How to Hire Your First Sales Leader

We have seen an uptick in small, growing companies asking us to find them a sales leader after their first sales leader failed. Diagnosing what went wrong revealed a common pattern. Fortunately, you can avoid some hiring failures by answering a simple question before you start the process to hire your first sales leader.

The Critical Question to Ask Before You Hire Your First Sales Leader.

Despite many failures, the company succeeded in hiring a strong sales professional. Unfortunately, the sales leader’s strengths didn’t align with the company’s goals. You can avoid this mistake by considering this question.

Maximize short-term revenue or build a repeatable and scalable sales strategy?

Most of our clients say they want someone who can do both. They want them to close (and often also hunt for) large opportunities while hiring, training, and mentoring a new sales team. Unless your sales team is small and your sales process is simple, it’s not a good idea. We can draw on major league sports to help explain why. 

The last time a major professional sports team made the playoffs with one of their players also coaching the team was 1970. You can read ESPN’s The Evolution of Player-Coaches ” to get a full explanation as to why it doesn’t work in sports anymore. The short answer as to why it doesn’t work in the sales world is simple: time. Hunting and closing opportunities is a full-time job. So is leading, mentoring, and hiring a sales team. Doing all of this while learning your business and operating under intense pressure to deliver results quickly is close to impossible.

Getting it Right.

To add color to the above question, ask yourself where you want the company to be in 12-18 months. Would you choose more revenue at the cost of a lack of repeatable sales processes, or give up some revenue in exchange for building a scalable, repeatable sales approach?

If revenue growth is the main objective, hire a tactical sales manager who can push the team to drive activity levels. Down the road, you can add a strategic sales leader or hire a new sales manager to work below your original sales manager (if they’ve grown into a bigger role). With some situations, it makes more sense to simply hire a stellar sales professional.

If your goal is to hire a leader who can build a sales approach that will drive years of hyper growth, you must hire a strategic sales director or VP. Of course, identifying and vetting strategic sales leaders is much harder than vetting sales managers. To help you, we wrote The 3 Skill Sets an Exceptional Sales Leader Must Have. Although it was written for inside sales teams, another useful qualifier to distinguish between a tactical sales leader (Sales Manager) and a strategic sales leader (Sales Director or VP of Sales) is “The Real Difference Between a Director and Sales Manager.”

When You’re Ready to Hire Your First Sales Leader.

When founders recognize their need for structured leadership and repeatable revenue processes, they often start evaluating external talent networks and recruiting partners. For companies ready to build a repeatable quota-carrying GTM motion, exploring our experienced sales leadership recruiting services can help you identify the right Head of Sales, VP of Sales, or CRO with the background to scale your team.

Recommended Reading: Best Sales Manager Recruiters