In this short Ask Evan episode, host Evan Carmichael answers a viewer’s question about how to grow an online business that relies on commission‑only salespeople. He explains that the first priority is to prove the model works—either by the founder selling personally or by hiring a first rep with a base salary/draw to demonstrate revenue generation. Once a proof‑of‑concept is established, he advises creating a detailed profile of the ideal salesperson (age, gender, affiliations, etc.) and then targeting the places where those people gather. He recommends encouraging existing reps to refer friends, family, and colleagues, turning the current team into a recruitment engine. Finally, he stresses the importance of reducing risk for new reps by supplying marketing support and qualified leads, especially during the early months, so that the salesforce can focus on selling rather than prospecting. The video concludes with a call to like, comment, and stay tuned for future episodes.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Richard, who's trying to build an online business with commission-only salespeople. He is trying to go from 1 to 10 people right now and roll out across North America, hoping to have 500 to 1,000 commission-only salespeople working for him, and he's wondering my advice on how to build up this organization. So Richard, a couple things for you. First off, it can be hard to build a commission-only salesperson type of model when you're first starting out. That's kind of the dream for every entrepreneur because there's no cost to you going out. You're only paying when you're making money. But it's hard for salespeople to want to come on because there's no track record of success. So the best way that you can build it up is to start by showing that, hey, this works and it can generate sales and people can make an income from selling your product or service. That first person might be you out there hitting the pavement so you can demonstrate that it works, or you might have to go and get your first salesperson and pay a base salary or base draw to make sure that they're able to support themselves while they kind of build up that process. There's going to be a lot of mistakes that you guys will make together as you first start building this up, so you want to make sure you can prove the case with one person, and that first person might not only be commission-only salesperson. So something to think about. Once you feel the build beyond that first person and you can show that, hey, this works, I would start building a profile of what a typical salesperson for you would look like. So think about the age range, think about male, female, think about what groups and clubs they would belong to, all those types of things that would kind of create a target profile for an ideal salesperson for you, and then start hanging out where they're hanging out. Start marketing to them, start showing them about the opportunity, and the more you can connect with those people, the greater the chances are that you'll be able to attract some of them to become your salespeople. If you want to build an organization that large, you know, if you're talking 500,000 salespeople, I'd also look at ways to encourage people who do join to refer their friends, family, colleagues to want to join as well. A great way to find new employees for a business is look at your existing employee base and see if they know anybody who might be able to help out. If the salespeople have done a good job and they've been able to generate sales, then it's going to be easy for them to convince their friends to want to join as well, provided they fit the right demographic. The last thing I would think about is also try to provide marketing support for them. So don't just expect them to go out and pick up a phone book and start reaching out to people. See as much as possible if you can provide some marketing support. So if you have your website, if you're doing any advertising, think about ways that you can help them generate leads to make it easy for them, especially in the first few months when they might be excited but it's hard to generate those first initial leads before the momentum starts building in. Think about ways you might be able to support them. If they can see that, then it's going to be a lot easier for you to be able to sign people up to want to join your organization because the risk has been dropped a little bit because you're providing leads for them. So Richard, I hope that helps. Kind of a lot of information in a couple of minutes. If you guys like this video, please give it a thumbs up below. I'd also love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you want to leave a comment under the video, and stay tuned for the next episode.
