
How to hire a sales person - ananddass
http://blog.filepicker.io/post/32008758408/how-to-hire-a-sales-person
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conrey
Speaking as a salesperson this article has a few things that I find difficult
to agree with:

1) Sales vs BizDev - As described in the article the sales people he's looking
for are great for one off transactions, not for building a real client base
that will refer and keep coming back. Remember how you like to be sold, for
bigger things most people want to know and trust the person they are buying
from.

2) Domain Knowledge - which is easy to teach, sales or what you do? Hire a
good salesman and teach them your business

The idea is sound and I've seen a number of startups go the wrong way with it,
but those two stood out to me.

~~~
ananddass
Conrey-I agree with your point about things not being black and white between
sales vs biz dev . It boils down to how many resources do you have to invest
in go-to-market initiatives. For most startups, customers decide to trust and
buy based on their interactions with the founding team and the CEO. In fact if
the founding team isnt actively involved in the deal closure process that is a
red flag. Given this assumption what you need is a person on the team who is
obsessively focused in generating prospects. Once a prospect has been engaged
then the founding team will have to wing into action in closing the deal.

On domain knowledge-certainly its easy to teach what you do than teach how to
sell. Always better to get a strong sales guy than the other way round. In the
article I was reference the difference between one with industry knowledge and
product knowledge.

~~~
ashleycutler
I would not recommend hiring a sales person who you cannot trust to close
deals or build long standing relationships with customers. I have been the
head of sales at Zencoder for almost two years. While there were certainly
deals where interaction with the founders was critical to winning the deal
because it had strategic impact on the business, they certainly weren't
involved with every deal. While the founding team shouldn't be completely
disconnected with sales efforts, if the founding team has to win every deal,
you haven't hired a very successful sales person and certainly not a partner
who can help you strategically grow your business. You have hired a
telemarketer (the difference between 'generating leads' and 'winning deals' is
crucial here).

Also, I feel like focusing on domain knowledge too narrowly can lead the
hiring process astray. I think you are spot on regarding hiring for
intelligence and acumen but I think it is a mistake to think that those
attributes can only be found in those with domain knowledge. I can tell you
that I knew nothing about video encoding before becoming Zencoder's head of
sales and had it been a requirement, I wouldn't have been hired. We were able
to grow that company rapidly to acquisition with only myself focused on sales.

My opinion is that a good sales hire should be 1\. fully committed to learning
your product inside and out and have the technical acumen to be able to
execute on that. 2\. Should think about sales the same way the engineering
team think about product (test, iterate, listen,) 3\. Should be able to sell
themselves they way you want your product to be sold. Listen to how they talk
about themselves in the interview. This is how they will sell your product.

~~~
ananddass
Ashely- you are spot on with all comments!

re: winning deals vs generating deals: winning deals = generating leads +
proposing a solution/pitch + dealing with contracting + get
technical/architectural support from core team + following up on sales
commitments.

Anything else?

Re domain knowledge: value of hiring smart reps> hiring reps with marketspace
knowledge > hiring reps with product knowledge

Re how candidates carry themselves: one of the things to watch for is how they
conduct themselves with customers. I have in the past taken candidates to
networking events to get a feel for how they work in a social setting.

------
Datonomics
1\. Knowledge: This may be useful if you have a highly technical product but I
have always found it easier to teach someone about a product than to teach
them how to sell.

2\. Skills: a skill that may be more useful than building a plan would be the
ability to close. Assign some leads and see if the person can actually close.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4>

3\. Accountability: Often the worst part about great salesmen is that they are
great salesmen. They will sell themselves and you on doing as little work as
possible. A basic CRM to monitor his progress may provide an equal or better
ROI than the salesman himself.

4\. If you are short on cash, you can build a sales team on commission only.
This book has a few ideas on how to set that up: [http://www.amazon.com/The-
Ultimate-Sales-Machine-Turbocharge...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-
Sales-Machine-
Turbocharge/dp/1591842158/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348276050&sr=8-1&keywords=chet+holmes)

~~~
ananddass
Imho accountability through CRM works only for large companies. In early stage
startups accountability has to be an intrinsic value in the hire. If the
founders have to measure accountability through CRM then they have hired the
wrong person.

~~~
apollo5
Why do you state this?

From my view, sales is often a numbers game. In order to get x sales, y
appointments must be set, z connections made. I am yet to find a good method
for measuring this outside a CRM. Excel is good for about 50 contacts.. After
that, it's a mess.

~~~
ananddass
Apollo. CRM is great for organizing and tracking but if you find yourself
going to a CRM to figure out deal flow...your sales guy isnt doing a good
enough job. Just like code repositories are important but not the first place
you would go to for checking code quality (you probably would look at
exceptions alerts).

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powera
"But unlike a technical interview, give the candidate a few days’ time to come
up with a plan. This will involve researching the market, doing some
preliminary analysis and would require some back and forth for the candidate
to understand how your product would fit with the market." - why would good
sales candidates be more likely to want to spend days preparing for an
interview than good technical candidates?

~~~
ananddass
Great question powera. Two reasons

1\. This is a self selection hack: The renaissance sales rep will be drawn to
the problem and will want the intellectual challenge of thinking through a new
problem. The coin operated ones will instinctively get turned off by your
request for a plan and will self select out. You anyway don't want to hire one
of those.

Also, most sales reps spending their days staring at spreadsheets, CRM systems
and drab presentations. This will be a welcome break.

2\. Helps them research their probability of success: Good sales reps don't
like to lose in the marketplace. These are individuals who are motivated by
winning deals. They love the chase.

Preparing a plan helps them evaluate their chances of success.From a career
standpoint they wouldn't want to join a company only to be let go after
sometime because they couldnt make quota. It reflects really badly in their
next interview.

So a smart sales guy would want to research before hand if the market is hot,
is the product unique?, who is competition? what are the prospective customers
that he has connections with?

He is going to do this irrespective of whether you ask him or not (red flag on
his caliber if he doesn't). Why not make it a part of the process?

Btw, judging the specifics of the plan is not as important as judging the
process of his planning.

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taariqlewis
The true test of your VP of Sales should never be: "What do you know of the
domain and what do you know of the customer" particularly when we're talking
about an early-stage company, still searching for a repeatable sales model.
It's my view that best test of the VP Of Sales is the following question:
"What do you do when no one is buying our product?"

Sales executives that are trained and deeply experienced in sustaining
innovation sales models are great when the repeatable sales model has already
been discovered, documented and integrated into the entire organization,
including the marketing and product. At this level, the role of the Sales VP
is there to "caretake" the sales organization through the maturation stage of
growth and dependable business objectives led by the CEO. Their rewards are
aligned with the ability to keep the engine humming or fine-tune it for
increased sales revolutions.

In a startup, prior to full discovery of the repeatable sales model, one
should avoid any sustaining innovation Sales VPs like the plague. One should
take a bigger risk on high-energy, untrained sales reps/managers, who are
capable of learning disruptive sales models and can be trained (and retrained
cheaply) to patiently listen to the customer buying cycle and business
circumstance around which a new marketing model must be built. It is my view
that most VP of Sales are not trained for disruptive and innovative sales
roles because their experiences were anchored around very predictable revenue
models.

At the VP of Sales level, there are many ways to vet a candidate and those
methods should align with the corporate structure and the corporate culture.
However, let’s be clear. The first VP of Sales or VP of Marketing are high-
risk hires who the CEO should be prepared to replace as quickly as possible as
the product market fit process, customer segments, and customer buyer-cycle
and buyer-profiles continue to change and settle.

Don’t get obsessed over your first VP of Sales as “The One”

Obsess that you have athletes that are capable of running a hard sales race
and that your organization is nimble enough to adapt and change, as needed to
survive the sales discovery process!

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adebelov
my 2c is that if you hire a stellar VP of Sales, then he can help you
hire/train an amazing sales team. So aim high, and poach guys from whichever
industry leader there is: Facebook, Google, AdMob (in our case), etc.

thoughts?

~~~
ananddass
Couldn't agree more. In my experience leading sales teams the difference
between one territory rep versus another territory rep is how well that rep
was trained/motivated/coached and mentored by his sales manager. Stellar VP of
sales are not only good with customers but also exceptional at grooming
people. Aiming high and poaching from a Facebook, Google etc. is the right
thing to do as these companies have good sales folks. If you are looking at
enterprise sales then Oracle and Salesforce.com have stellar people. But I
imagine some kind of inflection point in the startup journey where it makes
more sense to hire a VP of sales versus a individual contributor sales rep.
Any pointers on what that inflection point would be? Funding?

~~~
adebelov
I think inflection point would be determined by: a. Funding - I mean, you need
to pay these guys a bunch. Equity can get you only so far b. Stage - I think
hiring a stellar VP of Sales with a half-made product is not going to play out
well.

any other ideas?

~~~
ananddass
Also, does the startup have a semblance of a repeatable business model (which
tends to be correlated with later rounds of funding)?

If you know by putting in X sales reps with $Y sales productivity per rep you
can achieve $Z (X*$Y) in sales then that is a good case for hiring a VP of
sales and have him build a sales organization under him.

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uams
what are the differences between hiring a sales person verus a VP of sales?

~~~
mediaman
There's a big difference in psychology. Although it's only a rule of thumb,
the best VP of sales can be a bit more introverted and detail-oriented than
the salespeople they manage, who can be more outgoing, high-perseverence, cold
calling types.

VP sales has to manage revenue pipelines, analyze sales reports, detect
account losses, manage promotions, get involved in contract negotiations, etc.

Salespeople network, originate leads, cold call companies, build
relationships, close deals, etc.

The best salespeople often make terrible VP sales.

~~~
ananddass
why do best sales people make terrible VP sales? I heard this before but
haven't seen a consistent correlation.

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mburshteyn
But why only sales "guys"?

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ananddass
Sorry.. I should have clarified. A sales woman shares exactly the same traits.
No difference at all. Updated the post to reflect this truth.

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mp99e99
Very nice article, worth reading.

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dataisfun
Good article. But why out of curiosity did you include a road sign for Beer
Sheva?

~~~
ananddass
:-) to represent a Fork in the road!

