Hiring your first salesperson?

There comes a time in most businesses in which you need to hire your first salesperson.

Hiring good sales people is hard at the best of times and for a start up or early stage venture, the odds are even worse. Why? Good sales people are few and far between and the majority don’t want to work for a small start up venture for a host of reasons. Perceived CV risk, remuneration, employee benefits, increased accountability, job security and general uncertainty means the ever condensing pool of limited sales talent all but evaporated for the start up market. Despite the global proliferation of entrepreneurialism, the supply of genuinely talented and quality sales professionals is appalling. The sales profession is littered with underwhelming and unqualified C Graders. Finding and securing the services of a good one is possible but increasingly difficult for start ups.

For a start up or early stage venture, it’s your most critical hire and you can’t afford to get it wrong. 

For most, if not all startups, it’s the Founder that is responsible for new revenue, particularly while the product is still striving for some semblance of market fit. Many founders are not suited to business development and rarely have the skills and experience to manage a good salesperson. This present a challenge and can be the recipe for high attrition. However, to scale, most small ventures need to take the plunge and engage someone to accelerate the growth of the business. It’s an important hire, that is very easy to get wrong. 

Here are a few guiding principles to help you navigate the process: 

1. What role are you actually hiring?

You’ll likely be considering two separate paths. Do I hire a senior salesperson, potentially a VP of Sales, or am I looking for an AE who can simply get in and execute? What you can pay will influence everything and bring reality to what you want versus what you can afford.

A quick Google of the ‘should I hire a VP or a sales person” will give you numerous articles arguing that either option is the best way to go. In reality there’s no right answer and each business is unique.

Some important factors will shape your decision. Business strategy, product complexity, target customer profile, remuneration, the role of the Founder post hire and a bunch other factors will help determine what you need. The planned role and skills of the Founder are important too. What will the Founder do once a salesperson is hired? Sharing the sales role or focussing on other priorities? Specifically, are you comfortable setting the growth strategy and having someone else execute, or do you need some additional sales leadership to build the strategy. If the answer to the latter point is yes, then you’ll also need to be clear that this person must be comfortable talking to customers and executing as well as setting strategy. Those people rare ! You probably won’t have the means to support a purely strategic VP of Sales and VP's don't typically like to get their hands dirty or report to someone who doesn't understand sales. Chances are you will be hiring a salesperson and it's really easy to find mediocre talent. How do you find quality and elect the right person?

2.             Be clear on the role requirements

Like most roles there are nuances and specialisms, so simply finding any Account Executive won’t do. Average and under performing AE’s are a dime a dozen. Chances are as an early stage business, you’ll require some significant outbound prospecting capability (given it’s unlikely marketing can sustain the sales funnel, and nor should it) so they’ll need to be comfortable hustling and dealing with rejection. Look for people with specialist skills relevant to you venture. Beware of the generalist. Your clients demand someone who can shape their thinking and add value - Fast !

For me there are 7 critical and non negotiable characteristics of your first Business Development hire in a small venture.

1 - Known Quantity

Do not hire someone that isn’t endorsed by credible and known sources within your network. DO NOT hire someone cold unless you have no other option. If you then need to use a recruiter, DO NOT use traditional sales recruiters that offer no other value beyond warm bodies. Find recruiters that shape your thinking, add value and bring real talent to the table. It's a short list !

2 - Prolific Networker

The candidate must be social media savvy , digitally enabled and a master cultivator of networks. They must bring a network to the table that can be leveraged immediately.

3 - Resilience

They must have a track record of success in difficult environments and must come sporting battle scars. Do not be the provider of their first tough job. They will fail.

4 - Hussle

They must make things happen and be totally autonomous. They must be an inherent and hungry deal maker. Curious, creative and strategic. Always on and always hustling !

5 - Customer obsessed

They must genuinely be the customers voice in your venture. This may bend your company out of shape occasionally but it will keep you on the longer term path to success. There should always be tension about customers needs and what can be delivered in a commercially viable manner.

6 - No start up debutantes !

It’s this simple. If they have not worked in a small venture before then don’t hire them. Do not get romanced by the person with the 5 corporate logos on their CV. They will fail when the leverage, support, resources, value and comforts of a large brand are removed. Often these big logo players ‘don’t know what they don’t know’. They also may ignorantly get excited by the thought of being in a sexy, new, cool ‘scale up’ but watch them revert to type the moment things get hard and risky. 

7 - Master Listener

Run for the hills if you come across a ‘good talker’. Find the person with the great questions and the ability to drive a relationship, value and ultimately solutions from answers.

Whilst there are many other credentials and attribute’s of the modernized and successful sales person, for me the above are non negotiables when hiring for a start up.

Get your interviews right.

Beware of the impressive CV, great interview and amazing references. Words are cheap, CV’s are product brochures and no one gives a bad reference. You must get passed the fa?ade to minimize risk.

Interviewing a new salesperson is uniquely difficult. While a developer or designer can produce examples of past work as part of their portfolio, most salespeople will struggle to demonstrate their experience in the same way. They will be good at selling themselves, and while this is important, make sure they have all the other credentials. 

Spend the interview scrutinizing past performance and real scenarios. Seek to understand behavior, personal drivers, attitudes and levels of resilience demonstrated in real situations. Explore their failures and get them to reflect on cause, accountability and durability. Thoroughly explore mutual expectations and discuss example scenarios to try to flush out potential misalignment.

Many other factors to consider when hiring your first salesperson and you want to get it right. The impact and opportunity cost of bad hiring on any business is significant. For a small venture, it can break the business. When done well, it represents a very exciting step forward and major milestone for a start up. Increased capacity, new perspectives, a sounding board for the Founder(s), energy, new contacts and a new voice at the table can be very rewarding for those involved in a small business. 

Be smart about hiring salespeople. Learn from others mistakes, craft a compelling employer proposition and run a considered process to find the right person for your most critical role.

Author

Doug Hawkins

Business Transformation and New Venture Commercialisation Specialist.