Key takeaways
- Build the sales system before the hire so the person inherits a process and a pipeline, not your phone.
- Hire against a scorecard of outcomes and behaviours, and test it in a paid trial of a few weeks.
- Pay a base that lets the person survive the ramp plus a commission tied to margin and paid on collected cash.
- The employment contract and commission plan go to an employment lawyer. We support the hire, we do not draft the terms.
The first salesperson is the hire owners make with the most hope and the least preparation. The thinking goes that a good salesperson will figure it out, because that is what good salespeople do. Then six months later the pipeline is empty, the person has left, and the owner concludes that nobody can sell this product except them.
The failure is rarely the person. It is the absence of a system to hire into, a scorecard to hire against and a pay plan that rewards the behaviour you actually want. We support this hire for owners across British Columbia. We are not a licensed recruitment agency, and what we bring is the design of the role, the process and the ramp.
Build the system first
Before you post the role, your sales process should be written, the pipeline should be in a shared tool, the price book should exist and the follow-up routine should be running. If it is not, read our guide on building a sales system a small team will use and do that first. A salesperson who starts on day one with a warm pipeline and a clear process has a real chance. One who starts with a blank spreadsheet is being set up to fail.
The scorecard
Write the scorecard before you write the job ad. It has two halves. Outcomes, meaning what the person must produce by thirty, sixty, ninety days and the end of year one, in numbers you can measure in your tool. And behaviours, meaning what you will see them do every week that predicts those outcomes.
- Outcomes. Enquiries responded to within the target time, appointments booked per week, quotes sent, close rate against the company baseline, average margin per sale.
- Behaviours. Every lead logged the same day, every open quote followed up on schedule, pipeline updated before the weekly review, calls recorded and reviewed without being asked.
- Disqualifiers. Discounting without permission, promising what operations cannot deliver, quiet quoting outside the price book.
Interview against the scorecard. Ask for a real example of each behaviour from their last role and ask how they would hit the ninety-day outcome with your pipeline. The candidates who ask about your follow-up rule and your price book are the ones to keep talking to.
A paid trial beats a long interview
Where it is practical, bring the final candidate in for a paid trial of two to four weeks on real enquiries, with a short daily check-in. You will learn more in two weeks of watching them respond to leads than in five interviews. Structure the trial as proper paid work with clear terms, and have an employment lawyer confirm how it should be set up in British Columbia before you offer it.
Pay that rewards the right thing
The common pay mistakes are a base too low to survive the ramp, commission on revenue instead of margin, and commission paid on signed deals that are never collected. Each one trains the behaviour you do not want.
A workable shape is a base salary that a reasonable person can live on in your region, a commission on gross margin so that discounting costs the salesperson too, payment on cash collected, and a ramp arrangement for the first quarter while the pipeline builds. Keep the plan to one page and make the arithmetic something the person can do in their head. The actual plan, the contract, probation and termination terms go to an employment lawyer. We work alongside licensed professionals and we do not draft those.
The first ninety days
Sit beside them for the first week of calls. Hand over leads in stages, warm ones first. Review the pipeline together every week against the scorecard and record what you see. At thirty, sixty and ninety days, hold a written review against the outcomes you set. If the behaviours are there and the outcomes are close, keep going. If the behaviours are missing, decide early rather than hoping.
The owner's role afterwards is the weekly review, a few recorded calls a month and the handful of deals that need you. If you find yourself back on every call, the system has a gap, and that is fixable.
Keep the price book and the follow-up rule as the two things you never let slide in the ramp. A new salesperson who learns that both are optional will treat everything else as optional too.