As the founder of a startup, you may be tempted to handle everything yourself, including sales. After all, common wisdom states that founders are going to be the most motivated, knowledgeable, and dedicated to promoting the product.
However, Somen Mondal points out in his article published by The Globe and Mail, that being both founder and salesperson is not scalable.
Mondal founded Field ID, a startup which he grew successfully to the point of an acquisition in 2014. He admits there were many mistakes made along the road, and he offers the lessons learned from his experience as a guide so you don’t have to learn the hard way.
The article, titled 5 Tips for Building a Startup Sales Team, tells the story of how Mondal learned the hard way how important it is to hire a good sales team.
5 Tips for Building Your Team:
1. “Make sure there’s demand for your product.”
This may evolve over time as your initial product may not be something people actually want, in which case you can pivot according to what you learn and then build up your sales and marketing efforts around that.
2. “Hire salespeople in pairs.”
Mondal says, “The problem with hiring one salesperson is that you have no basis of comparison. It’s not exactly fair to compare their performance with the founders.”When you compare two sales people with one another, on the other hand, you can start to determine what works and what doesn’t for your business.
3. “Don’t hire based on recommendations alone.”
Even though it’s natural to look to prior colleagues’ experience with a salesperson at XYZ corporation to predict how they’ll perform for you, the author notes that it’s better to look for someone who you know fits with your unique company culture.“Even if someone was a rockstar at a huge company, they may struggle at a startup,” he writes.
4. “Have the right tools and process in place.”
You need a good CRM, and to make sure everyone is using it correctly.
5. “Use psychometric assessments, not gut feeling.”
This final one is fascinating. Mondal shares his company’s experience that crunching the numbers from personality tests produces a truer indication of a good hire than even your intuition about the person.
To view the original article in its entirety, please visit The Globe and Mail.
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