Co-founders, team & legal

How do I hire a great salesperson early when I've never sold or managed sales myself?

The short answer

Don't hire a senior sales leader as your first sales hire, you can't manage or evaluate them yet, and you'll overpay for someone who needs a machine you haven't built. Do founder-led sales until you've personally closed enough deals to know what a repeatable pitch looks like. Then hire a hungry, coachable early rep (an 'account executive' type), not a VP. In India, watch for candidates who sold a hot brand with air cover versus those who actually hunt cold; you need the hunter.

Go deeper, your way

2 hand-picked resources, 2 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

Why we picked it Lemkin gives you the exact sequencing this question needs: close 10 to 20 customers yourself first, then hire two reps (not one, so you can tell talent from luck), and do not touch a VP of Sales until those reps are already hitting quota. His one-line filter, do not hire someone you would not buy your own product from, is the sharpest gut-check an untrained founder can apply in an interview.

Dear SaaStr: When Should a Startup Hire its First Sales Person, and What Should Their Profile Look Like?

From SaaStr by Jason Lemkin 6 min read

  • Do founder-led sales until you have personally closed 10 to 20 deals; you cannot manage a rep at a motion you have never run yourself
  • Hire two early reps at once, not one, so a win or a miss tells you something real instead of being noise
  • A VP of Sales accelerates an engine that already works; hiring one to build the engine burns cash and the VP is gone in about 15 months
Open saastr.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

Why we picked it Your early rep has to hunt cold, not coast on warm inbound, and this piece hands you the concrete tells: the true hunter chases the follow-up unprompted, leans into rejection, and has a track record of turning cold prospects into paying accounts rather than growing accounts someone handed them. That is exactly how you separate a genuine hunter from a candidate whose big numbers came riding a hot brand with air cover, which is the trap in Indian enterprise sales where a marquee logo does half the selling.

Hunter vs. Farmer in Sales: Empowering Your Team for Long-Term Success

From Peak Sales Recruiting by Peak Sales Recruiting 9 min read

  • A hunter reveals themselves in the process: they follow up on the interview without being asked, the same persistence they will show your prospects
  • Read the resume for new-logo wins and cold-to-close stories, not account growth, which is a farmer's game and inflated by an existing brand
  • Early-stage teams should skew heavily toward hunters; a farmer who never had to open a door cold will stall when there is no inbound and no brand behind them
Open peaksalesrecruiting.com →

Terms in this answer

Account Executive Founder-Led Sales

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