Making this mistake cost me over £100,000...

This is one of the costliest mistakes I ever made when growing our KBB Business…and it’s not even close.

When scaling your company, one of the key hires you have to make is a sales designer.

Once you find a good one your mind starts to run with the possibilities that you won’t have to be the one seeing every client. You could be sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere while the sales roll in….

We can all dream.

Anyway, the good ones are a dime a dozen and they often command a hefty wage. As they should if they’re good.

How do you know if they’re good though?

Anyone can interview well, even mediocre salespeople (that is their job after all).

We developed a simple framework to judge whether a sales designer was going to make it or fall by the wayside.

And the best part?

We set it up so this decision was reached prior to the end of their probation period.

The first thing you need to do is write down your proposed payment package.

Let’s say in this example my designer is going to earn £30,000 p.a. gross plus a commission of 5% of the net sale on the entire kitchen.

Next you need to know your gross margin on a kitchen sale – let’s say its 40%.

We take these two numbers to calculate how much in sales this person needs to do to break even on their costs.

In this example it’s about £85,000.

Now we need to pro-rate this by our probation period. Let’s say it’s 3 months.

This fictional staff member needs to sell £21,250 worth of goods in the first 3 months of their employment to break even on their commission.

It hasn’t cost you anything to have them (other than time in training etc) and you can see if they are on the right trajectory to becoming a star.

Simple, not easy.

We cover TONS of frameworks and learnings like this inside the KBB Collective – our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom group coaching programme.

If you liked this tip and want to find out more, click the link below and let’s schedule a chat.

P.S. If you found this newsletter helpful or insightful please forward it on to others in the KBB industry. We’re out here doing God’s work.