February 07, 2017

178: Sales Hiring for Startups

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about sales hiring. Salespeople require a specific skillset that may be difficult to quantify and assess from a hiring perspective. Sometimes, it’s best to just see them perform. But, as this is not always possible, listen to find out what you should be looking for in a salesperson and the key indicators that can point you to a great, potential candidate for your team.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:38 – Hiten says sales hiring is an interesting process

00:47 – “It’s a lot different in hiring marketing”

00:52 – How do you know if a person is going to be good in sales? – “You don’t”

01:15 – Steli has hired a lot of salespeople, but he can never say he’s hired a great salesperson

01:33 – There are indicators, but the only way to truly know is to work with somebody

02:02 – Ask certain questions or test prospective hires in certain challenges

02:37 – Sales is based on performance

03:50 – You only know somebody is good when you observe them work

05:07 – Steli reserves his judgement until he works with a person for at least 3 months

05:48 – “Alot of sales people are incredibly inconsistent”

06:40 – Look for signals through observation

07:00 – It takes a while to know a salesperson’s capacity

07:45 – Steli has 3 categories for salespeople: people who are great in selling, people who are great in selling themselves as salespeople, and everybody else

08:10 – People who are not good at sales will not be very convincing

09:17 – Most people who are hiring for sales do not have a lot of experience in it

10:00 – Another factor to consider is how easy it is to get them on your team

10:42 – “If somebody is too easy to hire, they are probably not that good in sales”

11:17 – “If you are in sales and you’re great at it, you’re not looking for a job”

11:58 – Ideally, startups should not hire people who have a long sales career already

13:37 – The best channel to get salespeople is to look at your network

14:16 – You could hire an outsourced provider

15:25 – “Who is somebody you know that could be amazing at sales, but would never want a sales job?”

16:34 – Hire somebody who has the traits you’re looking for and train them

17:43 – Before hiring anyone, ask yourself this key question, “Do I want to buy from this person?”

18:36 – Want to know more about sales hiring? Check out Steli’s working copy for The Sales Hiring Playbook and enter the code thestartupchat to get access

19:04 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

There’s no way you can know if a person is good in sales unless you see them work.

Indicators to knowing whether a sales hire will be a great salesperson are not 100% accurate.

Before looking outside to hire a salesperson, begin looking at your own network for possible hires, first.

Resources Mentioned:

The Sales Hiring Playbook – Steli’s book regarding sales hiring

Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah: And this is Hin Shah, and today ... what we're going to talk about is Sales Hiring. It's probably going to be me, be me rapid-fire asking Stali many questions I can, because I know he's still a knowledge on this topic.

Steli Efti: Let's go.

Hiten Shah: First of all, on the sales side ... I've hired sales people ... it's definitely been an interesting process, scaling a sales team is also an interesting process. Mostly because it's a lot different than hiring marketing in my experience. I'll start off with the first question on my mind, which is: how do you know that sales person is any good?

Steli Efti: Yeah. That's probably the number one question I get when it comes to hiring sales people.

Hiten Shah: Awesome.

...more

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By Steli Efti & Hiten Shah: Serial Entrepreneurs, Sales & Marketing Experts, Startup Investors & Advisors, CEOs running multi million dollar SaaS Startups

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