Book · 35 min read

Founding Sales, Chapter 10: Early Sales Management and Scaling Concepts

Peter Kazanjy · Founding Sales Free Intermediate

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.

  • A good B2B win rate is 15 to 30 percent, and hitting it is the signal you can add reps.
  • Sales cost should stay at 20 to 25 percent of the revenue closed; a 100K rep needs to bring in about 500K.
  • A dedicated sales ops hire pays for itself around 10 reps, adding roughly 50K in bookings per rep.
  • Metrics-driven management moves manager ratios from 1 per 5 reps to 1 per 8, cutting cost of sales by about 40 percent.
  • Baseline SDR output is about 10 new qualified meetings a week.
Open on foundingsales.com ↗

It answers 7 questions

  1. When do I stop selling myself and hire my first salesperson?
  2. I am the first AE and my founder still runs half the deals. How do we split it?
  3. How do I know whether a new rep is going to work out before six months have gone by?
  4. How many reps should I hire next quarter, and in what order?
  5. One of my reps is at 40 percent of quota. How do I move fast without wrecking the rest of the team?
  6. How do I actually get out of founder-led sales instead of just talking about it?
  7. How do the best-run sales orgs decide someone is not going to make it, and how fast do they move?

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  3. Ten specific, named mistakes rather than principles, including hiring a VP of Sales too early and letting a bad rep linger past... SaaStr Podcast · 30 min listen SaaStr Podcast #379: The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Sales Team Jason Lemkin
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