How to start building your Sales Org?
For weeks - you're the only person selling your company's product - on a late Sunday evening, you realize there is too much demand for you to handle; now what?
Most companies begin their journey with Founder Led Sales i.e. the founder/CEO as the key Sales / Customer Success person. Humble beginnings (often embarrassing) - I’ve been there: did our first 18 Sales - 4 in December ‘21 and 14 in January ‘22 - before we started hiring Sales Reps.
In several earlier posts on the Indian Founder’s Field Guide - I’ve written about different aspects of building a Sales Org - but ALL of these posts assumed you have some form of a Sales Org - what if you don’t? What if you’re still the 4 person team trying to figure out this selling thing?
Have no fear - here’s a high level guide to "Getting Started With Sales”
You can click on the below image to zoom in & download it for future use
I have already written in detail about building a Sales Training Library and Sales Metrics in previous posts - you can read them later on, if required.
Let us now focus on Steps 1 to 3 - where little literature exists
STEP #1 - Founder Led
As the Founder/CEO - you are most articulate about your company’s product - you can answer ALL questions, paint the vision & explain the USP.
Let’s face it - not everyone else can - hence its your company
During Founder Led Sales - it is your job to “figure” out what resonates with customers
Do statistics work? Do testimonials work? Do case studies work?
What words cause their eyes to brighten up or cause “uh huh” to be uttered?
In our first 18 Sales - I always took ONE other team member along to write up some notes
We used these notes to create a Sales Script and FAQs document
It also meant that more team members had an understanding of the Sales process (so I was unavailable during the Process Led sales stage - there were others who could answer questions)
Milestone: When is Founder Led Sales done? Guess what - it never does - but, you’ll know when to layer on Process Led Sales (i.e. via Sales Reps)
You’ll start to get exhausted repeating the same stuff - which should be written in your Script & FAQs by now
Your customers / product is driving enough prospects to you where you can no longer handle all requests.
Pro Tip: IF you can, save some of your call recordings while pitching customers (with their permission) - this will greatly help new Reps understand how early Sales were done.
There is no defined time period for Founder Led Sales - it could be 30 to 90 days - or maybe longer if you change the product significantly. Now, you’re at the fun part - PROCESS!
STEP #2 - Experimenting with Process Led
You’ve now figured out HOW to sell - you now need to figure HOW others can sell
Every guru on Sales has their own view on how many Sales folks to hire on Day 0 - it should never be 1 (random luck) and it probably shouldn’t be 10 (can’t give individual attention). We hired 5 with one Manager.
The goal of Process Led Sales is to “productize” the company’s ability to drive revenue from prospects i.e. not dependent on a single person
Everything you & your team are learning needs to be documented - Notion, Loom, posters, printed material etc
This can get tedious - you MIGHT want to make an early Manager level hire / Ops hire who can co-ordinate with Engineering, Marketing & your new Sales Org.
Some process items you might want to replicate from our journey:
Do a “Start Of Day” (SOD) huddle with your small 3 to 5 person Sales team - recap the previous day / week’s learnings.
Also remind them: Be open to new things - early stage Sales is full of chaos.
Do an “End Of Day” (EOD) discussion - write down common pointers for adding to the FAQs
Do a weekly update to your Sales Training Library
Get non-Sales team members (including yourself) to hear 15-25 calls of your team per week for insights
Milestone: When is the “Experiment” phase of Process Led Sales done? You’ll know it!
You’re starting to see your Sales Reps close business like clockwork
Your Sales Manager is trying to design variable incentive programs - a great time for you both to decide on the Sales Quota (slab wise targets) for Reps
You might ask your team to build some reports / dashboards or invest in some Sales tools
Pro Tip: ALWAYS save some of the good call recordings for inclusion in training material
There is no defined time period for experimenting with Process Led Sales - it could be ~ 90 days - or maybe longer if you have a complex / enterprise Sales product. Now, PLEASE do NOT jump right into scaling the process - ITERATE on the process.
STEP #3 - Iterating on Process Led
You’ve now figured ONE method for HOW others can sell - now you’re fine tuning & testing BEFORE you scale
Arguably, this is the easiest part - but the one area where people are prone to premature optimization & sticking to status quo (I can write an essay on this - but suffices to say this was a major problem I’ve faced).
You’ve now doubled your Sales team to ~10 Reps with one manager & one Ops person.
Hopefully, the updated training material will shorten the Ramp Curve (“time to generate revenue”) for new Reps
You might see your Tenured Reps producing even more business like clockwork!
At this stage,
Your new Reps are critical: They give you a fresh perspective on existing training material & are often brimming with ideas.
You should encourage the Sales Reps to try different approaches to closing customers (changes in script or changes in Sales collateral shared with customers)
Consolidate:
Lock in report formats (temporarily)
Build boiler plate job descriptions & incentive programs
Start the search for / close a VP Sales level hire
Milestone: When is the “Iterate” phase of Process Led Sales done?
Your team feels like they’ve tested a lot of ideas; they’re running out of creativity - you now “know” what works & what doesn’t
You will start to see a rough formula which tells you:
“{X} type of Sales Rep hired by us takes {Y} time period with {Z} training provided to produce ${A} in revenue in a 90 day period post their initial training period.”
Okay, so you’ve got 10-15 Reps, some Sales support staff, Sales leader & this formula. Congratulations - now, its time to go ballistic (we’ll cover scaling a Sales Org separately since that needs a LOT of space!)
FAQs section
{This is a placeholder which I will update based on questions}
Closing thoughts
About 13 months, I had no idea how spending 9 hours per day “trying” to do Sales would get us to a 50 person Sales Org. Most of it was trial & error, sheer luck & brute force.
I hope this post gives you (the founder/CEO who is grinding Sales in the shadows) some clarity / guideposts on how the evolution from Founder Led Sales to Scaling a Sales Org takes place.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts, comments & feedback. Please do share this on Social Media if you found it useful.