This month, Success spoke with Niall Kelly, CEO of Salesjobs.ie. Salesjobs.ie was launched as Ireland's only online jobs board solely dedicated to Irish sales professionals. 'Sales' is not just another category or add-on, Salesjobs.ie is highly focused and by putting all their emphasis on the critical sales role, they are widely regarded as the industry leader.
Niall, tell me what made you set up SalesJobs.ie?
I have been in IT Sales for 20 years and IT Recruitment for the last 12 years with itpeople.ie. I had been thinking hard on finding a business that won't always need just my own skills and experience to run it. When you hit 40, you start to look for easier ways of making more money than the usual hard "week in week out" graft.
Also, on-line recruitment is one of the big success stories on the net. I did some research and niche job sites are proving very successful in the USA and I saw that sales hadn't been covered here. It’s an area of life/business that has always been close to my heart.
Tell me about your customers, who are they? - SME's who can't afford/won't pay 4-5K agency fees to find sales people and can advertise their sales job for €99 for a month.
- Medium to large corporate companies who are always looking for sales people such as Irish Life, Apple, Canon, Cornmarket, conduit, Cara, and they would typically take out annual membership for €495-995 and post 5-10 jobs.
- Finally, we have most of the "smarter" sales recruiters/agencies such as Richmond, BMS, Net nation, Direct Personnel, MRS, Sales Placements, Sales People, school of sales, Pinnacle, etc who would take out annual memberships ranging from €495-1995 per year.
What other resources do you provide on the site besides sales jobs?
In addition to providing over 400 sales jobs at any one time, we cater for the sales professional directly, by providing free value added services such as; - Lists of the latest sales books, sales trainers, sales movies, sales gadgets, sales software
- Sales industry news, 100+ articles on the sales process, sales career advice, interview skills, CV tips, salary survey's.
- Job alerts by email.
- Monthly newsletter.
- 100+ web links and listing of all sales events and training courses coming up in Ireland.
Why would a company looking for sales people turn to you instead of a normal recruiter?
1st reason is price. We are a lot more cost effective than an agency but the company has to do the screening of candidates themselves. More often they will use us as an extra resource along with a normal recruiter as well as perhaps some newspaper advertising. When you’re fishing for good sales people, you need to spread your net as far and wide as possible. We act as an extra inexpensive resource.
Apart from price, how do your customers put a value on the service that you provide?
That's a hard one as saving money is where we are most valuable. I suppose ease of use could be one, a company can have their advert up on the site in less than 5 minutes, and of course we are a small company so it’s all about the personal touch. Also, as its an on-line business, everything is so much more efficient. They can monitor how many people looked at the job, edit the job anytime, include their logo, etc.
How many positions would you typically fill in a month?
We would usually have between 300 - 450 new sales jobs advertised on-line per month. We would get between 100-150 applications going through every week to these jobs.
How many sales people are registered on the site?
We currently have over 3000+ sales professional's registered and growing by about 50 per week. Based on research in the UK, we estimate that there is approx 30,000 people in sales in Ireland and 5% or 1500 of those would be actively looking for a job each month.
What piece of sales advice, which you have learnt at the coal face, would you like to pass on to other Business Owners?
Make sure you structure your time correctly to focus solely on business development as it’s too easy to get distracted on general running of a new company. Allocate a set time during the day to do your calls, follow up's etc. Then you can doss away dealing with IT, accounts, marketing, etc. I'm currently reading a book called "10 secrets for time management for sales people" by David Kahle which is excellent.
Finally, this newsletter is called Success, what is your definition of success?
Success in life is a many varied thing, but if its just related to Salesjobs.ie, then I suppose if it becomes the 1st and last place companies and people go to when looking for a job in sales, I will have succeeded in my objective.
This article was written by Peter Lawless, founder of 3R Sales and Marketing - www.3r.ie. For previous articles or interviews like this, visit 3R's Resources. Alternatively, subscribe to Success our free monthly Information Bulletin with sales and marketing articles.
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