Too many factors to say. What's interesting is, more often than not, management in organisations have incorrect expectations as to how quickly sales can be recognised? Why is that? If it were that easy, why would you need sales people!

Larry Brewton hahahaha So true

Dave Ask If one can find an experienced person from the same field. Returns can be immediate.

Good insight. Results should and always be collaborative expectations. "What are our goals, and how do WE get there". Establish fair "by whens" too.

We are recruiting account managers now, and our recruiter said plan revenue for NO sales in the first 90 days, just as a backup plan. The right candidate may start producing well before then, but have 90 days buffer in case. And if they haven't hit quota by end of month 6, it's not the right candidate and it's time to move on.

For folks filling a previously held position I typically expect a 3 month transition time to feel comfortable with hitting stride of converting newly mined business around the 6 month mark. This may shorten or extend based on experience and prior relationships that may be exercised. I agree though, there are many factors involved in the transition and the training process as well as coupling with the seasonality of sales in my particular area (respiratory in particular).

In part it will depend on how experienced the sales person is, along with how long they have been involved in that market. Another factor is if the product is a lower cost and/or disposable, versus high end capital equipment. But in general my experience has been at least 3 months, unless it's high end capital equipment, then it's usually closer to a 12 month cycle.

Ken Powell My first health care professional position after returning from Aspen and my freestyle ski career I was selling Commercial Reference Lab services for Upjohn Laboratory Procedures. I was based in Michigan and the lab was in King of Prussia, PA, so I was selling against both local labs and national ones (Check-Up - became National Health labs bought by Pearlman/Relon Healthcare), hospitals and others. My territory was doing approximately $5,000/month. Eleven months later it was doing $110,000/month and I earned a whopping $125 bonus. So I left, went to a small clinical diagnostic company (Roche Diagnostics - $18MM) and earned the Roche President's Achievement Award in my second year. The rest is a very long and quite interesting story where I was lucky enough to lead the transformation of the practice of medicine numerous times. I just love sales because not only is it the world's oldest profession, everything isn't bought - its sold!

Jack Gleason The question is ambiguous. Do you mean a new product or a new rep.? that rep experienced with the product or the marketplace?
Regardless, it can take a few weeks up to a yeR for a new rep to become effective with a new product in an unfamiliar marketplace.

Emma Xie Experience is very importan of sales. But if you have sales expericen before, I think it would be easy to change other position. I am a sales too.

Ken Powell Jack - when you know the market, product, features and benefits you have a great advantage (head start). I just had lab experience and great sales ability that I learned selling soap in 1960;)

Ibrahim Elalfy 6 months

Ibrahim Elalfy 6months

Dan Golka I believe that a salesperson that is experienced in the field has a distinct advantage. The results should start to come in after 90 days.

Anthony Wunsh Having hired thousands of sales people for many companies I have started, this is a loaded question without all the variables to consider. Things like sales cycle, how long does it take to sell the product or service. If it is a six month sales cycle, then it may take two years to get really going. If it is a one call close item, based on knocking on doors, it could be two weeks after proper training on the product and sales process. Best possible answer is ask your new employer what their expectation is and past experience has shown and set a goal to better that.

Damodaran Narasimhulu If the product is well accepted in the market and the sales person is smart I don't think it will take more than 3 months to get the revenue

6-12 months...all depends on what the sales pipeline looks like when a person is transitioned into an existing territory. If no pipeline or a bare bones pipeline exists, 12-24 months. Have to build momentum first, then work on consistency.

This discussion is raising some excellent points to consider. Since the focus of your question is "substantial revenue", I agree with Anthony that the sales cycle is a critical variable. To illustrate this, let's create an unrealistically optimistic example. The new salesperson arrives on their start date of January 1st already
prepared with a call list of ideal prospects. They are selling Acme-Omega1, your software implementation that will increase inventory turn by 300%, improve your gross margins by 100% and provide improved cash flow that will explode your client's growth. They meet with a CEO and CFO the next day and get a signed deal for $8M. Acme-Omega1 takes only 7 months to implement and the client will pay in full at the end of that period. In this hopelessly ideal scenario, the revenue will not happen for at least 7 months because it is bound to the sales cycle.

6 months.

Anthony is correct. Most important is the sales cycle for the product. I would add that if it's a pioneering sale (eg. new product in a new category that your company is the first to address) you can expect the sales cycle to be substantial.

Depends on what you are selling. We have some employees that have significant revenue in one month but most take at least a year.

Daniel Skalko There are too many variables

I worked in a drug delivery (design from scratch, go through FDA approval, then launch and manufacture and frankly it took an average of a year just to get in the door at these large Pharma companies and get to the right people in R&D and then if I was lucky another year to bid on a project and that's IF the company followed a design from scratch model vs. buy off the shelf IP. So really interesting challenge.

Having recently polled as many (primarily US focused, emergency med and critical care, mostly disposables) companies as I could at the Arab Health conference a few weeks back, seems the mean was near 18 months, with a handful saying 36 to 60 months as their own outliers (typically new disruptive/innovative products). It's rough out there...