Make a copy of this resource to refer back to as you hire your early startup sales team, a brief summation of the advice from the 0-$5M series on First Round Review.

🚦 Signals it’s not too early to hire your first salesperson

• [ ] You have at least a dozen customers (who aren’t all your buddies)
• [ ] You have a somewhat repeatable sales process
  • You know your ICP
  • You know your typical sales cycle length
  • You know the common objections and how to handle them
• [ ] You’re dropping leads because you have so much inbound interest that you can’t keep up
• [ ] You have a minimum viable business unit (such as budget for them to put on an event and some basic post-sales support to nurture new accounts)

🔍 The criteria to look for in candidates

• [ ] They’ve got early-stage experience
• [ ] They’re well-versed with your sales motion (this trumps domain expertise in most cases)
• [ ] They’re a missionary, not a mercenary, and are energized by the problem you’re trying to solve.

Bonus:

• [ ] They’ve been in sales leadership before (and hated it).
• [ ] They weren’t selling the clear category winner (so they know what it’s like to get their teeth kicked in)

🔮 The hiring exercises to find your top candidate

• [ ] Use this sales hiring scorecard to grade consistently across each candidate
• [ ] Ask these proven interview questions when sitting down with sales candidates
• [ ] Ask them to run a demo or a pitch of your product
  • Keep the exercise vague. What thoughtful questions do they ask to clarify the exercise?
  • How much time did they spend learning about your product over the course of the allotted time?
  • Can they create a beautiful deck without someone making it for them?
• [ ] Ask them to re-do their pitch
  • When you share feedback on how the first version pitch went, how do they react?
  • Are they able to quickly implement that feedback for the second try?