Hiring your first salesperson

Are you ready?

The clearest sign is simple: you’ve become the sales bottleneck. Remodelers Advantage lists the symptoms: leads going unworked, follow-up slipping, and work you could have won with more attention going to someone else.

You’re in good company. In national figures Contracting Business reported in 2008, homeowners were asked who sold them their HVAC system. How often the answer was the business owner: Almost half. The data is old, but owners in every trade will recognize the pattern.

Size rules of thumb help as a sanity check. In HVAC, one is 6+ techs, 2 install crews, 1,000 agreements before a full-time replacement seller pays for itself. In roofing, most sales teams run with 4 or fewer reps, so a first hire at a small size is normal. In remodeling, the real question is usually whether you can fund the ramp.

Then price the cost of not hiring. Count the leads you didn’t run last month, or ran late, and multiply by your close rate and average ticket. That’s money already on the table. The empty territory calculator does the math.

Define the seat: write down how you sell

First hires often struggle for a simple reason: the sales process lived in the owner’s head. Before you hire, write it down.

• Which leads go to the new rep. Start with leads you can afford to lose while they learn: marketed leads in your far zip codes, older rehash leads, smaller jobs. Keep referral and repeat customers until the rep has earned them.
• Your presentation. The order you do things in, how you show options (good/better/best), and how you handle price, financing and the spouse who isn’t there.
• Your price book and discount rules. What the rep can give away, and what needs your sign-off.
• Paperwork and handoff. Contract, deposit, measurements, photos, and what production needs to build the job.
• Your own numbers. Your close rate, average ticket and cancel rate over the last year. That’s the bar, and the new rep should know it.

One trap to avoid: handing the new rep only the worst leads to “prove themselves”. A good closer on bad leads looks average, and you lose them. Know how you count, too. Pro Remodeler’s verdict on close-rate definitions: No standard. Pick your formula, such as jobs signed over issued leads or over demos, and use it for yourself and every rep after.

Design the pay plan

The temptation is commission-only: no cost until they sell. For a first hire, we usually recommend a base or a draw against commission for the first 60 to 90 days, then a move to commission. Commission-only can attract great people, but a new rep with no cushion tends to discount to get deals through, and you end up with underpriced jobs. A base buys you a rep who follows your pricing while they learn your leads. Remodelers Advantage gives the same advice.

Rates vary by trade and ticket. Remodelers Advantage puts residential remodeling commission at 3-6% of sold revenue. Pro Remodeler’s older figure for home improvement sales is 6-12% of the sale. In HVAC, ServiceTitan’s target is 9% of sales. In roofing, 10% of gross is the most common plan. The spread mostly comes down to ticket size, who pays for the leads, and whether there’s a base.

Whatever the shape, the best reps look for three things: a plan they can calculate themselves, commission paid on time, and enough good leads to earn. Caps, complicated clawbacks and rules that change after the start push them away. A few rules keep everyone on the same side:

• Pay full commission only at full price. A sliding scale keeps your margin in the deal.
• Write down what happens on a cancel. Under the FTC Cooling-Off Rule, homeowners can cancel most in-home sales within 3 business days, and some cancel later. Decide whether commission is earned at signing, at install or when you get paid.
• Decide W-2 or 1099 with your accountant. In roofing, 93% of sales leaders in Leap’s 2024 survey said they had moved reps to W-2.

Sourcing: who to hire

Hire someone who already sells in the home. Kitchen-table selling is its own skill: one appointment, a careful homeowner, sometimes a spouse, a real price and a decision in the room. Siro’s recordings put the median in-home appointment at 75 minutes. Someone from a retail counter, phone sales or B2B hasn’t done that yet.

The next best fit is someone who sells in the home in another trade. A windows rep can learn HVAC; a great HVAC tech often finds selling harder to learn. If you’re tempted to promote from your crew, test the selling first. Look for consultative sellers, too. Remodelers Advantage puts it well: the strongest remodeling salespeople are consultative, not high-pressure closers.

Don’t assume the good ones are taken. Most strong reps do have jobs, and that’s where the best hires come from. They move when someone shows them a better opportunity: better leads, a fairer pay plan, an owner who treats them well. A growing company with an owner who has been closing its jobs can offer all three.

Titles differ by trade, so search for the right one: comfort advisor in HVAC, roofing sales rep, design consultant in bath and kitchen, in-home sales consultant in windows and siding, and foundation inspector in basement waterproofing.

The job ad

Strong reps vet you as carefully as you vet them. Answer their questions in the ad:

• Where the leads come from and roughly how many appointments a week.
• The pay plan, with one worked example and the assumptions behind it.
• Whether you’ll keep running some leads yourself, and which ones.
• Territory, hours, vehicle, and the training and ride-alongs you’ll give them.

Use being the first hire as a selling point: “The owner has run every appointment until now. You’re taking over a share of a proven book.” Start from a template for your trade: comfort advisor, in-home sales consultant, design consultant or roofing sales rep.

Screen on proof, not personality

The most common mistake we see with a first sales hire is hiring for personality instead of proof. You’ve likely been the best closer in the business for years, so it’s natural to look for someone who reminds you of yourself. But salespeople are good at interviews; it’s the job. The owners who get this right ask for the record first, and only then judge fit. Ask every candidate for:

1. Close rate, and out of what: issued leads, appointments run or demos, which lead sources, over what period, and whether cancels were taken out.
2. Average ticket, and what they typically sold.
3. Volume: sales per year and appointments per week.
4. Cancels: how many signed jobs fell through.
5. Pay records: commission statements or W-2s that match the story.

Then listen for detail. A real closer can tell you how many leads they ran last month, how many they sold, and why they lost the one that got away. Someone who mainly interviews well stays general: “I’m great with people.” Notice whether they talk about the homeowner’s problem or their own pitch.

The gap between reps is wide. Siro’s data has top reps running +7.4% to +11.3% above their own company’s median close rate. In kitchen and bath, Siro values closing a bottom rep’s gap to the median at about $1,290 per appointment. That’s the difference between a seat that grows your business and one that eats your marketing budget.

Level does this part before you meet anyone: we verify each rep’s close-rate history and pay history and check their references. You run the interview and make the decision.

Interview, role-play and ride-along

Two steps tell you more than any résumé, and you’re the best person to run both. Nobody knows your leads and your customers like you do.

Role-play your own toughest lead

You know your hardest objection. Play the homeowner and let the candidate work through it. Watch whether they ask questions before pitching, present options, stay calm on price, and ask for the order.

Ride-alongs, both ways

Before the offer, take your finalist on one of your appointments as an observer and talk it through on the drive back. After the hire, flip it. Remodelers Advantage suggests a new rep learn your process, shadow you on sales calls and study your won and lost jobs.

The offer and the first 90 days

Set expectations honestly, for both of you. Remodelers Advantage’s timeline for a new remodeling salesperson: first solo leads in the first couple of months, first closed jobs at 3-6 months, and full productivity at 6-12 months. Shorter-cycle work like HVAC replacement or retail roofing can move faster, but nobody walks in at your close rate.

Agree the targets for each stage (leads run, close rate, ticket, cancels) before day one, and check in every week. Expect a dip: your first hire will probably sell less than you did for a while, because they don’t have your reputation, your referrals or your instincts yet. Judge the trend over months. And try not to take leads back after the first lost deal. It tells the rep the seat isn’t really theirs.

Why first hires leave early, and how to keep them

The usual reasons: fewer leads than promised, commission paid late or short, no training on the products or price book, or rules that change after the start. Most of this is fixable in the hiring process. Show the real lead numbers, pay on time every time, and invest the first two weeks in training. Reps rarely leave a company where they’re earning well, and a rep who earns well is selling your jobs.

If you hire through Level and the rep is let go for performance within 60 days of their first day, we find you one replacement at no extra cost. How the guarantee works.

Metrics to manage

Track these every week, for you and the rep, on the same formula:

For context only, Siro’s recorded consultations show a national in-home close rate of 26.9% across 53,389 visits, where a “close” means the visit moved toward a sale. Your own history is a better bar.

Common mistakes

• Waiting until you’re exhausted, then hiring whoever can start Monday.
• Hiring the candidate who reminds you of yourself. Check the record first.
• Giving the rep only the leads nobody could close. Start them on leads you can afford to lose, not leads that were never going to buy.
• Commission-only with no ramp plan. You get someone who’s already looking for the next thing.
• Never writing the process down. The rep can’t copy what they can’t see.
• Comparing their first month to your tenth year. Compare the trend.
• Hiring a friend you’d find hard to manage. Hire someone you could coach honestly, and part with if it came to that.
• Keeping every good lead for yourself. Then the rep never gets the chance to prove themselves, and you never get off the kitchen table.

There’s more on growing a company while you still run the leads on our page for owner-operators.