Continuous Hire Key To Home Improvement Growth

Think building your home improvement company is all about leads? It’s much more about the quality and efficiency of your sales force.

Most home improvement company owners would like to grow their operation. The question is, how? Conventional thinking has it that to expand you must increase leads. Run more leads, get more sales. That’s simple, isn’t it?

That strategy will require a corresponding investment in marketing/advertising, or web spending.

And if that’s the way you choose to go, I can tell you from experience that plenty of advertising/marketing companies will be there to tell you they can increase your sales. Their sales rep will assure you that all it takes to add sales is an increase in your marketing budget, i.e., spending more money with them. That usually starts with a big chunk up front. The rep, however, won’t guarantee results. If the campaign isn’t working, he or she will tell you they need to “tweak the details” and “test” more, which will cost you more money.

Many advertising/marketing companies think their job is to sell more of your company’s product. It isn’t. Their job is to generate leads. There’s a big difference. 

You Get What You Wish For 

But lets say that you, an owner, invests a large sum of money to increase the lead flow, and it actually results in a significant increase in leads. This can be just as disastrous as getting no leads at all. Here’s why: 

1. You probably won’t have enough sales people to run those leads.
2. You cannot hire or train enough sales people fast enough to run those leads in a timely manner. Giving expensive leads to inexperienced sales people is costly.
3. You may end up running your existing sales force ragged simply trying to cover all the leads. Exhausted salespeople quickly become ineffective and won’t give their all, what it takes to gain a sale.
4. When a sales person knows that there are excess leads, they tend to start “creaming” the leads for the easy sale.
5. A surplus of sales leads causes the owner or sales manager to hold on to nonproductive sales people. Someone’s got to cover those leads, right? All you’re doing is throwing a match on the dollars you invested in marketing.
6. A fresh sales lead is usually a great opportunity. Prospect interest is high. But after several months there is a very good chance they will buy from someone else if you can't contact them immediately because you don't have the sales force ready to run them.
7. When sales people are running a certain type of new lead (such as for instance the leads produced by your advertising/marketing campaign) and they get tired, they begin taking shortcuts, cherry picking some leads and pre-qualifying others. Soon you have lots of complaints about lead quality. Complaining is contagious, so much so that what is essentially an excuse for poor salesmanship can spread right up the ladder to the sales manager and the owner, turning the new lead campaign into a disaster.
8. You, the owner, buy into the sales force opinion about the lead, and finally declare the campaign a failure, never to repeat what could’ve truly been a winner. In effect, you’re saying it’s too expensive and difficult to grow the company. 

Leads Driving Manpower?  

The process described above is called Leads Driving Manpower. Increase lead flow on the assumption that you can increase the number of salespeople to cover the leads. Anyone attempting to put this concept into practice will quickly realize that’s it’s impossible to hire and train salespeople at the same rate that leads increase.

Recruiting, hiring and training competent a sales person takes time. I know because at the different companies where I’ve worked, every attempt to expand by 1) generating a ton of new leads and then 2) hiring the salespeople to run them…failed. 

Manpower Drives Leads 

What has proved effective is exactly the opposite. In other words, Manpower Drives Leads. It works like this: if you want to grow your company and increase sales, be constantly in the process of hiring new sales people.

When most owners or sales managers read this, their first thought is that there won’t be enough leads to go around.

In fact, that’s correct. You won’t have enough leads to go around. And that’s good because: 

1. Having more sales people than leads puts the owner or sales manager in a much more powerful position with regard to the sales force. The one who controls the leads is in charge.
2. When sales people are competing for them, they know they have to work effectively to remain in the running for those leads. A competitive environment among sales people is a good thing. It increases ROI on lead investment.
3. The owner now has options when it comes to who gets leads. Poor attitude? No leads.
4. When you have more sales people to give leads to, the marketing department is under the gun to produce more leads with the same resources, which they can only do by becoming more efficient in increasing their conversion rate. Funny how that works.
5. When Manpower Drives Leads, in effect, you are, over time, culling the herd. The most productive sales people get the leads, and those who don’t produce either quit or are fired. You now have a much more efficient and productive sales force. How do you know? Sales will go up with the same amount of leads issued to the sales force.
6. It costs a lot less to invest in a new sales person than it does to sign on for an expensive marketing campaign aimed at increasing leads. You can’t do anything if the marketing campaign doesn’t generate those leads, but you can replace that sales person if he/she fails to produce over time.
7. New blood will get the sales force charged. It always does. 

Big Changes In The Works 

Adopting the philosophy that Manpower Drives Leads will take a change of attitude on the part of the owner or sales manager. Here’s what to do: 

1. Adopt the philosophy that “the best sales person in the company hasn’t walked through the door yet.” Hire continually and that may come true.
2. Learn to stand fast in the face of sales force whining about there not being enough leads to go around. Otherwise, your attempt to improve leads-to-sales conversion efficiencies will fail.
3. Salespeople need to know that the top sales person, the “hot” one, will always get leads. Be ready when unproductive sales complain about that. Use the occasion of their complaint to start a conversation about what it will take to improve their performance so that they can get more leads.
4. If there is no company trainer, be prepared to commit substantial time to training new hires. Use the occasion as an opportunity to bring certain existing members of the sales force in for retraining. And training should be ongoing, not a one-time thing.
5. Discard the excuse that there are not enough qualified and experienced sales prospects in your market for a continuous hiring program. Look for inexperienced people who have a great personality, are smart, eager to make money, and have good work habits. There are plenty out there. Then, spare neither time nor energy when it comes to training them.
6. If you see that someone doesn’t have what it takes, terminate. Often times owners and sales mangers like to smoke “hopium” i.e., indulge their belief that faltering sales hires will turn around. In truth, they just don’t like firing people. You’re not doing the new hire any favor by making them think they can make it when you know they can’t.
7. The owner and sales manager must realize that there will be an increase in sales person turnover when they increase hiring. This is a natural effect. That’s why the hiring process must be a continuous activity no matter how well sales are increasing. 

Now Go For The Leads

After having success securing new hires and developing a larger and more productive sales force, the owner will clearly know when it’s time to increase the lead flow by investing in marketing/advertising. Now you have the sales force to cover the new leads.

The nice thing about beginning the process of growing your company by continuous hiring is that an owner can start immediately. The concept is simple, but it works. So start looking for your best sales person - tomorrow.