Opportunity Awaits podcast Episode Transcript
Aaron Henriques (00:03):
So right now I'm pretty pissed off, disappointed, and shocked at how poor the quality of salespeople is in the UK today. I mean, I don't know what's happened, but I'm going to be talking about something today where I've tried to hire a sales person. You know, you make their life a bit easier by actually putting out an advert saying, Hey, we're hiring guys and girls, you know, come and come and get the job. And for some reason they just find it really difficult to actually be salespeople. So here's, here's the thing. So I'll give you a bit of background to this because you're perfect, confused, like why I started off like this and, and, and, and all sorts. So here's the background to this. I have one of my online businesses. I'm looking for cold sales staff who, who can do cold prospecting. Okay. That's what I'm looking for.
Aaron Henriques (01:06):
Absolute animals who can just go out there, they'll be picking up that phone. There'll be getting off their bum, going to see businesses as business to business role. And I've been advertising that on indeed for nearly two weeks. And on Gumtree, you know, 35 grand (£35,000 GBP) unlimited commission as well, and where it's high ticket stuff, you know, it could be selling sort of 30, 40,000 pound stuff. You know, commissions are going to be decent for them as well. And here's the thing, you know, I've put in the advert, I've made it super easy for these people. I've made it really easy. I've put the ad, I've put the web address in the advert and right at the end of it in big, bold writing, impress us. Okay. I wouldn't, and I'm telling them, impress us that impress us doesn't mean just send me your CV and hope for the best.
Aaron Henriques (01:55):
Okay. And the reason why I'm not going to hire a single person who's applied is because none of them have shown me any that they've all failed. The first test, they've all failed. My first test, they don't know it's the test, but they've all failed it because not one of them seemed capable of actually selling themselves to me, not one of them. They sent me their CV. I don't care about their CV. I couldn't care less. What's on their CV. Okay. That that's a filtering exercise, a CV. Okay. But what I was expecting from some of these people was for them to actually get in contact with me. And I've given, made it easy for you. Within two minutes, you can find my direct contact number and sell yourself to me on the phone. This is what I'm telling them. This is what their job is gonna be.
Aaron Henriques (02:44):
They're gonna have to go and find people. They have to know how to find the right people, call them up and sell to them. So if they can't even sell themselves into a job, how on earth are they going to sell my stuff from my company to these executives around around the world? I don't know. So that's why I'm so disappointed because, you know, I mean, I've, I've looked through some of these CVS, right. And, you know, people saying, they've got 10 years of cold prospecting experience, you know, blaring themselves up there. They're the big dogs, you know, in their industry. They've been selling hundreds of thousands of pounds a month and all this stuff. Right. Great, fantastic. But not one of them bothered to try and get in contact with me, not one. And there are a lot, there are a lot in there.
Aaron Henriques (03:37):
So I think it's quite quite a tragedy. And I think it's something that people should sort of consider when, you know, particularly if the they're going for a sales job, but any job. And I'll probably talk about it separately another day, because I've got a whole story around this that might be useful for some of you, but if you're going for any job, you know, stand out and, you know, an easy way to stand out and easy way to stand out is literally just speaking to the owners or the manager or whoever is hiring, you know, the hiring manager, speaking to them directly because most people won't bother. They'll just send their CV and hope for the best. Like what sort of tactic is that?
Aaron Henriques (04:17):
So that's all I wanted to share briefly on that because it's so important to get the right type of salespeople in your company. And I've had terrible sales people before. I've, I've hired people straight from, you know, just looking at a CVS, me, contacting them for an interview and I'm interviewing and then yeah, performing really well in an interview, setting themselves in interview part, but then actually not performing afterwards. So I've had that before. You know, I've, I've, I've, I've had it where you know, we've had salespeople who just haven't been able to sell at all. I've had some people where they've been out to sell some stuff, but not much to sort of justify them. You know, if a sales person is costing you more than they make for you, then what if they use, you might as well not have them.
Aaron Henriques (05:15):
But yeah. It's just that I'm just releasing my frustration here because it's so annoying. And I think if there's any of you out there that are running your own businesses and stuff like that, you should really consider really, really consider if you want someone for cold prospecting. That's what I'm talking about here. Everyone I'm not talking about where you've got you know, where you've got your own call lists, or you've got inbound leads and stuff as different. That's a different kettle of fish. It's a different game, different type of sales person that deals with that. Okay. But if you're talking about someone who's cold prospect, I'm on about literally there, there isn't a lead list for them, that it is you go out, you go and find the client. You, you go and find, identify potential clients and you go and make contact with them and you go and sell them.
Aaron Henriques (06:04):
Okay. That's that is the cold prospect in part. And if you're looking for anyone, who's cold prospecting, think twice about how you're hiring them, because, because if they cannot even cold prospect, you, okay. So for the, that, they're trying to sell themselves now to you, they are their product. They're trying to sell themselves to you. Yet, they're not even managing to pick up the phone to dial you and then sell you on them. Then you need to think twice. How well are they really going to do doing that to other people? Okay. So even if one of them had one of them just called me up, they probably would gotten a job by now, just because of the fact they stood out from everyone else. So here's what I've done. Everyone has been binned. And I'll just have to put out another ad and hope that someone somewhere out there, somewhere in the UK, that there is actually someone who is remotely competent and able to do cold prospecting.
Aaron Henriques (07:07):
So anyway, I just wanted to leave you on that note. And you know, if you've, if you've had any sort of issues with sort of hiring staff, hiring sales staff, particularly before, you know, let me know like how you overcome it, because for me, I find it quite challenging to get a decent cold prospect sales person in who's actually, you know, who can actually just prove to me that they're actually going to be worth the investment. You know, they're not a small investment or a lot of money, but if you find a good one, they can be really good. So I'm still looking. So if you do have anything like that, let me know get me on Instagram, @AaronHenray, that's @AaronHenray. Give me a photo and say, hello. Been getting quite a few requests recently.
Aaron Henriques (07:57):
I've got a few in my inbox this morning that I need to reply to. But yeah, give me a shout out and also do me a favor. You're listening now. You've got your app open on your phone. Can you just go onto the, if you're on, on your iPhone, go onto the review bit, give me five stars and just leave something, you know, say hello, you know, yes, this was useful because of this, or leave your comments about this episode even in relation to your, your experience with hiring salespeople. Cause I'd like to know, I'm sure other people would like to know and doing that can also help this podcast get out to more people as well. Yeah. So until next time, thanks very much.
