Entrepreneurs are always selling.
Selling to customers, yes. But also employees, investors and partners. And many successful founders are naturally good at it.
Maybe you are selling to SME’s and your price-point is sub $1k/month. If so, it’s possible that you can rely on a product-led growth strategy (sprinkled with some inbound/content marketing).
But if you sell to enterprise, at some point, you will need to hire the first “seller” to your team. This week, I will explore how to get the first hire “right”.
The obvious questions to answer are, when, what, how and who?
But first, start with why.
Why do you need a salesperson in your team?
At the seed stage, your main objective is to develop and prove product/market fit. And in enterprise, having paying customers is vital proof that your solution fits your market.
Here are the three typical reasons to make the first sales hire:
- There is already a natural/experienced sales leader in the founding team. You are now looking to increase deal capacity and accelerate the top-line growth. In enterprise, that means growing the sales team.
- The founders have landed the first set of lighthouse deals. Now they are looking for someone to build a repeatable sales model. That means expertise on how to build a sales process and a sales-org.
- Your ICP is in enterprise, but you have no enterprise sales experience in your founding team. You need someone on board who knows how to navigate complex buying processes. That means hiring someone who understands how your customers buy and how to work with their process.
What do they need to accomplish?
You’ll see how the “what” is embedded in the “why”.
Are you looking to
- expand capacity (follow an existing playbook),
- build a repeatable process (create a repeatable playbook), or simply to
- get started winning lighthouse accounts (be a pathfinder)?
With these objectives clear, you can start mapping out your hiring plan.
And tomorrow, I will unpack the next phase of just how to do that.