Podcast · 30 min listen

SaaStr Podcast #379: The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Sales Team

Jason Lemkin · SaaStr Free Beginner

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.

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It answers 7 questions

  1. When do I stop selling myself and hire my first salesperson?
  2. What does a good first sales hire actually look like, and what should I not fall for?
  3. I have been offered the first sales hire job at a startup. What should I check before I say yes?
  4. How do I interview a salesperson when I have never sold for a living?
  5. How do I know whether a new rep is going to work out before six months have gone by?
  6. When do I hire a VP of Sales, and what happens if I get it wrong?
  7. One of my reps is at 40 percent of quota. How do I move fast without wrecking the rest of the team?

Read with it

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  3. Names the two ways founders get the timing wrong, scaling too early and scaling too late, and walks the progression from... Founding Sales Book · 35 min read Founding Sales, Chapter 10: Early Sales Management and Scaling Concepts Peter Kazanjy
  4. Stripe's Chief Business Officer on building a written sales operating model (leads, conversion, deal size, win rate, cycle) so... SignalFire Article · 14 min read How to train and measure your startup's early sales hires Sadasia McCutchen with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
  5. 365 B2B companies surveyed on ramp, tenure, attrition, activity and comp. When you want to know whether your ramp is slow or... The Bridge Group Report · Report, 20 min read The 2023 SDR Metrics and Compensation Report The Bridge Group
  6. The clearest arithmetic anywhere on rep economics: the rule of 10 for quota against base, four months to productivity, draws... Craft Ventures Essay · 12 min read Simple Math to Set Up a Sales Team David Sacks
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