successful sales case study

We Get Sales Results #1

Case Study: Gillware

Are you making a $1,000,000 mistake in your business?

Our client, Gillware was.

Honestly, many business owners are…and they don’t even know it. 

The problem is business owners frequently underestimate the cost of what they miss out on by not having the right sales team in place. 

It’s only when they’ve been dealing with a string of bad hires and severely lagging sales numbers that most business owners stop and ask themselves if they need to make a change…

But you don’t have to wait until it gets to that point before you take action!

Read on to discover how we helped just one of our clients, why our data-driven approach to hiring is the game-changer you need for your sales team, and how you can hire us to do the same for your business.

Their Challenge

Like many businesses in 2021, our client was struggling. They’re a tech company and had been through 5 unsuccessful sales reps in the last two years. 

With the pandemic changing the face of how business and sales were happening, they struggled to find qualified sales professionals who could meet the demands of a changing marketplace.

Throughout 2019-2021, the sales team barely closed any deals, and the company floundered. They were unsure of what to look for in a top-performing sales candidate and were confused about what exactly they needed.

There was a new sales territory they hoped to enter. Without name recognition and a competent sales representative for the area, they were hesitant to move forward.

In the two years before working with us, they spent $325,000 on salary for their sales team (excluding onboarding costs) and had brought in close to zero revenue.

Our Solution

We began by using our proprietary, data-driven sales hiring process. 

The beginning of our sales hiring process is based on science, not personality. Our first step was to examine the applicants’ Sales DNA and their ability to close deals using a sales-specific assessment tool

Only those we were confident could build rapport and close deals made it through to the next stage.

From there, we conducted and analyzed interviews, made recommendations, and assisted our client with onboarding the candidate we were confident would best fit their needs.

The Results 

Within 60 days of hiring us, we found the ideal candidate and supported our client as they successfully onboarded them.

In just 30 days, their new salesperson started to close deals and brought in 44 new accounts. In that first month, this sales superstar brought in enough revenue to cover 80% of their annual base salary.

Within 60 days, the numbers were even more impressive: 85 new accounts and over $25,000 in closed deals.

All of this, in a brand new territory for this tech company (a very crowded marketplace) with no name recognition or previous client network or pipeline to fall back on.

Client Value

Whereas many sales recruits aren’t profitable for upwards of 12 months, within 60 days of hiring the candidate we recommended, our client:

  • Saw a massive ROI
  • Firmly established themselves in a brand new territory
  • Were well on their way to solving the sales problems that had plagued them for over two years

Based on the sales numbers our candidate did in their first 30 days, our client lost out on almost $960,000 in revenue between 2019-2021 by having the wrong people on their sales team. 

They spent $325,000 in salary and got little to no results. 

The cost of onboarding the wrong employees was also significant but challenging to quantify:

  • Lost work hours in HR looking through applications and interviewing
  • Time the sales manager wasted training 5 useless sales reps 
  • Damage to the company’s reputation caused by ineffectual salespeople

Certainly, the CEO wasted a lot of time, energy, and stress worrying about his company’s sales numbers and future viability…again, a difficult thing to quantify but a painful cost nonetheless.

It’s difficult to calculate the total cost (including lost opportunity) over those years of having sub-par sales “professionals” on the team, but it’s well over $1 million and could be upwards of $1.5 million.

Conclusion

We do things differently at Improve Growth…namely, we get results.

You want sales professionals who can sell, and that’s who we find.

Our approach to sales hiring may differ from what you’ve tried, and that’s why it works. 

A data-based approach is what you need to stop the cycle of churn and burn that leaves so many businesses struggling.

The problem isn’t that it’s hard to find the right salespeople, it’s that it’s so easy to onboard the wrong ones.

The numbers (and data!) speak for themselves, and that’s the way we like it.

If you’re ready to discover the difference our sales hiring strategy can make for your business, contact us today for your FREE 30-minute analysis. Whether you need a sales rep, VP of sales, or a sales hiring manager, we are equipped to help you find and hire the right candidate, the first time.

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