Tips from One Founder to Another: Invest in New Sales Hires
You have heard it before, and you will hear it again. Measure Twice, Cut Once. This old-age axiom is critical when developing your Startup Dream Team (SDT). Once you have decided to expand your team to include additional personnel, it is imperative to take time to ensure your new sales hire is the correct fit for the job and is supported in their pursuit to excellence. Founders should be certain of fit before hire. However, you still are responsible for verifying you made the right decision. Trust you made the right hiring decision but confirm it by being involved in their first 90 days. You cannot afford to fail at this critical hire. It is so much more expensive and time consuming to source, recruit and hire than it is to shadow, teach, and mentor.
When you invest time in new sales hires, it reduces the lead time to productivity. In a world where the average turnover of a salesperson is 18 months, it is critical that you take time to establish team buy-in with clear sales objectives and a well-defined strategy.
Define Your Business Strategy
As the SME of your start-up, it is up to you to define, articulate, and motivate your business strategy to newcomers. Without a clear vision, it is impossible to maximize the efforts of your sales team and grow your organization.
Key factors to keep in mind include:
- How do we differentiate from the rest of the marketplace?
- What are our strengths and weaknesses as an organization?
- Where do we stand to achieve the most sustainable growth?
Once you have a clear understanding of these points, you can put together a plan to recruit, train, and influence your sales team to maximize revenues for your startup.
Support Your Team with Resources
Once you have clear and transferable alignment with your business strategy, it is important to provide support to your SDT. Regardless of your team’s hard and soft skills, it is imperative to consider opportunities for professional development that will aid in the productivity of your sales team. With more and more companies adopting a hybrid sales strategy, there is greater opening to leverage and utilize data to understand one’s growth opportunities.
Consider the following to better support your team’s success:
- Choose a CRM that will aid in reducing cumbersome administrative tasks and maximize sales.
- Develop easy to implement practices that keep everyone in the loop and provide clear opportunities for measured growth.
- Establish a regular check-in with your team in which you, as the founder, are accessible to help troubleshoot and ideate.
When you put in the extra effort to make sure your team feels connected, heard, and well-resourced, they will go the extra mile to support start-up in the pursuit of excellence.
Stay tuned for more tips from one founder to another,
Ted