You want someone who will do their own button clicking. The single most common mistake is overshooting seniority: hiring a person whose last three years were spent managing a territory handed to them by a marketing team you do not have. Look for grit, coachability, and genuine curiosity about the product, and be suspicious of a resume that is only big brand logos, because hitting quota at a company with brand pull rarely transfers. Two useful filters: would you buy from this person, and have they carried a bag at a company under 50 people. Hire two, not one, so you can tell whether a miss is the rep or the playbook.
5 resources, 1 India-specific, 5 link-checked.
Two hours covering when to hire the first rep, what to look for, when to bring in a VP of Sales, and how comp and quotas should be set, all in one place. If you only watch one thing on sales hiring, watch this.
On Lenny's Podcast by Lenny Rachitsky and Jason Lemkin 2 hr watch
The second half of this question is what not to fall for, and this is a list of the exact traps: the big-logo resume, the one senior hire instead of two, the rep who has only ever sold a finished product.
On SaaStr AI by Poya Osgouei 25 min
Ten specific, named mistakes rather than principles, including hiring a VP of Sales too early and letting a bad rep linger past one sales cycle. It is the fastest way to avoid the errors almost every first-time founder makes.
On SaaStr by Jason Lemkin 30 min listen
Open saastr.com →The most detailed free writeup of an actual sales hiring process: the profile, artifact-based screening before you spend live time, the mock pitch stage, and what to pay. Free to read online, no signup.
From Founding Sales by Peter Kazanjy 50 min read
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
How hiring and ramping gtm people reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Co-founders, team & legal, our Starting Up track.
