Top tips in hiring sales people in an Expansion Stage Company

I just found a great article on how to build an effective sales team in a start-up. The article broke it out to 14 key things. Below are my main takeaways. 

1. Don’t hire sales people too early. You don’t need sales people, you need sales. the CEO and founders should be doing a lot of sales at first. Also, don’t jump to hiring a VP of Sales or Sales Director. You don’t need sales managers at this point, focus on the actual sales.

2. Figure out your sales process and how it works the best before hiring a whole team. Start with one person focused on sales and go from there. Make sure to start watching the funnel and the progression of leads to qualified leads to opportunities to opportunities won and lost. Also, set KPIs early and don’t be afraid to adjust them.

3. Track all data!Information you will want includes: What was sold, who sold it, when, for how much, etc. This data will be invaluable later as you start to scale. For example, you should be able to answer the question: We had 14 customers cancel last month – who sold those customers? Is there a pattern? In the early days, you likely won’t have the volume (or the time) to analyze the data – but you should at least capture it for future use.

When OpenView invests in an expansion stage company, there is usually a start-up stage sales team or structure in place. Sales support and marketing is something that OpenView can build out. OpenView Labs also helps to track the important information and make sense of it, something CEOs often do not have time to do. Providing a lead generation system to put the most qualified opportunities in front of the portfolio’s account managers is something much appreciated by our CEOs as well.