Ready to Hire? 3 Signs You Need to Scale Up Your Sales Team

Business growth can sometimes be a paradox. On one hand, seeing your sales numbers grow and your customers happy is proof that your business works. On the other hand, keeping up with and continuing the growth requires you to put in more time and money, hire more salespeople or wring out even more from your current sales team.

The latter solution is perfectly fine if your current team has the right size, experience and tools to nurture every aspect of growth coming your way. But at some point, you will have to scale up your sales team. Get ready to hire when you see any of these three signs:

1. Current team exceeds every sales goal, no matter how high

This seems like the perfect situation. Your current sales team is exceeding every goal you set and business is growing rapidly. Both are great things, we’re in agreement there.

However, if the goals are exceeded every time, it means there’s a lack of competition. And more times than not, a lack of competition leads to a surplus of complacency.

By adding another salesperson, you’re adding another challenger to hit sales goals. This will not only keep your current team motivated but provide you with another revenue generator.

2. Territories are too big to cover

Too often, low production is blamed on a bad sales rep, but territory mapping can make or break your sales team. If you’re the majority of your current team is having trouble reaching all potential prospects in a timely manner, your territories are too big.

80% of companies are missing 2-7% of unrealized sales because territories are misaligned. Properly mapping out your territories and hiring enough salespeople to cover each one, will lead to an accurate division of labor. Ultimately, you’ll have lower salesperson burnout and more precise metrics to grade individual and team success.

3. Need to launch into a new market

Your team is killing it in your current market but you have your sights set on a more lucrative, but completely different playing field.

Salespeople might be rock stars in one market but have a lot of trouble with another. So when launching your product or service into a different market, it’s imperative to have people with the experience and skills to take it on.

In the short run, you can penetrate the new market more quickly by hiring an experienced salesperson. In the long run, this new sales person can serve as a training aid for any salesperson that wants to make a switch. Either way, hiring a new experienced salesperson saves money and time.

On the flip side, there are a few things to ask yourself before searching for your next closer. 

• Is there a proper onboarding and training strategy to get a new hire up to speed quickly?
• In a Docurated’s State of Sales report, 79% of salespeople surveyed, stated that improving current productivity is the top driver for hitting new targets but 49% of companies have little to no means to measure it. So, are there technologies and strategies you can implement to measure and improve your current sales team’s productivity?
• Can the territories be better mapped amongst the current team?
• And obviously, does it make financial sense in both the short and long run?

If you can confidently address these questions and clearly identify the signs, get ready to hire!