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.
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I can see that I confused the issue -- we don't have any offshore sales reps. Our entire sales force is in the United States but spread around the country. only one sales rep works from our headquarters now.
In Latin America, we only have some customer service and some programming...
Yes, I certainly agree that it is not always easy dealing with a remote sales team. However, there are certainly advantages as well to this approach beyond just finding the best talent skill-wise. I am sure you can't forget Hurricane Wilma which came through here as a strong category 2 or weak category 3 hurricane a few years back.
Our preparedness was certainly lacking at that time. The plan was "let's go to Orlando." Cell phones didn't work, I personally didn't have electricity for 2 weeks, and it wasn't a nice time. Some of the sales and tech team did go to Orlando. But after just 2 days, our office in Weston was back in business. By that time I had also communicated with another local sales person that found a working internet cafe the very next day.
So if we had a better plan at that time, "Orlando" would've been taken off the table for a few days to think. Which leads me to the benefit of having sales team members outside of the area that can keep the company afloat should disaster strike (we had none at that time). We haven't had to implement it yet (just a false alarm dress rehearsal last year), but giving the team in Chicago and Texas more power as a hurricane threat nears has become part of our survival plan.
Other positives of non-local sales staff include having them available in other cities to spread the company gospel by attending trade shows, our sponsored job fairs and other local events. It saves on time, travel expenses, and they already know the area as well. Time zones are sometimes an issue as well for professional sales people. An East-Coaster can't be making calls from 8am to 9pm (which is when the 6pm West Coast starts to wind down), so having a few sales people out west surely alleviates some of those problems.
And, Eric, even almost all of our local team is now "remote" working from home offices, very effectively I must admit. We see each other more than say, the guys in Chicago, but not every day or even week. In the end, exactly right--you gotta hire the best talent no matter where they are and not put all your eggs in one basket (Weston)for lots of reasons.
Rob Steward, LatPro Sales Director
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