By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca
Dictionary.com, defines a paraprofessional as “a person trained to assist a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or other professional, but not licensed to practice in the profession.” One example would be a paramedic “a person who is trained to assist a physician or to give first aid or other health care in the absence of a physician, often as part of a police, rescue, or firefighting squad.” The Paralegal Society of Ontario adds “Usually paralegals have taken a prescribed series of courses in law and legal processes, which is much less demanding than those required for a licensed attorney.”
In certain instances one can turn to a paralegal to get the job done without the price tag of hiring a lawyer, simple filings, traffic court are a couple of examples. But I don’t think that I am that different when I say that when it comes to “serious stuff”, we tend to shell out for the lawyer, or whatever the “profession” called for.
Seems some sales organizations are taking a page from other paraprofessional playbook, some effectively, others, maybe not. Those in the effective camp are using capable people to execute specific tasks that help in the revenue process, allowing their “full blown” reps to focus on tasks that require their training, background and experience. In organizations with a large and blended team, inside, outside, pre-sale, post-sales, responsibilities, these parasales people have an opportunity to learn and evolve, gain needed experience and expertise while still contributing to the outcome.
Having a career path for people not only allows one to service client better with the right assets, but also allow the sales team to develop and succeed in adopting and executing the company’s sales process. I have worked with a number of sales organizations that have brought people in as say sales admins, then they move to inside sales, either in a support, or some form of outbound calling, then to field sales, all the way up to enterprise or national account status. This has worked well in developing and maintaining the right talent, and the ability to identify skills in individuals who take a related path, such as field management, and complementary functions such as marketing.
The flip side of this movement is not so good, where organizations either by intent or ignorance, choose to trust their entire revenue generation to people who can at best be described as parasales reps. With all due deference to paraprofessionals on all fields, in this particular case I specifically mean sales people who are not qualified to or ready to carry the responsibility for the company’s revenue and ultimate success. I have seen organizations who will hire a couple of “not ready for prime time” sales reps, because they can get two for the price of one fully qualified and proven sales rep. All too often the two end up producing less than the qualified rep could.
Other times it is the parasales reps themselves who pass themselves off as fully qualified reps. A regular lament I get from managers is that the best presentation a rep had was the one they did for the job. This highlights the need for a more planned and patient hiring approach. Many sales managers freak out if the territory is vacant for a day, and will “settle” for a “parabody”, not taking into account the impact on customer satisfaction, revenues, both in terms of lost deals and lost or unrecognised opportunities; there is something to be said for hire slow fire fast, it would certainly help reduce the number of parasales reps. A good corporate hiring plan would also eliminate the “para-sales-manager”, you know the ones who were better politicians than sellers, or who were good reps and got promoted to failure.
As in the other professions, para is good, in the right place, the right time, for the right reasons.