Making Your First Sales Hire
Hiring your first sales professional is a crucial step for any early-stage startup, as this individual will shape your initial revenue efforts and set the stage for future growth. This playbook will guide you through the key steps—from identifying the right time to hire and defining the ideal candidate to setting up your interview processes. Don’t forget to check out Pave for free compensation and equity benchmarking data!
- How do you know you’re ready for your first sales hire?
- You have a defined sales motion that you can teach to someone who knows nothing about your company.
- You have proven PMF and signed up several paying customers in the last year.
- You have a document sales playbook from the very beginning of the prospect life cycle all the way to closing. This includes cold call outreach, proposals, and contracts.
- You have a buttoned up sales demo.
- You have a clear TAM and lead list.
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- Creating a Job Spec and Posting
- Determine the type of sales cycle:
- Transactional or SMB - Jr. rep with 1-2 years of sales experience
- Recent graduate from college
- Worked in some type of new business sales role (maybe BDR or SDR) at a startup or larger company
- Looking to take the next step in their career to full cycle sales
- Mid-Market - 3-5 years of sales experience
- Worked in a full sales cycle role (cold calling to closing)
- Has several years of experience in $10k+ ACV deals
- Looking to take the next step in their career to have more impact at a startup
- Enterprise - 5-10 years of sales experience with similar ACV to your current deals
- Has worked deals north of $100k ACV
- Proven track record of hitting $1M+ annual quota
- Looking to have a larger impact on strategic sales at a smaller company
- List out all the requirements of the role. Set clear expectations.
- Look at other companies you admire and review their job postings for inspiration. Pull in bullet points that you like.
- Add in the ability to grow with the company, as that is part of the upside for joining a startup.
- Characteristics to look for:
- Prepared for all interviews
- Ask great questions
- Clearly researched the company ahead of time
- Well spoken
- Coachable
- Competitive
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- Interview Process
- Determine who at your company should be involved and outline the process for each interviewer. Add cross functional interviewers like product or engineering.
- List out what each interviewer will cover and ask. Be comprehensive and don’t ask the same questions.
- Create a company scorecard that reflects key characteristics of the hire. This will help review and qualify candidates consistently. Criteria include:
- Company values
- Culture fit
- Skillset
- Long-term alignment
- Provide an assignment to further assess a candidate’s skillset. This can include a prospecting email, presentation, or sales call role-play. Some important aspects to look for include:
- Are they an effective storyteller and conversationalist?
- Do they have clear and error free communication?
- Are they detail-oriented and personalize outreach and follow-up?
- Make sure to do thorough diligence on all candidates. This includes reviewing their social media, comparing their LinkedIn and resume for discrepancies, back-channeling etc.
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