This month you are going to learn three valuable resources, plus several personal strategies and techniques to assist you in properly hiring virtual and/or in-house employees. Before we jump into those, let me back up and make one thing clear…
Your number one goal as an online entrepreneur is to generate a sale and a profitable sales process.

That occurs when you:

a) Locate or create an in demand product or service of value,
b) then provide it to a niche market who wants and needs that product or service,
c) attain the proper targeted traffic to your site,
d) convert a decent percentage of your targeted visitors into buyers,
e) priced at a fair market value the target market is willing and able to invest,
f) with a fair profit margin remaining for you as the entrepreneur.

This Out-Task & Grow Rich article series has shared numerous ways to assist you in accomplishing this goal through out-tasking so you won’t have to do it all yourself, and if this is done effectively it will dramatically shorten that journey to profitability. No magic formula exists that will tell you when the right time is to hire someone full or part time. That would be dependent upon your business plan, comfort level, and level of profitability. Only you will know when the time is right for you to bring on an employee.

One of the main questions asked frequently is, “Who should I hire first?” The answer to that is simple. Once your sales process is in place and your business reaches steady profitability, it is highly recommended that you hire people to handle your customer support and from there move into staff that can assist you with execution of your daily revenue producing tasks (video, html, php, webmaster, programmer, copywriter).

Three resources that can greatly assist you in knowing when the time is or isn’t right for you to add new people to your team and how to go about hiring and dealing with superstars are the books:

“The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies” by Chet Holmes

“Top Grading: How Leading Companies Win By Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping The Best People” byBradford D. Smart, Ph.D.

“Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $ 100 Million in No Time Flat” by Michael Masterson

All of those books are highly acclaimed and recommended not only for tremendous business growth strategies but they get into how to hire stars and deal effectively with employees. When Mike wanted to hire a top sales person over a year ago, he and I used the ad laid out in Chet Holmes’ book almost word for word and followed his system to the letter. Bottom line, it saved us an amazing amount of time and it weeded out the low performers and we noticed very quickly who the top performers were.

Last month that top performer we hired by following Chet’s system, and his team that he hired using the same process, was responsible for over $ 100,000 in profit. Here is Chet’s ad as seen on page 84 of “The Ultimate Sales Machine” that we barely modified to bring in our top performer:

Superstars Only $ 50K to $ 300K
Don’t even call unless you are an overachiever and can prove it. Come build an empire within our fine, progressive company. We are in the XYZ industry, but we don’t hire backgrounds. We hire top producers. If you’re average, you can earn $ 50K with us. If you are a star, you can earn $ 300K plus. Young or old, if you have the stuff, we’ll know. Contact us at…”

Chet continues on until page 101 describing the follow up strategies in hiring a superstar sales person. As a quick summary, of pages 86 and 87, he explains how to separate the weak callers from the superstars within 60 seconds. Here’s how:

When they call, your whole purpose is to put the onus on them by asking them to tell you why you should interview them. No matter what they say, you tell them you’re not really hearing it; you’re not hearing a top performer.

To Mike and my surprise, many of the callers would say, “Really? Ok!” and hang up…which is EXACTLY what they would do to any prospect that threw them an objection. After numerous calls from people wanting the position we got a person who just wouldn’t accept the fact that he wasn’t the superstar we were searching for no matter how many times we told him we weren’t hearing it.

He handled it in a very professional manner and impressed us with his sales ability in overcoming that ego test objection.

Until you experience a process like this you can hardly grasp the power of it, yet once you do it once you will be forever grateful for the time you would have otherwise wasted in a long drawn out hiring process. One word for it: brilliant! There is much more to that particular system and as mentioned I would recommend getting this book and not only reading it, but keeping it as a valuable resource and reference tool. Shoot, Mike and I even used the books advice during the face-to-face interviews as it also has many great questions to ask potential superstars who make it past the phone stage for a face to face interview.

Obviously the above example shared our success in locating a sales superstar. So how about an ad for a local “normal” superstar worker like a copywriter or a programmer? That’s where the book “Ready, Fire, Aim” can assist you, since it even shares an example ad for a copywriter in Chapter 21.

“Top Grading” is another book that can become an invaluable tool simply for the forms it provides such as: interview guides (with questions to ask), career history, reference checks, assessment scorecards, interviewer feedback, and more.
It also goes into depth about steps and strategies you will want to know in order to avoid any legal problems in the hiring, managing and firing of employees.

Another popular question that is asked is, “Where do you find most of your people?”
We simply ask our friends and colleagues who they know that is good at XYZ task (whichever position we are searching for). From our own network of referrals and friends is where we have gained most of our team. Seminars and industry events are another great place to find talent. Mike and I first met at a seminar, and then again at another seminar a couple months later. That’s where our friendship and business relationship began.

Action Step #1: Get your hands on the three books mentioned in this article and read them immediately. (Re-read or review them if you already have them.)

Action Step #2: Always remember your number one goal as an online marketer. Is your profitable sales process in place yet? If not, what must happen to get it in place? If it is, who can you bring on board to maximize those profits?

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By Tom Beal
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This article first appeared in the December 2008 issue of the MarketingDotCom newsletter. You can get a free copy of the latest issue for the price of shipping at http://the7figuresecrets.com

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