Building Your ISP Sales Force

When it comes to sales organizations, most independent ISPs are woefully underpowered. What's the problem here—and what can you do to remedy it?

by Jason Zigmont HowToSell.net [July 30, 1999]

The basic problem is a general lack of skilled salespeople within the relatively young Internet industry. It's tough for an ISP to take a car—or carpet—salesman (or woman,of course) and instantly turn him into an Internet sales guru.

If you do find someone who's skilled in Internet sales, he or she is pretty much guaranteed to be working at an ISP already. If you want him or her, you'll have to pay dearly. Turn the situation around and you've got another problem: If you're looking to poach other people's talented salespeople, chances are that if you have good salespeople, your competition wants them, too.

Either way, you end up paying big salaries to the key salespeople within your organization. These essential people will probably bring in most of your business. (Remember the 80/20 rule?) This most likely gives you one or two heavy hitters, which probably will not be enough to carry a company, but will keep you right-side up.

But to grow your sales force without going bankrupt, you'll need to add less experienced people and hope you can train them to the level of sales success that your key people have achieved—without losing them along the way.

Two choices
You can hire salespeople who may not know how to plug a computer into the wall and train them on the technical side, or hire technical people who couldn't sell water in the desert and bring them up to speed on sales skills. But which way to go?

For most ISPs, a simple answer is to bring your technical staff into the loop as sales support. This then shifts the balance in the direction of hiring people with proven sales records (preferably not in carpet or used cars sales) and training them technically. And you really do need to train them. Training is all too often overlooked, but it can make the difference between success and . . . well, that other thing.

Instant producers?
When general 'management' people hire saleseople, they often expect them to start producing immediately—forget about training and forget about the sales cycle. If you do this, you're only setting yourself up for disaster. Try to hang onto the idea that in this business, it ain't gonna work that way. The simple truth is that your sales recruits will have as much technical knowledge as you are willing to give them.

Even if you do have the ability to train sales recruits in both sales and technical skills, not every newcomer will become a producer. Not everyone is cut out for sales. It's a rewarding, job, but it's demanding too. If they prove unwilling to train, then you hired the wrong person. If they just aren't 'getting it,' all the training in the world won't make them succeed. What to do? Fire early and often. If someone isn't working out, teaching him or her Sales 101—or the technical underpinnings of the ISP trade—will be an investment with no return.

Another problem
In many ISPs, the sales staff are managed by tech staff. Not only does this not foster the teaching of sales skills, it may result in frustrations caused by technical managers' not understanding the sales cycle. But remember, sales is a numbers game. You should be able to forecast your sales and know within reason what your sales will be next month. If a salesperson has nothing on the forecast for an extended period, then there is something wrong.

Finally, many ISPs are willing to pay or otherwise 'incentivize' technical staff to come—or remain—on board, but not sales staff. This is probably because management is typically more in touch with the technical side and the need for good customer service, But the fact remains, you get what you pay for. If you give second-class incentives to salespeople, you'll probably always have a second-class sales organization.

—End