Hire Estimators Who Have Social Media Experience

If you are look­ing to hire a sales­per­son (esti­ma­tor) for your home improve­ment busi­ness, may I sug­gest that you strong­ly con­sid­er this pre­req­ui­site: Make sure the prospec­tive esti­ma­tor has some expe­ri­ence with social media and is not afraid to do a lit­tle bit of social media work when he/​she comes to work for you. Over the years I have worked with many qual­i­ty paint­ing com­pa­nies around the U.S. and have had the priv­i­lege to inter­view poten­tial sales­peo­ple for some of them. I have also inter­act­ed with many esti­ma­tors who were hired by my clients. In most cas­es, the esti­ma­tors are not very tech savvy or do not have much social media expe­ri­ence. Many of these folks also did not seem to have the desire to learn and embrace some of the lat­est inno­va­tions in tech­nol­o­gy and online social media.

Why Is It Impor­tant for a Sales­per­son to Embrace Social Media?

It is real­ly quite sim­ple. If you can hire a sales­per­son who has a good under­stand­ing of social media, whether it be Face­book, Snapchat, Insta­gram, LinkedIn, or Twit­ter, chances are that he or she can put that knowl­edge to work for you. They should be able to help build your com­pa­ny’s’ brand and sell more work over time. Social media done right is real­ly not very dif­fer­ent from mar­ket­ing with tra­di­tion­al forms of social events: tradeshows, net­work­ing events, mix­ers and so forth. Social media is also a way to edu­cate one’s audi­ence and build a rep­u­ta­tion of trust with con­sumers. If a sales­per­son can do this on their own and/​or assist the mar­ket­ing depart­ment, you’ll def­i­nite­ly see results. There’s not much more to add at this time. I just want­ed to put a bug in your ear about adding social media expe­ri­ence as a ​“nice to have” when look­ing for sales­peo­ple. Obvi­ous­ly, you can pro­vide train­ing if some­one does not know all that much about online mar­ket­ing or social media out­lets, but it sure does­n’t hurt to find some­one who already has that form of edu­ca­tion under their belt. It might even be far more impor­tant than a col­lege degree!