You get out by writing things down, not by hiring harder. Build a sales operating model on paper: leads, conversion rate by stage, deal size, win rate, cycle length, and what each rep is expected to produce. Once that exists, a miss is diagnosable, and you can hand over one stage at a time instead of one whole job at once. Then set a rule for yourself about which deals you are allowed to touch and stick to it. Note that founders who did this well, and Indian SaaS founders are blunt about this, usually failed at their first one or two sales hires before it took.
4 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it Stripe's Chief Business Officer on building a written sales operating model (leads, conversion, deal size, win rate, cycle) so you can diagnose whether a miss is the rep or the model. The missing step in most handoffs.
From SignalFire by Sadasia McCutchen with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser 14 min read
Open signalfire.com →Why we picked it Zenoti's Sudheer Koneru saying plainly that his first two sales hires both failed and he had to go back to selling himself. Rare honesty from an Indian founder about the part everyone else skips.
From SaaSBoomi, The India Advantage by Manav Garg with Sudheer Koneru 7 min read
Open saasboomi.org →Why we picked it Names the two ways founders get the timing wrong, scaling too early and scaling too late, and walks the progression from founder selling to pods to a real team. Useful precisely when you are deciding whether it is time.
From Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy 35 min read
Open foundingsales.com →Why we picked it Indian founders comparing notes on hiring for grit and coachability over resumes, and on what it really costs to sell into the US from India. The on-ground detail you will not get from a US blog post.
From SaaSBoomi 8 min read
Open saasboomi.org →How hiring and ramping gtm people reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Co-founders, team & legal, our Starting Up track.
