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[MUSIC PLAYING] Hiring your first sales person is a big step and a big expense. In this lesson, I'm going to share with you how you can help ensure this is a success for your company. This sounds like it should be easy. You're growing quickly, spending more and more of your time on the phone or traveling to see customers, and not enough time on product, merchandising, or the other things you have to do.
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So you put up a job description and start hiring salespeople to sell, so you can focus on other parts of your business. Sound about right? Not so fast. As the CEO and founder, you will always be the chief sales officer of your company. You don't get to give that away, even if you don't like it. There is just no replacing the founder in the eyes of a customer.
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You know why the first customer purchased your products, what is unique about your company, you know your own story. This is critical when you think about hiring salespeople into your business. So how do you know when you're ready to hire your first salesperson or sales manager? Let's first look at when you're not ready. When you're sick of doing sales and want to give it to somebody else.
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When you're investors tell you you should hire a salesperson. When you think this is not where you should spend your time. That is not when you're ready to hire. Hiring salespeople because you don't want to sell yourself is a really bad reason. Get comfortable with being in sales, it's your job. Now let's move on to what you'll need in order to hire salespeople.
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Anyone you are going to hire in sales is going to need training on how to sell the things that your company. So you can't hire until you can explain how a sales happens. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up and the new hire for failure. There are a number of things you will need to explain to your new hires to help them be successful. You'll need to know what your average deal size is, your average sales cycle, how long it takes to sell something, your target customer profile, who's the ideal person to sell to, your value proposition, and your why.
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Why do you exist? What's the story? If you don't have the answers to these simple questions, you can't hire salespeople. The good news is that most founders do know these answers, they just haven't thought about it before. Once you've written that information down, you'll need to determine exactly what type of salesperson you need to hire first.
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Generally, it's a question of whether you're going to hire an individual, a contributor, or a manager. I think about it like this. If you're going faster than anyone can manage, have customers beating down your door, and you simply can't keep up, hire a manager who can sell it first, then can rapidly build you a sales team. If you're looking for more support and have time to work with someone directly, hire yourself a salesperson first, and help them grow.
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Here are the top four roles I hire for most frequently and some of the pros and cons of each role. The VP of sales, for one who wants to hire this first. But let's be clear, they're the most expensive. They bring you a lot of experience and knowledge but generally are used to managing teams. So while you get that experience, you might also need to rapidly build a team underneath them for that to work.
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Your second option is a sales manager. Again, they're generally more expensive, you could spend 70 to $150,000 on salary with people like this. They are more experienced but they're also used to still selling. They're kind of the best of both worlds. The downside is they'll need more support from you. And they're going to want to grow their team as well.
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The season vet or the season salesperson, they know how to sell, they simply want to sell, this is their career choice. They don't have any management experience, so you might be alone trying to figure out how to manage these people. And then finally, the new salesperson. The pro to this is they're eager, they're young, and they're cheap. The downside is you're going to have to spend a lot of your time helping them learn how to sell in your business.
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So quickly, they're going to need a sales manager. Before you start hiring, determine what type of person you're going to hire. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the six critical attributes every great salesperson has and how you can find them. [MUSIC PLAYING]
