I’ve been asked by an entrepreneur friend to talk about hiring sales people. My friend, like a lot of high-tech entrepreneurs, is a technical person who also has the role of CEO and Sole Salesperson, and they feel it is time for them to “bring in a professional” to “take the company to the next level.”
Here’s where I think a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly those that are bootstrapping, make a big mistake. They hire a VP of Sales and Marketing, capable of growing a large sales force. Maybe. The New VP spends a lot of time thinking about Positioning. They talk about Executive Selling, Leadership Alignment and Developing Value Propositions. What they probably won’t talk about during the interview or after being hired is how many phone calls they are going to make to new prospects every day. When the sales don’t happen, it’s a product or market problem. (They say)