My Coworker is Football-Obsessed

Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.

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Dear Bev,

We are having an internal debate over whether to hire a full-time sales professional. I come from the financial technology industry, and we always used business development reps (BDRs, sometimes called sales development reps or SDRs) to work with our senior salespeople. Here the advisors don’t believe it is either necessary or relevant to their work. They say high-net-worth investors don’t enjoy being pushed or sold, and that it is a softer sell.

My last BDR was a very talented woman who had a great personality and was not pushy. But she was determined and dogged. She kept following up with potential prospects until we determined if they were a fit for us. I would like to hire her here and test out my hypothesis that a talented person could be a good lead for us into many opportunities.

It has become a very contentious discussion. I respect the concern that she would call and bug clients or valued third parties of the firm. My thought was to give her a list we have created here over the last few years of people who formerly expressed interest but never followed through. They are sitting in the CRM in essentially a dead folder. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t – I’m not attached to the outcome and this former colleague of mine is currently home with small children. She doesn’t need the work, but she’d be willing to give it a try with me and see how it goes.

How do I get my partners to see the risk here is low?

T.H.