How to sell a new product - Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of our readers, Gordon, who runs an auto shop and has partnered up with an equipment company to create new technology that can help auto shops across the country become more productive. And he's looking for help in selling it and wanted my advice on how to find salespeople to help him grow his business. So Gordon, congrats on the opportunity, it sounds really exciting. A couple of ideas for you. First off, you may not be strong at sales, but you might be better at marketing, and that might be a skill set you could tap into to help grow your company and get it off the ground. So by marketing, you're creating content, you might be taking out pay-per-click advertising, you could be speaking at trade shows or getting in the media, creating videos like this. You're basically creating a whole bunch of content to get people to find out about you, and then once they're calling in, it's a lot easier to sell them on whatever technology you're selling. So that might be a way you can go without having to go get a salesperson, so get your company off the ground, get those first few orders rolling in. If you're dead set on finding a salesperson, two things I would think about. First off, you want to find somebody who has industry experience, so look at somebody who's not brand new to the auto industry. You want somebody who's done it before and somebody who you get along with, right? If you're bringing somebody on new in the company, especially if it's just going to be the two of you at the start, you want somebody who you're going to be able to get along with. So to find this person, I would start looking at who's currently selling to you already. You mentioned you own an auto shop in your email, so where are you buying from right now and who are the vendors and who are the salespeople who are approaching you? Do you like any of them? Do you get along with them? Do you think they're really good at sales? Because if they're selling to you, they're probably selling to your competitors and auto shops, you know, across the country as well. So that could be a good person to start with. The second type of person I would also look at is from the trade shows. So you also mentioned in your email you go to trade shows, so look at the trade shows and see who's selling there. Those are all salespeople at trade shows. So is there anybody who resonates well with you, who you think could be a good addition to your company? Now, if you're bringing on a salesperson, you have to think about compensation. If it's just the two of you, you probably can't afford to pay a huge salary, and usually salespeople don't take commission-only type of positions at a startup company. So you might want to think about the equity side and how they're going to get compensated. And when you bring in an equity partner on there's a lot of potential issues if you don't get along down the road. So definitely make it an earn-in, so they have to reach certain milestones to earn that equity in the business. So Gordon, I hope that helps. Congrats on a new opportunity. Good luck with it. Sounds exciting. And if you liked the video, and if everybody else liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I'd also love to hear feedback if you wanna leave a comment. Those things make me want to create more of these types of videos. So please leave a comment below and stay tuned for the next episode.