I can always tell when someone is hiring sales people for the first time. They typically make 3 rookie mistakes: 1) Hiring a VP as their First Salesperson Good VPs want to build teams, manage them, set strategy, and help with the most important deals. Good VPs DO NOT want to do the dirty out bounding, follow-ups, contract redlines, etc…that come with early stage sales. If you need help building some operations or strategy, then hire a good sales consultant. They’re going to help you avoid some very costly mistakes. And make sure your first hire is a full cycle AE that can prospect and close. 2) Complicated Commission Plans I’ve built dozens of sales compensation plans. I used to worry about every scenario…how do I protect the company? How do I protect the reps? The plans got complex. It cost the company company countless hours of expensive time trying to calculate every detail and manage the one off scenarios with the team. Don’t do this. Instead, keep it simple. - Your first plans should not include escalators, just flat rates For SDRs specifically: - Start with a commission for each meeting held and try to add a commission for each deal closed (if you can) - In the beginning, don’t penalize them for bad meetings set, but monitor it closely. Eventually you can add variable that measures the % of their meetings set that AEs mark as Sales Qualified Opps 3) Missing Obvious Red Flags in the Hiring Process A bad first hire will cost your executives a lot of time and a lot of actual money for the company. At a bare minimum, your first hires should be excellent with the small details around communication — good formatting, proactive, professional. You’re hiring sales because you need to get it off your plate. So while you’re juggling everything else, you don’t have time to train someone on the fundamentals of client communication. How they communicate with you during the interview process is a reflection of how they communicate with customers. Even if the candidate has good logos on their resume, don’t drop your standards on communication. The reason this is top of mind? We've been hiring a bunch of overseas SDRs for our clients and I've been having these exact conversations with founders and early stage managers.

@mattressguy_ Haha well you're part of the way there! Like anything, it's gonna suck for a while. But just keep going.

@cryptoreo So it let you make a mess?

@StumpGuyTy @mhp_guy Once you just start doing things it can be intoxicating. You realize that most of the time, you just need to ask or to try something if you want to get it done.

@irentdumpsters @juliusmarchi A piece of my soul just died reading this post. Good customer service and salesmanship is such an edge

Not sure one will be better than the other but there will definitely be tradeoffs. Culture and comms will probably be better for the college intern. But they probably won't stick around for more than a year, won't have the same commitment level, and probably don't have the same level of experience that you can get overseas for that budget.

@CoFoundersNik At least the little guy is learning some good lessons.

If your US based sales reps don't like to cold call, consider hiring a rep overseas. In my experience, you can find people who are fearless about cold calling and have very little accent. 50-250 calls a day...not a problem.

@mattressguy_ Hell yeah!

We just hired a B2B Hubspot Marketer for an enterprise AI startup. Here's an early green flag on his communication: I sent him a Slack connect request to his client email -- this is a black hole because I'm not sure if he saw that, but then he sent me this email: "Hi Jason! Got the email notification you are trying to reach by slack, but it seems I don't have permissions on my CLIENT slack account to see those messages, I'm reaching out to Julia and/or Eric to ask for those." He PROACTIVELY sent that email to me to make sure I knew what was going on. We call this a "no update update" and it's critical to great communication. If he continues to communicate like this, there's a really high chance that he's going to be successful in this role.

@AtlantaTaxes @PranavGhatraju No doubt

@NotGoKGreen Hell yeah!

60 MPH winds, the best slice of pizza in the city, and a celebrity encounter…that’s how you welcome an employee to NYC. One of our account managers, Daim, was in NYC for the first time, so I had to take him around for the day. I blocked my entire afternoon and set up 5 New York things to do: As a remote-first company, it was important for me to make this rare opportunity, a memorable day. 1. Lunch at Mercado Little Spain in Hudson Yards 2. A trip to the Edge, an 1,100 foot balcony. You can see everything in NYC and 20 miles into NJ. This was the 60 MPH wind. I could barely hold my phone to take a picture. 3. American Museum of Natural History. Daim is a big history guy, so he really loved this. We spent a lot of time talking about ancient civilizations and dinosaurs (of course). 4. A slice at Joe’s Pizza, the best slice in NYC. This trip would have been a total bust without this pizza. We got slices from a fresh pie and we talked about all of the celebrities on the wall. 5. An evening at the Comedy Cellar, which included a Judd Apatow showing up for a set. This was his favorite thing from that day. An awesome wrap to a quintessential NYC day. I think we hit the goals of making it a memorable time. But we definitely missed some things, If your employee was visiting NYC for the first time, what would be on your list of things to do or places to eat?

@riloreist this is great. are you guys doing the sales calls too?

@TS_Secrets What mistake?

@bradsmithcoach Working out first thing in the AM is the only formula that works for me. If I don't, then the day gets too busy just like you said

@DaneSuave Try to remind myself of this every day

@HarrisFanaroff Embrace the lack of mobility of #2!