Yesterday, I talked about a counter-intuitive outcome we experienced in hiring a heavy-hitter salesperson as our first sales hire. It did not work out.
After that experience, we regrouped with another plan more suitable to our startup’s needs. Here are some of the elements:
- Hire a Sales Assistant as the first sales hire (as recommended here)
- Focus on inside sales, avoiding travel as much as possible
- Use marketing automation (we use salesforce.com + bizconnector, because it’s cheap)
- Minimize partnerships, keep focus internal (as recommended here)
- Get a Growth Hacker for the business (as recommended here)
- Focus on content creation with a blog and useful demos/examples
There are more elements we are adding to the list (such as cold calling), but the list above is an improvement over our first approach.
Different startups require different strategies. Differentiators include:
- VC funded startups may require a heavy-hitting VP of Sales in order for the investors to be comfortable with the team
- Higher average sale prices (ASPs) justify more heavy-hitting (e.g. $50,000 or greater); lower ASPs are better suited for a more lean inside approach to sales
- Rapid innovations in sales and marketing technology have made it easy to accomplish a lot with little cost/effort
What have you done to build your startup’s initial sales team?
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