In today’s economic climate it is hard to find talent, however, MSPs are reporting that it is even harder to find talented sales people. Although sales positions have been around for hundreds of years, the job has not stayed the same and has become more complex with the fast paced society we live in. We meet with Ted Hulsy who shares his insights on sales recruiting, and how recruiting is a lot like building a sales engine in your business. It’s something you have to be doing 24/7/365 days a year, you have to always be recruiting.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Nation Nation back with Ted Hulsey out of the San Francisco area. Happy New Year.
Ted Hulsy
Happy New Year. Harry, how are you?
Harry Brelsford
Not good. I’m enjoying the sun and the fun in Austin, Texas. So for me, is you? Well, no, it was a wise move after 32 years in Seattle. How are things out there? You getting some good weather?
Ted Hulsy
Yeah, I mean, California is great. You know, we’re still bobbing and weaving through lockdowns and all that sort of thing. But, you know, we’re hopeful for the new year. Let’s put it that way.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Well, the topic you brought to the table is really interesting. I my morning walk, I was talking with a lead generation service, a friend of mine talk for about a half hour and he said, I’m really hard to find talent really hard to find sales people. And that’s actually helped his business. In lead gen. So you brought to the table, the hunt for talent from an MSP perspective, what’s, what’s up?
Ted Hulsy
Yeah, I think just all the MSPs I’m talking to everybody struggling with finding people. And, um, you know, I think most MSPs, over the years get really good at finding technical talent, I think it’s always been a struggle to find, say, sales and marketing talent, because it’s kind of outside their wheelhouse. But it’s only gotten harder, I would say in the past 12 18 months. And it’s really reaching a crescendo here a little bit. So people are desperate to get, you know, sales, sales type talent on on staff. And it’s just really hard. And, you know, recruiting is a lot like building a sales engine in your business. It’s something you got to be doing 24/7 365, you got to always be recruiting. But this is an area that I think is just stretching people’s capabilities and resources a bit because the talent is scarce. There’s weird things in the labor labor market. And I think every MSP business owner that wants to grow and knows they need to bring people on to complement the sales talents of the leadership team.
Harry Brelsford
wonder are you seeing this, in this used to frustrate the heck out of me in the channel in general, I called it musical chairs you had in this is more on the vendor side, but you had someone sitting in the chair over here. And then about one year to 18 months later, they’re sitting in a chair for another vendor in the in the channel, you know, the 18 month hops, and it used to frustrate me, just that, about retention at SMB Nation, we did pride ourselves on pretty good employee retention. Here’s my question, specific to the MSPs. Are you seeing hopping from MSP to MSP? Or are you seeing people exit the MSP business sales people going to another industry? And I don’t know, I’m just asking,
Ted Hulsy
I think I think the I think the biggest challenge is getting people just on board. I mean, I think that the skill set you need to success excel in selling in an MSP environment, means you’re MSPs are kind of competing with software companies, you know, so you’re, it’s the same sort of skill set, but you have like these larger companies that are that that are really scooping up a lot of this talent. So I think the big challenge is finding very talented people who are earlier in their career. And they want they believe that they’re going to make a bigger impact in a smaller organization. So they want to make a big impact. But you’ve got to give them a career path. And I think that’s the part of the answer is that people are it’s not about the money. It’s not about the base and the Commission program, and the comp plan. It’s about those things. Plus, what is the career path? What’s the career path? What’s the training and development program? How am I going to grow? Where am I going to be in three or five years, and a lot of MSP business owners need to crisp up that part of the conversation for sure. Yeah.
Harry Brelsford
Well, I’ll tell you what, well, we’ll check in with you next quarter. And we’ll see what Lord only knows what’s news.
Ted Hulsy
All right. All right. Let’s get stay folks that are catching up, Harry, take care.
