The True Cost of Hiring a Sales Rep for Your Moving Company: Part 1

In Part 1 of our sales rep blog series, we examine the true cost of hiring a sales rep for your moving company.

Handling Sales Calls

If you don’t answer your phone when it rings, you can’t book that potential job. Handling sales calls effectively is one of the most important parts of running a successful moving company.

In the early days of growing the business, many owners will handle sales calls on their own, or ask a family member or friend to help out.

It can become tricky navigating both calls and jobs, and at some point most owners may reach the stage where it becomes too much to handle, and will consider hiring a sales rep to answer calls while they concentrate on running other aspects of the business.

So, what is the true cost of hiring a sales rep for your moving company?

Time Costs

Hiring a new employee can be a time-consuming process. We asked our Director of Inside Sales, Ron Evans, to break down how he spends his time each week when hiring new Oncue sales reps.

• 8-10 hours – reviewing resumes and profiles 
• 5-8 hours – interviewing potential candidates
• 3-5 hours – following up on completed interviews 
• 5-7 hours – creating and updating training content 
• 27 hours – training new hires in their first week
• 2-3 hours – ongoing coaching and development

We’ve streamlined the hiring process and iterated on it several times over the past two years and even still, a sales manager will spend up to 30 hours a week on new hire admin and 33 hours a week on training.

The True Cost of Hiring a Sales Rep

When you start the process of looking for a sales rep, you’ll need to factor in time for:

• Advertising the job (online and offline)
• Searching through resumes to find suitable candidates
• Arranging and setting up interviews
• Holding interviews
• Following up with each candidate
• Arranging next round interviews with your candidate shortlist
• Holding final interviews
• Creating a job offer with the relevant legal details and contracts
• Making the job offer and dealing with any potential negotiations

Keep in mind that every week you spend looking for the perfect employee means another week of time spent away from working on your company. That’s potentially 30+ hours each week until you find the right candidate. If you’re a moving company owner trying to simultaneously run your company and hire a new employee, you can see how quickly your work days get filled up with the tasks needed to employ a sales rep. 

How To Calculate Your Cost-Per-Hire

If you’ve been considering hiring a sales rep for your company, the first thing you’ll need to know is how much it will cost you. It can be helpful to break this down into the various financial costs (hiring, salary, commission, benefits, equipment, other).

For this example, we’ll look at the costs associated with finding and hiring a salesperson with a base salary of $40k (if you grow the team and hire someone to manage the sales reps on your behalf, you’d be looking at a salary of $70-90k plus commission per year for an experienced Sales Manager).

Salary (before commission): $40k

To get a decent number of applications from qualified sales candidates, you’ll usually need to advertise the job role and specifications online. Depending on the site you choose (LinkedIn, Monster, Glassdoor, etc.) it can cost up to several hundred dollars just to advertise for 30 days.

Advertising costs: $100 – $500

Most employers will also be responsible for covering employment taxes and benefits like health insurance and 401(k), on top of the base salary.

By using this simple formula, we can calculate that with a $40k base salary for your new sales hire, you’ll actually be paying closer to $50-56k per year with everything included.

$40k (1.25 to 1.4 times base salary) = $50-56k

Benefits: $10-16k

Your salesperson will need, at the very least, a basic computer, headset, desk, monitor, and any other equipment needed to carry out their responsibilities. 

Equipment: $1500-$2000

TOTAL: $58,500

To hire a single salesperson at a base salary of $40k, you’re looking at a total cost of up to $58,500, before you even consider the commission you’ll be paying them each month. 

The Cost of Training

You’ve found the perfect candidate, you think they’ll be a great fit for your company, and they accept the job offer. Great! Now you have to train them to make sure they understand your company, your culture, and your policies.

It can take more than 60 hours of training to get someone to the level you need them to be. And if you’re the only person running your company, that’s 60 hours you won’t be selling or working on growing your business. 

Our sales team here at Oncue answers calls for hundreds of movers every single day and they know the intricacies of each policy inside and out (however complicated those policies may be). They are professionally trained to answer customer questions and put customers at ease with any concerns they may have surrounding the move. If you’d like to find out more about using the Oncue sales team to help answer your sales calls, get in touch with us today.

What happens when you hire the wrong salesperson. Find out in Part 2 now!