Mistakes with my first sales hire
by Josh HoWe needed to scale out sales! July came and the first salesperson was hired. At this point, all I knew was what I was doing in sales but never considered myself an actual salesperson. I thought a salesperson was supposed to be “salesy” and what I was doing was a hack. So the first person I hired fit that mold and as you probably can guess… I failed miserably...
Overall these were some mistakes with my first sales hire that hopefully others don't have to repeat.
- We had ZERO onboarding and training for sales.
I didn’t realize how much of a learning curve a new product and new customer profile mattered. I thought hiring a salesperson was just going to spin up and do what they do as a “real salesperson” in a matter of weeks. I think I even gave the new salesperson all the demos within about 2 weeks. Here's what I learned...
Build out at least the framework of some training, record more of my own demos, and come up with a basic level script that someone could pick up rather quickly.
- We didn’t have the right type of salesperson
There are different types of salespeople? My first hire had experience selling to SMBs which was great but didn’t have much marketing experience which led to some challenges on picking up on the product and understanding the customer. Here's what I learned...
Get rid of the picture in your head of what a sales person looks like, it will cloud your hiring judgement. Find someone who is coachable, understands at least the basics of digital marketing, is consultative and helpful vs salesy and pushy.
This was a hard lesson to learn as it killed 2 months of revenue and I was pulled back into sales and lost valuable time and energy that could have gone to other areas of the business.
(Also note this was all 2.5 years ago. I added this milestone retroactively when filling out the product profile. I didn't know it would all show up here like it was current)
