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Issues with new hire
Posted by on February 25, 2021 at 12:19 amNeed an outside opinion as I’m not sure if my expectations are too high or not.
We’ve recently hired a new business development manager for our SEO team. He interviewed well, answered the questions with what we were after, had experience with some big agencies, and his references were positive.
But now were experiencing a few problems. The sales opportunities he’s pursuing have been poorly qualified and we seem increasingly unlikely to fall within their budget. One opportunity in particular has raised some red flags – a templated get rich quick, work your own hours site with duplicated layout and copy of a few hundred other sites. I’m starting to suspect that he’s lied on his resume and used friends as references just to get the job, and now that he’s here he’s trying to pursue everything possible hoping that something will fall in his lap.
So here’s my conundrum: if you’re hiring someone who is experienced in not just sales but selling SEO should you expect them to understand how to qualify prospects and understand enough about SEO to detect these type of time wasters?
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9 Replies
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Obviously, the answer here is that roles and expectations should be clearly defined upon hiring. That being said, happy to dig into this a little with you.
Can you elaborate on the “templated site thing”? Did he build some random site? I don’t understand what happened here.
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Hiring for SEO or website dev sales is almost impossible unless you’re paying $100k plus. Our agency has been looking for someone to grow with us and make very good money for years and we haven’t made it work with a variety of people, so we stick to paid search and email campaigns.
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Someone that’s experienced in sales **should** be able to recognise the kind of prospects that are likely to turn into customers. It’s one of those sink or swim things – if you get it wrong, there’s no way you’re hitting your targets.
We’ve run into a similar issue recently in hiring an “experienced” sales person, but she wasted a ton of our time talking to irrelevant leads. We concluded this wasn’t because she didn’t know how to qualify leads – she just wasn’t familiar enough with the service to know if the prospect would bite. So she ended up chasing a bunch of false positives.
Perhaps your guy doesn’t *really* understand the value of selling SEO to prospects and is qualifying targets based on the wrong ideas.
If it looks like he’s made stuff up on his CV… well you know what they say? Hire slow, fire quick.
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I’ll slide in from being in sales in a different field. I make huge effort and have the experience to qualify my leads and pursue the most interesting and likely to get over the line, also taking into account our products and skills. This can be short medium or long terms assessments.
One if my previous managers however liked to pursue every single lead regardless of potential or time wastage, he also managed our BDM.
So perhaps have the conversation and outline exactly what you would like see from a bdm. Perhaps they have been in an environment that isnt condusive to efficient work practices
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Fire him on the spot. MLM is huge red flag.
Who is he and who did he work for? -
My question is how did a MLM get in the picture at all?
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I’ve hired 20+ people for SEO, but never for sales. So I can’t dig into the sales specifics, but here are my thoughts.
Assuming you’ve brought up the main issues at least once, it’s time you had a hard conversation with him and clearly defined what his objectives are in the role, why they matter for the company’s bottom line, and what success looks like for him in this position. Be as concrete as possible and ask him to agree or object. The goal of the conversation is to get both sides in alignment as to what the role is. He does not have a lot of room to redefine the role, but you should be prepared to seriously consider the role as you (and he) have envisioned it – it’s possible there are real issues you’re not aware of, and you sincerely need to hear him out before you can move forward.
Once you’re both clear on what success looks like in the role, you chart a path forward. Work out clear steps he can take on the road to that success and plan follow up meetings to see where he’s at.
If at any point you become certain he’s not a fit for the role, it’s best to break ties quickly and cleanly. If you’re downright certain he lied in the application process, you don’t necessarily have to be generous in letting him go. But if you did hire the wrong person for the job, I would encourage you to be as helpful and generous as your business allows (keeping in mind he hasn’t been with the company long). There are different outlooks on the matter, but I tend to believe very strongly that hiring someone is one of the most serious business decisions you can make, and so should firing someone from a role.
(one side note as a follow up – you want to set clear goals for him, but also be straight up about why those goals matter for the company’s bottom lines. you need agreement on both fronts, especially since it sounds like the original issue may have stemmed from going after unqualified companies, possibly in pursuit of quantifiable target numbers)
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I’d send him to go talk to a qualified lead to see if he can close.
Then I’d send him to a mate’s office as another “qualified lead” to suss him out again.
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If you’ve hired a business development manager and your company doesn’t have built in mechanisms or processes to generate leads, or a proven process that the BD team can follow to generate leads, than everyone you hire is likely to fail in that role.
If you have sorted that out, this is something you should be talking to the employee about, if he / she is new. Maybe their previous companies were different than you in terms of the type of work they were comfortable / would take on.
Business Development does not traditionally = lead generation.
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