What is the best way to hire an offsite sales person?

To obtain new clients for an ecommerce business

[tomld2]

I have managed my own internet businesses for the past 3 years. While I am good at the business aspect and marketing ends of things, I have no experience with business to business sales. What is the best way to hire an offsite sales person who would become an expert in my product line and work on behalf of my company to bring in new clients for a range of business products? I know being offsite will signifcantly complicate matters. However can this be done? Are there any trustworthy companies that offer these services?

Regards,
Tom

[ogletree]

There is a whole group of people with experience with this. Just advertise for someone with outside sales or bus dev experience. It is a career path. You can search for resume on one of the job sites for those kw's.

[raywood]

Be very careful and very picky. I am good at recruiting and managing technical teams. But I proved that I was very bad at recruiting and managing sales teams. I hired people with great credentials, they interviewed well, and they promptly cost me a ton of money.

Structure your compensation plan to reward results, not reports of lots of client meetings or prospect contacts that produce no revenue. A good salesman that works for commission will hustle and bring business if he has faith in your product. I made the mistake of paying a base salary and benefits plus commission. Don't do that.

One more note. Your sales people are the face of your company. Make sure to hire people who will reflect well on you.