The first salesperson you hire is the one most likely to fail — and it usually isn’t their fault. Owners hand off “sales” before they’ve written down what good looks like, then wonder why the new hire flounders.
Here’s what we tell people before they post the job.
Know what you’re actually handing off
If you’ve been the one selling, your process lives in your head. You read the room, you know which questions to ask, you know when to follow up. None of that is written down, so the new person is guessing.
Before you hire, spend a week writing down what you do: how a lead comes in, what you say first, what you send, when you chase. It doesn’t need to be pretty. It needs to exist.
Hire for the part you can’t teach
You can teach your product. You can teach your pricing. You can’t easily teach someone to pick up the phone when they don’t feel like it, or to stay warm after three “no”s in a row.
Hire for the temperament, train the rest.
Give them a 90-day number, not a “go sell”
“Go sell” is not a goal. A new salesperson needs a concrete target for the first 90 days — calls made, meetings booked, a revenue floor — and a weekly check-in where you look at it together. Without that, you won’t know if it’s working until it’s too late to fix.
The first 30 days are yours, not theirs
Sit in on calls. Listen to how they talk about the business. Correct early and often. The cost of a bad first month is a bad first year.
Want a hand setting up the role before you post it? Tell us what’s going on — that’s exactly the kind of thing we get in the room for.