A friend who runs a top niche job board recently asked me this:In the past, we’ve only hired local sales people but we’re looking at the possibility of hiring remote reps. I know it’s hard to find employees in South Florida and I was wondering if you have any staff that works remotely and if so is there anything you can tell me that would help us?
My answer -- you can't afford not to. We tried for years to grow our sales team by hiring locally. We would hire-train-fire and then repeat. But all the while, I was watching Don Firth (friend and fellow Florida job board entrepreneur) grow his sales team three and four times as fast by hiring virtually from around the country.
Our delay in hiring remote sales was one of the most costly mistakes I have made in business. We have always had a dispersed staff with key team members in Delaware, Florida, and Guatemala. But for some reason, I was especially uncomfortable with the idea of sales being virtual. Perhaps because our sales training involved taping sales calls and playing them back for training purposes.
Every year, I am more and more taken with the idea that we cannot afford the luxury of hiring the best person for the job that lives nearby. I see a tidal wave of competition coming at us. It's not just coming from the USA either. Recently, I have written about startups in Argentina and India that are targeting the US internet recruiting market. These are well-funded companies with a cost advantage you cannot easily match. But then there's also the future, global hyper-competition in affiliate marketing that will drive SEO/SEM margins threadbare. When your cost of living is US$250/month you don’t have to make much profit online to lead a good lifestyle.
While our sales team is spread around the US, the company as a whole is currently spread between Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Florida, Delaware, Ohio, Texas, Illinois and Colorado (me). Making this work takes time and investment in communication tools like voip, basecamp and management practices like the Rockefeller habits. We are far from perfect, but I consider these to be key survival skills for the coming onslaught of market fragmentation and competition.
