Insights — Sales Strategy — 3 min read
Sales Consultant vs Hiring a Salesperson: Which Does Your Business Need?
The decision between hiring a new salesperson and engaging a consultant depends on one question: is your problem a lack of capacity or a lack of capability? Adding more people to a broken process only creates more overhead.
Choosing between a sales consultant and a new hire depends on whether your problem is capacity or capability. If you have a working process and just need more calls, hire a salesperson. If you have a busy team but flat revenue, or no clear route to market, a consultant is the lower-risk investment to fix the foundation first.
Hiring a salesperson is a long-term commitment to overhead; hiring a consultant is a short-to-medium-term investment in infrastructure. Getting the order wrong can be expensive.
When to hire a salesperson
A new salesperson is the right choice when your sales process is already proven. If you know that 100 calls lead to 10 meetings and 2 sales, and your current team is simply at maximum capacity, you need another pair of hands.
- You have a clear, documented sales process that a new person can follow.
- You have more incoming leads than you can handle.
- Your existing sales team is hitting their targets consistently.
- You have the management capacity to train and monitor a new hire.
When to hire a sales consultant
A consultant is the right choice when the system itself is the bottleneck. If you hire a salesperson into a business with no clear strategy, they will likely spend six months 'getting up to speed' before leaving because they haven't closed anything.
- You aren't sure why deals are being lost.
- The founder is the only person who can sell the product.
- You've hired salespeople before who 'didn't work out'—this is often a sign of a process problem, not a people problem.
- You need senior Sales Director capability but cannot justify a £90k+ salary.
A third option: The Fractional Sales Director
For many SMEs, the best path is not either/or, but a sequence. A Fractional Sales Director can build the strategy and recruitment process first, ensuring that when you do hire that new salesperson, they are stepping into a role designed for success.
This model gives you the leadership to manage the new hire without the cost of a full-time executive. It bridges the gap between 'doing it yourself' and 'hiring a professional sales team'.
Summary: The litmus test
If you stopped doing all sales activity tomorrow, would you know exactly what to tell a new person to do to get it started again? If the answer is no, hire a consultant. If the answer is yes, hire a salesperson.
Think your sales operation could be performing better?
A Sales Growth Assessment finds where revenue is being lost before anything gets changed.
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