
Ask HN: Experience bringing a sales guy onboard? - Maro
I'm interested in your experiences bringing a sales/business guy onboard in an early-stage startup company. Assuming the sales guy's role is to bring in prospective clients and investors, and has an impressive track record as both a salesman and entrepeneur.
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axiom
Be very very careful. The success rate for this kind of hire is around 10%. I
personally don't know of a single startup that did this and didn't have to
fire the guy after a few months (with lots of time and money wasted.)
Seriously, not a single one out of dozens.

The problem stems from the fact that most seasoned sales/business guys have
experience in larger companies, running established teams, which is radically
different than working in a startup and having to fill every role yourself in
addition to building up the team from scratch. The other problem is, quite
frankly, that most of these old sales guys are at a stage in their life where
working 60-80 hours a week isn't something they want to do, and so they will
be very very difficult to fit into a healthy startup culture where hard work
and overtime are required.

We hired a former VP sales from a big ($100M+) company in our space. A guy who
was a founder at a few successful startups and had a kick ass resume in
general. He was even a great salesman. 6 months later and $100k down the drain
we had to fire him.

My advice is make sure that if you give this guy equity that it vests over a
few years with a 1 year cliff, and that if you give him a salary that it's
very modest, mostly commission based.

Odds are you're going to have to fire him, but if you want to take a chance,
go for it.

~~~
trustfundbaby
"We hired a former VP sales from a big ($100M+) company in our space. A guy
who was a founder at a few successful startups and had a kick ass resume in
general. He was even a great salesman. 6 months later and $100k down the drain
we had to fire him"

Why did you have to fire him?

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thekevan
You are asking for a sales guy but describe a CEO, co-founder or even an
advisor. The sales guy isn't best suited for bringing on investors.

Don't listen to the people who say don't bring on a sales guy. Most people
haven't done it right in the past which is why they think it is a bad idea for
everyone.

Find a hungry young performer who is willing to forgo a guaranteed
compensation plan for a high potential compensation plan and pay them on
performance. Somone with 3+ years under their belt, hopefully without kids and
a high mortgage. (If they have renters subsidizing their rent: bonus points,
that's a money minded sales person.) Use a ramp or draw if you have to. (Draw:
is where salary now is taken out of future commissions. Ramp: it varies but
maybe now they get X base salary and Z% commission and as the pipeline grows,
they get a smaller base and higher commission.) I have been in sales for over
10 years and am dying to jump ship for a start up with potential but do not
have the safety net at the moment.

Incentive-ize overperformance. Make their commission .75X at 0% - 75% of goal,
X% at 76 - 100%, 1.25X% at 125%+. (Arbitrary numbers there, figure out what
make sense for you.) You want to make them fight to make more money.

Don't think you have to bring in a seasoned VP of Sales from another company.
They're like old Jaguars. Classy, expensive, impressive, high performance
potentially, but you never know if they are going to start. Most of those guys
are looking at you as a way to pass time between here and retirement. Maybe
you can use the right one later, but not now.

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aspir
I agree with other commenters that you've advertised for a coufounding CEO,
rather than a sales guy. Be your own CEO, or officially hand over the reins to
a CEO hire -- don't hire a sales guy for the wrong job. But, here's my advice
for an early hire startup sales guy, should to go that way:

First, make sure they're a startup sales guy, not just a traditional sales
guy. Other comments in the thread have given enough perfectly good reasons.
There's lots of individuals who want to be (and are good at) doing startup
sales. I'd liken the difference between big sales guys and startup sales guys
similar to coders who perform best in large companies, versus strong first
technical hires. You have to be a risk taker, and willing to go with really
low/no pay for a while. Traditional sales guys are often very well paid, are
strict 9-5 workers, and wouldn't handle the early startup stress

Also, every job I've ever taken at a startup as a "sales guy" has been one
where compensation is linked to performance. Not commission specifically,
though that play a part; I mean that to get a salary, I have to deliver in
regards to traffic, conversions, or any other measurable factor for the
company. Basically, each week I'm called to be accountable for what I
accomplished at a quantified level. I don't get paid until I hit a threshold
($15,000 in sales, x new clients based on my efforts, higher SE rank).

Do the same for your hire. Do a 4-5 month contract to see if it's going to
work, make compensation based on performance, and shake hands and part ways at
the end of the period if it doesn't work out -- its business.

------
ekidd
We realized that our startup had two probems: A really long sales cycle (on
the order of years for some clients), and a lack of the necessary sales skills
on the founding team. We weren't able to address the former. But while trying
to address the latter, I found the following articles useful.

In _Four Steps to the Epiphany_ , Steve Blank has some great advice on hiring
sales staff before product-market fit:

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705)

Basically, he says, "Don't do it," with the possible expection of a single
"sales closer" who loves working in the field, and who has been avoiding
promotions to VP of Sales. As I understand it, you're not looking to build a
sales organization yet, but you may need some sales skills to close your first
3 deals and prove that the model works. But even then, he has a checklist of
customer discovery tasks to do first.

There's also some amusing advice from Eric Sink on hiring sales staff in a
micro-ISV:

<http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Closing_the_Gap_Part_1.html>
<http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Closing_the_Gap_Part_2.html>

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triviatise
Good comments here. Who you hire depends on what kind of sales you are doing.
My company does consulting for f500 companies and a services sale is different
from a product sale. I have hired 10 sales people and have had just 3 good
ones.in addition to the other posters I would add that you will ultimately
make the sale and the sales guy will make appointments and do followup.

Determine if you need marketing which is lead generation or sales which is
closing

Also read spin selling, it is about consultative selling which is a good fit
for hackers.

Finally count on it taking a year before you can confidently fire a non
performing sales person

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ajju
So we are starting this process right now and I can tell you that it is hard
enough to hire a sales person who is really good at sales and fits with your
company culture. Bringing in customers is _not_ the same thing as bringing in
investors. So hiring someone who can do both is going to be hard.

~~~
Maro
Assuming the person is given and commited, the question is what the
experiences are wrt. structuring commission, ownership, vesting, etc.

~~~
triviatise
the least painful structure for me is a non recoverable draw and then a large
percent of sales. This makes them 100% commission but they still get paid even
if they arent selling. However once they do start selling the commission goes
against the draw that they have accrued. This means if it takes 6 months to
sell 100K you are out their draw, but you dont pay them additional commission
on the 100k.

drop me a note if you have questions.

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javery
It sounds like you are trying to bring in a CEO not a sales/business guy.

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namank
It would be good to have experience in the industry. I would personally look
for experience on the floor, door to door kind of stuff...someone who has
actually been in the trenches

And, as everyone said, vesting. Might even be a good idea to make his pay
commission based for the first six months - an opportunity to prove himself.

Who are your clients? Cusomters or businesses?

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noelsequeira
I'm going to buck the general trend here and recommend bringing the guy on
board, but note that what I say (as with all advice) isn't free from the odd
concomitant caveat.

The million-dollar question: "Am I selling to a market that I lack access to /
lack the means to access?"

If the answer is yes, then you need this guy. And bad. You're likely a lamb
heading to the slaughter without someone like him. Enterprise software is one
such (arcane to an outsider) market. For instance, it's incredibly hard to
sell to CIOs / IT departments without a solid channel of motivated System
Integrators. It's even harder for a startup with little credibility to build
such a channel of System Integrators who aggressively push your product
without the leverage of strong relationships (built over a non-trivial period
of time, usually years or decades).

I speak from personal experience - we added a Vice President of Sales from a
Fortune 500 to our team, and it was the catalyst that our business so
desperately needed. Within the space of six months, we were able to close over
10 channel partners and consequently access decision makers at hundreds of IT
departments.

My advice would be this: keep compensation low, as low as you possibly can. If
the guy balks at this, that's a red flag. A true VP of Sales will take it as a
personal affront if he doesn't have to prove his mettle through results. I
can't emphasize this enough, vest equity solely on performance (revenues
realized) and set a reasonable, realistic cliff (a year can sometimes be a bit
too short). Give him the authority to incentivize reps adequately. There's a
great example from a company called Verdiem in this TechCrunch article
([http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/06/0-to-20-million-ten-hand-
to...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/06/0-to-20-million-ten-hand-to-hand-
sales-tactics/))

 _Verdiem’s Jim Flatley taught me this at Plumtree: he fought to get early
reps 15% of every sale, but after we made our numbers for the first time ever,
nobody wanted to pay them less. Even after the bubble burst and every other
technology company took a blood-bath, Jim kept delivering results._

Another article that you just can't afford to overlook is by Mark Suster
([http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/the-excuse-department-is-
cl...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/05/the-excuse-department-is-closed/)),
and he sums up succinctly in one line what I've been trying to convey through
all this verbiage:

 _(Sales people) are more mercenaries than missionaries._

This applies to their leader, the VP of sales in equal measure and the moment
you internalize this (and make peace with this fact), you'll find this
decision quite easy and understand how to approach the entire exercise.

All the best!

~~~
thekevan
Regarding the 15% example, did they not want to lower the rate because they
decided it was worth it or they were afraid to piss off the sales people?

If it is the latter, there is a work around. Sales people hold their
percentages tightly and get pissed when people lower them. We own them. Don't
raise and lower the one rate, add and take away others. So say if you know now
you are willing to pay 15% now but think that rate will go down to 10%,
introduce the 10% as the rate, but add 5% as a temporary incentive, making it
an effective 15%. This way their rate doesn't go down in there eyes, it is
just the extra spiff that goes away--which wasn't theirs to begin with really.
They knew that 5% was temporary. However if you lower my 15% to 10%, I will
always feel like that 10 should be 15.

Dumb psychology but it works.

------
suking
Sales people do not bring in investors, they bring in clients. The CEO's job
is to make sure there is enough money to pay people and if that includes
raising $, that is your job.

Now if you want customers you want someone who fits your culture, is not
afraid to call anyone, has contacts and is motivated by $. Most sales people
don't give a flying F about stock, options, etc. They care about $. Set clear
goals and have a nice commission aspect. We are about 60% salary, 40%
commission and seems to be working well. Do not be afraid to fire sales people
after a couple of weeks, some people just don't work even though you think
they will.

