To Make or To Buy - That is The Question.

Some companies have the luxury of developing training programs and strong internal career paths for young up starts that they bring onto their sales team. But in this day in age there are many companies, particularly small and medium businesses, that have a very difficult time creating an environment for growth that manages the development of their people. In fact, all companies today are squeezed on margins and have a hard time creating enough infrastructure to provide full time sales training programs, mentoring, and other types of developmental activities for their sales people.

If your company is thinking about making or buying, one of the key considerations as to whether or not you buy the best or grow from within really comes down to resources. If you are a small or medium company, perform an assessment of what it is you can do to help grow your sales people. Write down a list of all the activities that ideally you'd be able to perform as a sales manager to mentor and grow new hires into your company. When you come up with that list, figure out whether or not those tasks are things that you can perform internally. If you can’t perform internally, then the next question is, is there a way to outsource these activities to make sure that they are getting done by somebody? Often times a sales consulting firm can help you with some of those activities that are not ongoing but require specific specialist inputs from time to time.

Sometimes it's easier to buy in the best talent by bringing outsides sales consultants, but other times it makes a lot of sense to just go ahead and hire a sales resource that can help you from the outside. If your company is going through a make or buy decision as to whether or not to grow from within or to hire the best, consider using a recruiting firm that can help you get the best people. Those people require less training and less time to develop in order to get to your overall sales growth objectives. This is why it's so critical to be clear with yourself as to what you are capable of doing as it comes to hiring people.

If your company has a well developed sales infrastructure, training programs, incentive motivation schemes, mentoring, coaching, and those kinds of capabilities, then you could very well go it alone and hire people of less experience hoping to bring them along, but if you are like most companies who are struggling to get all of these tasks done while continuing to focus on the day to day business, it's better for you to either bring in a outside sales consultant or hire a recruiter that can help you go find the talent you need.
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