry or says one wrong thing, the project could become a nightmare very quickly. "The sales guy said you were going in the attic", "The sales guy said that was included". Also even with the best software or AI recording apps, things get missed or forgotten, or a homeowner hears something different. And we all know the customer is always right!

I have always thought salespeople are for products, not services. It's hard enough to sell yourself, it's even harder to sell a technician who is going to show up in a few days.

My business model is inspect, present quote and get the work done right then and there. It is working out great so far and a customer very very rarely needs a few days to think about my proposal. I like the idea of a sales/service person, and that would be the best to promote inhouse. Have a technician who has some free time to go out and do the sales lead with the hopes they land the job and have time to do it too.

I am very curious to see what other have to say about it too.

hugehomepros · Answer

Following! I often think about this as I spend a lot of my time doing sales calls. I tried to have a "project manager" role that had a base salary and gross profit percentage as the performance pay. I discovered we needed a lot more jobs going at once to make that a financially feasible role. In my mind, a sales role needs to be keeping at least 3-5 crews busy and needs to be tied to profitability (not revenue) or there needs to be set amounts per thing they sell.

I don't have a sales person though so one of you that does, fill us in!

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Hiring Your First Dedicated Salesperson: When Did You Make the Leap?

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