Linear #023: Founder -> Employee-Led Sales, Refugee to Tech CTO, Guild Education
Linear #023: Founder -> Employee-Led Sales, Refugee to Tech CTO, Guild Education
One vSaaS breakdown. One Biz Story. One 'How To'. In your inbox once a week.
One Vertical SaaS Breakdown:
Moving From Founder-Led Sales to Employee-Led Sales
At a certain point you have to make the jump from founder-led sales to employee-led sales. It can KILL your business & most companies f*ck it up.
9 critical lessons in scaling your early sales team:
Lesson #1: Prove that your founder-led sales motion works before hiring sales reps
You have to have a decemt understanding of your motion.
Is it an outside or inside sales motion?
How long does it take?
It doesn't have to be perfect but you need to know the basics.
Lesson #2: Make sure your product has good "enough" customer retention before moving away from founder-led
If you are closing business like hot-cakes but your customers are not sticking around you need to fix the leaky bucket. Too many scale sales before addressing this.
Lesson #3: Two cats one bag
When you go to hire your first reps I'm a big proponent of hiring 2 of them.
Why?
1 likely wont work out.
2 will create competition.
They won't feel on an island as they create the role together.
Lesson #4: Don't hire a bunch of AE's at the same time
You're killing it with a founder-led sales and you decide to hire 5 or 10 reps overnight.
So costly.
They are going to be no where near where you are. Don't hire AE's in batches until you have 2 that are doing 3-5X OTE.
Lesson #5: Don't hire a top performing AE from a big company
Often the first sales person we hire were top performers at Stripe, Google, (insert great brand here), etc. These people are use to complete systems and support surrounding them. This is not the right person.
Lesson #6: Test different personas in sets of twos
Constantly be in search of the right sales person persona.
How much experience do they have? What is their background? I like to test this in sets of 2. That way if both don't work out I know it's not likely right yet.
Lesson #7: Get out of the drivers seat
It's so easy for a founder to watch new sales people struggle through a pitch and just jump in and take over. This is a bandaid & it HURTS in the long term. Your sales people HAVE to lean the hard way just like you did.
Lesson #8: Don't bring in a VP Sales until you have 2 successful sales reps
A lot of founders hire this person before they have successful AE's or think not having them is the reason their AE's haven't worked out. A VP of Sales scales your GTM function but it HAS to work first.
Lesson #9: KISS (Keep it simple stupid)
A lot of folks get obsessed with their CRM or building 100+ page training decks. These things don't matter until you have 2 reps hitting quota and are ready to scale that to many more. They just need to follow you around. Nothing fancy.
One ‘How To’:
Going From Refugee To Tech CTO
One Biz Story:
The Story of Guild Education (Contrary Research)
