
Ask HN: How to hire your first sale team member? - jguimont
I am an engineer, I know how to hire a fellow engineer.<p>I am not a salesperson, I do not know how to hire a salesperson.<p>For the last 6 month, I have been trying to do both, engineering and sales, but that is taxing on both front (and my sleep, stress and health). I am ready to hire a salesperson to delegate that responsibility to him. But how do you find such a person? How do you find someone that will not ask for the moon to help you start your business?
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davismwfl
Compensation structure generally depends on the business structure and type of
product. There are almost as many ways to create a sales pay structure as
there are sales people.

As for interviewing and finding the right person, I am a huge fan of having
them sell me their old product, then immediately asking them to sell me on the
largest competitors product (to what they used to sell), then I like to put
them in front of my product and ask them to tell me about it. I expect a good
sales person has already done research so they should have a clue what your
product does. There are some caveats if you don't have a public website etc,
so you have to work around that sometimes. If you don't have information they
can learn ahead of time, you should sell them the product and let them poke
holes in your sales pitch, have them play customer and ask you questions. That
will tell you if they have good insights to common customer questions as well.

Hiring people that have never sold software to sell software is usually a bad
way to go for your first few hires. You need industry experience and contacts.

Some more things I generally ask. Who is the person who influenced their sales
process the most and how? How do they stay up on new sales methodologies? Get
them to describe the difference between marketing and sales (this helps you
understand how they see the team). Who is their most important contact in
their rolodex that the can call on if needed? And there are a ton of other
things like this.

In general when hiring sales or other non-engineering roles, the decision is
about cultural fit, experience, personal attitude and of course capabilities.
Remember, that you will likely go through a few sales team members before you
fine one you really mesh well with that can lead your sales.

