When you start to hire your first sales reps, you’ll hire some >good< people that still just fail and don’t work out
That’s on you to spot — before you hire them:
Here are 9 reasons good salespeople fail: 🔽🔽🔽
#1. You hire sales reps that need lots of training, systems, and process in the early days
Big Companies, at least some of them, are generally very good at this. Larger, fast-growing start-ups often become excellent at it. Small start-ups are almost always terrible at it
#2. You hire a rep that hasn’t sold at your price point before
Sales reps that are great at $20k deals join a start-up with tons of leads but at a $2k price point and fail again and again.
And vice-versa
Each price point has its own playbook
#3. You hire a rep that hasn’t sold with your sales process
Are you good at in-bound? Out-bound? Farming? Account management?
Reps are mostly good at one
#4. You hire a rep that can’t do competitive sales — but needs to be
Many sales professionals can win in an environment like Salesforce or Twilio where you have a dominant — not sole, but dominant — brand, but melt in an environment that is hyper-competitive
#5. You hire a rep that hasn’t sold without a brand backing them
Related to the prior point. Selling a product without an established brand, at least a mini-brand in its niche, is different. It can be fun because you get to interact with early adopters — but it’s way different.
#6. You hire a rep that doesn’t truly believe in the product
Later, again, brand can make up for this
But in the early days, an AE that doesn’t truly believe will rarely make quota
There are just too many objections & feature gaps
#7. You hire a rep that can’t understand the buyer
Not everyone is ready for technical or highly verticalized sales in the early days of a start-up’s life. Later, once a company has 30, 50, 100 reps … they get more help
#8. You hire a rep that can’t self-organize
It can be very tough to excel in almost any smaller environment if you can’t self-organize. But larger sales organizations put sales operations processes in place that keep you more organized.
#9. You hire a rep that skipped too many steps
These days, so many sales pros go in 100 days from SDR to a quota-carrying AE. From good AE without ever having hired anyone, straight to VP Sales
When I see folks skip 2+ stages of development, I’ve almost never seen that work out
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