When sales fall behind expectations, recruiting another salesperson can feel like a decisive response. There is a role to fill, a target to assign and a visible investment in growth. It can also put a new colleague into circumstances that the existing team already finds difficult.
Before approving the role, it helps to distinguish a shortage of selling capacity from a problem with how selling works. Both deserve attention, but they require different decisions.
Follow an opportunity through the business
Choose a recent win, a loss and an opportunity that has stopped moving. Ask the people involved to explain what happened from the first conversation to the latest decision. Look for the point at which progress became difficult.
For an MSP, this might be a proposal that required repeated technical rework, an unclear service boundary or a customer who liked the solution but had no agreed buying timetable. Another salesperson will encounter the same obstacles unless the business addresses them.
Make the role possible to succeed in
A useful recruitment brief describes more than the revenue target. It should explain the customers the business wants, the problems it is equipped to solve and the support available to win and deliver the work.
- Market focus: can the team recognise a customer worth pursuing and explain why the offer fits?
- Opportunity discipline: what evidence is needed before a deal enters the forecast?
- Management support: who will coach the new colleague and help with difficult opportunities?
- Delivery confidence: can proposals be scoped, priced and handed over without constant improvisation?
These questions are also a fair way to assess the environment around your current people. Someone who appears hesitant may be navigating unclear priorities or waiting for decisions they cannot make themselves.
Test capacity with evidence
If the team has a clear proposition, credible opportunities and effective support but cannot cover the available work, additional capacity may be justified. Consider where the extra person would contribute: new-business development, account expansion or a specialist part of the buying process.
If conversion is weak or opportunities regularly stall at the same stage, investigate that point first. More early-stage activity may simply create a larger queue of unresolved deals.
Use a short review before making a long commitment
Bring sales, technical and delivery colleagues together to identify the two or three changes that would make the greatest difference. Give each change an owner, a practical deadline and a measure that shows whether it helped. Revisit the recruitment decision using what you learn.
This is not a reason to delay every hire. It is a way to invest with greater confidence and give a new colleague a fair opportunity to succeed. The aim is a team whose effort has a clear route to commercial progress.
Expanded website edition of a post by Robbie Campbell. View the original LinkedIn post (opens in a new tab).