Even with a highly competent, passionate and seasoned creative team, an agency that can’t make sales or land clients won’t survive. This is why it’s crucial for agencies to work toward attracting and keeping top sales talent on board.
Of course, it can be a real challenge to find and hire the best of the best. The most effective, successful salespeople can work in any industry and often have their choice of opportunities. Fortunately, there are steps agency owners can take to successfully recruit and retain top sales talent in a competitive market. Below, 15 members of Forbes Agency Council share their top tips for doing so.
Forbes Agency Council members discuss how agency owners can find, hire and retain top sales talent.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Invest In Your A-Team
The most important thing you can do, especially given the circumstances of the last year, is to invest in your team. It’s critical to keep and retain your A-players: those who are committed to the bigger picture. When you find them, hold onto them tight. You need to know what those people care about, both personally and professionally. Find out what matters to them and show a genuine interest. – Larry Fisher, Rise Interactive
2. Sell Them On Your Passion
Interview with passion, for passion. A successful salesperson wants to sell a vision, not a product or service. Sell them your beliefs, your company’s “why,” and show them how their specialized skill set will drive mutual growth. – Chris Gutierrez, LeadJig
3. Take Their Feedback
Sometimes, sales forces are marginalized because the rest of the company thinks they’re smarter or more important. The best salespeople are treasured assets and are treated as such. Listen to what they have to say about the operation as a whole. – Jason Wulfsohn, AUDIENCEX
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4. Keep Them Incentivized
My No. 1 tip is to always keep your sales team incentivized so that they “have skin in the game.” Another important thing to keep in mind and to reiterate for your sales team is that they’re in a relationship-related business, and success will come from relationship building. – Spencer Hadelman, Advantage Marketing
5. Offer Commissions To All Team Members
As an agency owner, I have found that any member of your team can be a top salesperson, and often, your creatives are known as such to their friends. Use that to your advantage by offering commissions to anyone on your team who reels in referrals. Your clients will feel comfortable working with someone they trust, and your employees will appreciate the opportunity to attain additional income. – Logan Rae, Argon Agency
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6. Prioritize Their Professional Development
If you want to retain your best sales talent, you’ll have to prioritize their professional development. High-achieving salespeople strive for opportunities to expand their skill set, and can quickly lose their drive if they no longer feel challenged. Make it a point to regularly check in with your sales team to provide feedback, identify areas for improvement and set goals moving forward. – Adam Binder, Creative Click Media
7. Thoroughly Train And Nurture Them
Most people who struggle in sales have not had enough training, support, coaching or guidance. I believe that it takes about a year of hands-on experience for someone to get good at selling professional services. So if you want to retain sales talent, nurture them. Give them mindshare and increase your expectations of them in proportion to your time investment. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
8. Identify Gaps In Strengths To Build Your Ideal Team
Often, when a new hire doesn’t become a long-term employee, it’s not due to a lack of talent or skill but a lack of fit. Tools such as Gallup’s CliftonStrengths can help agencies identify gaps in strengths and gain greater insight into what makeups are ideal not only at the position level, but also at team and enterprise levels. Making a talent tool such as this part of the hiring process can help ensure a fit from day one. – Mary Ann O’Brien, OBI Creative
9. Hire For Goal Alignment And Retain With Growth
I’ve got two tips. My advice for hiring is to make the process candidate-focused, not company-focused: Only hire people whose personal goals align with what your business has to offer. My advice for retaining top sales talent? Make sure they feel their progress. It’s commonly believed that salespeople are only motivated by money, but that’s not always true. More often than not, they are motivated by growth. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
10. Find Curious Sales Professionals Who Listen
Agency owners need to find professionals who are curious, trainable and willing to listen. The sales environment has changed dramatically over the past few years, transitioning from “selling” to “problem-solving.” A problem can only be solved by listening first, so the individual must be in constant “learning mode.” Otherwise, they’ll be stuck selling products, not strategies. – Bernard May, National Positions
11. Inquire About The Relationships They’ve Built
When you are screening and interviewing prospective employees, make sure you focus on the relationships they have built. Sales numbers are definitely important; but in a creative agency, strong relationship building is key. Also, focus on their post-sale after-care experience. It is important for a salesperson not to vanish after the contract is signed! – Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency
12. Understand Each Person’s Personality
It is important to understand the personality and motivations of each of your sales team members to craft compensation packages that truly motivate them. Understanding the team will also help you craft sales roles that best suit their unique gifts and talents, as well as figure out how they can support one another versus compete with one another. Lastly, their values need to match up with yours. – Jason Wilson, Strategy, LLC
13. Think Beyond Financial Incentives
It’s important to understand what motivates the salespeople you have. Sometimes it’s money, but sometimes it’s not. Salespeople who are marketers make the best fit for our agency, and they like to be heard and included in the process of onboarding the client, seeing the creative, etc.—not deeply, but enough so that they aren’t excluded. They also like to be seen as experts and rewarded for their efforts. – Megan Devine, d.trio marketing group
14. Focus On Your Holistic Work Culture
Agencies should focus holistically on their work culture across the board for all employees to create a great vibe, a movement that will encourage all staff, no matter their position, to stay. Too often, the people at the top get all the attention; but focusing on everyone, from the agency’s coordination team up to the management and sales teams, will allow you to build a strong team for years to come. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR
15. Find People Who Love What They Do
You have to find people who genuinely love what they do and believe in your vision. If not, it’ll fall apart fast. You also have to have someone who “sells” the way your culture needs to be sold. Is it more of a classic approach? Are they connected to the greater purpose of the agency in a real way? Also, have you set up a compensation structure that matches how they are intrinsically motivated? – Becca Apfelstadt, treetree
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
