Corporate Events Sales Person - ie sport, golf

[einsign]

We need some help creating a job position that does not exist yet in our company. Any comments or recommendations welcomed!

We are a family business (26 people) manufacturing and engineering, but also a very high skillset of graphic and creative design, printing directly onto fabrics, flags, outdoor signs and banners etc. For example our textile printing setup is one of the only in the UK that can produce such a high level of quality and resolution.

I don’t even know what the title of the job should be called or even exists?!

Other than people in the Corporate Events World, ie branded logos and displays that you would see at sporting events I am not sure where to look?

Appreciate any help, or maybe you know someone who fits the bill?

Thanks

[BE57 TOY]

Sorry, what's the job description?

[burriana]

Have you tried LinkedIn James?

Or, Facebook pages of existing Corporate Events companies and asking them where best to find staff?

Stay away from Recruitment Cos if you can. Cost a fortune and hard to find a good one.

al

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

I've been (well, was until a few years ago) in the print business for 25 years. During that time, I was in repro, then management and senior management which included having to recruit - then I managed sales for a bit, and in one hiatus went to work for a recruitment company specialising in print recruitment.

I was mostly 'ink on paper', but as companies had to adapt, I've become conversant in out-sourcing and selling print on any substrate, promotional items, complete solutions for clients etc.

In printing, when recruiting sales people especially lately, no-one will recruit a print sales person without them bringing accounts with them. But because of the recession and the bloodbath of companies closing, there is a huge surplus of talented salespeople without jobs, because they've been out of work long enough that they now don't have customers and accounts to bring with them. Hence, they cannot get a sales job, no mater how good they are - MD's just don't want to know unless they've got half a million pound's worth of T/O to bring with them.

So, I would suggest that you'll have no problem finding a decent salesperson and giving someone a break - there are loads of good people out there dying for a position like this. I know guys who used to earn six figures in commission in print sales, who through no fault of their own are driving vans and flipping burgers to feed their family.

I suggest your first ports of call, where I used to recruit mostly from, are the 'Print Week' website and the print-specialist jobs site, Ozzle.

If you don't get some great candidates from there, I would be very surprised.

http://jobs.printweek.com/

www.ozzle.co.uk

Obviously they both cost money to advertise on, but the Print Week team are especially good, because one of their team will help you write and draft your advert, and place it in the correct section, in order to get the best results and response from relevent candidates for your niche.

With regard to remuneration, yes there's no point in offering a huge basic, because it will be money down the pan, at least for the first 6 months to a year. However, in my experience it's also pointless offering a crap basic, no matter how attractive the commission - because as the old adage goes, pay peanuts, get monkeys...some of my clients in recruitment insisted on offering basics of around 10 or 15 grand, with one or two insisting on 'commission only' positions.

Inevitably, I couldn't supply anyone decent for that money, an if I did, they were often not that great (although I have had one or two notable exceptions).

I would suggest offering a basic of around high teens / early 20's, with a sensible commission package, and one or two nice toys like a laptop, or at least a mobile phone, and obviously either a car, or more usually mileage allowance. This currently stands at around 45p a mile in most places.

Drop me a PM if I can help you further - depending upon where you are in the country, I could also put feelers out amongst my friends still in the trade.

HTH.

[einsign]

burriana said:

Have you tried LinkedIn?

Or, Facebook pages of existing Corporate Events companies and asking them where best to find staff?

Stay away from Recruitment Cos if you can. Cost a fortune and hard to find a good one.

al

Thanks Al, I was concerned about directly approaching some of my own linked in clients encase they thought I was trying to poach their staff. However maybe directly advertising on Linked In might work?

At the moment we don't yet know what the "job description" should be exactly, we hope to pin this down through such discussions over the next month or so. We have huge skill set but lack a really good sales person to exploit this area for us!

[einsign]

Ray Luxury-Yacht said:

I've been (well, was until a few years ago) in the print business for 25 years. During that time, I was in repro, then management and senior management which included having to recruit - then I managed sales for a bit, and in one hiatus went to work for a recruitment company specialising in print recruitment.

I was mostly 'ink on paper', but as companies had to adapt, I've become conversant in out-sourcing and selling print on any substrate, promotional items, complete solutions for clients etc.

In printing, when recruiting sales people especially lately, no-one will recruit a print sales person without them bringing accounts with them. But because of the recession and the bloodbath of companies closing, there is a huge surplus of talented salespeople without jobs, because they've been out of work long enough that they now don't have customers and accounts to bring with them. Hence, they cannot get a sales job, no mater how good they are - MD's just don't want to know unless they've got half a million pound's worth of T/O to bring with them.

So, I would suggest that you'll have no problem finding a decent salesperson and giving someone a break - there are loads of good people out there dying for a position like this. I know guys who used to earn six figures in commission in print sales, who through no fault of their own are driving vans and flipping burgers to feed their family.

I suggest your first ports of call, where I used to recruit mostly from, are the 'Print Week' website and the print-specialist jobs site, Ozzle.

If you don't get some great candidates from there, I would be very surprised.

http://jobs.printweek.com/

www.ozzle.co.uk

Obviously they both cost money to advertise on, but the Print Week team are especially good, because one of their team will help you write and draft your advert, and place it in the correct section, in order to get the best results and response from relevent candidates for your niche.

With regard to remuneration, yes there's no point in offering a huge basic, because it will be money down the pan, at least for the first 6 months to a year. However, in my experience it's also pointless offering a crap basic, no matter how attractive the commission - because as the old adage goes, pay peanuts, get monkeys...some of my clients in recruitment insisted on offering basics of around 10 or 15 grand, with one or two insisting on 'commission only' positions.

Inevitably, I couldn't supply anyone decent for that money, an if I did, they were often not that great (although I have had one or two notable exceptions).

I would suggest offering a basic of around high teens / early 20's, with a sensible commission package, and one or two nice toys like a laptop, or at least a mobile phone, and obviously either a car, or more usually mileage allowance. This currently stands at around 45p a mile in most places.

Drop me a PM if I can help you further - depending upon where you are in the country, I could also put feelers out amongst my friends still in the trade.

HTH.

Thank you, some great advice and all very relevant to what we are trying to achieve. As much as it would be lovely for someone to bring work to the table I am also willing to give the right person a shot with us. We already have some very high end clients that I feel we could do much better with that would passed to them to directly manage.

YHM.

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

einsign said:

Thank you, some great advice and all very relevant to what we are trying to achieve. As much as it would be lovely for someone to bring work to the table I am also willing to give the right person a shot with us. We already have some very high end clients that I feel we could do much better with that would passed to them to directly manage.

YHM.

No worries, have mailed back

[einsign]

Thanks for the help RLY, all great advice.

One of the start/search points could possibly be people that have historically been involved in "Print Facilities Management" with experience in dealing with Blue Chip companies, offering a bit of a one stop shop to larger organisations.