You don't need a sales team, not yet! When I talk to founders specifically service or SAAS business CEOs or founding teams. They would be like “If only I had a sales team, I would be able to scale my business” And this is at a very nascent stage of the companies life, where most sales were made because of family, friends, and acquaintances. But at that point, the initial boost that was there due to these sales has died down and now is at the stage where sales have either stagnated or is declining. Here is the thing, a sales team won’t be of help. What would happen in most cases is, A sales team is hired Asked to generate leads Sell and bring in revenue Which they can’t The sales team is fired and everybody is back to square one! Here is their reason why every company I have worked with is different not in the way the problem they were trying to solve. But in the way the product was built, They usually set our build a cycle but came back out with a Land cruiser. Originally meant for a weekend cyclist the Land cruiser was not what they wanted. This happens more often than not. Having said that if you are the founder and are contemplating hiring a sales team. Here are a few questions that you need to ask yourself, If you were asked to sell today, can you go to LinkedIn Sales Navigator create a filter, and show us the target group that would become your perfect customers - I call it the Linkedin Persona test. If you can’t then stop. Have you already sold to such a customer? If not, then you need to stop If you have already sold to such a customer, are they the best users of your product adoption-wise? If not, you need to stop. Can these customers who are your best customers adoption-wise, afford to pay for an increase in cost? If, not you need to stop. Most of these questions has a couple of simple answers You need to define a customer persona and filmography or in marketing terms, you need to define your ICP If you have defined your ICP, you should have a framework- might be a skeleton framework for finding, reaching out, engaging, and closing deals with the ICP available with you. If you have these 2 in place then you are ready to hire a sales team. If not go back to the drawing board, sell your product to a cold customer first, scale them and note down the process. Nobody knows your product and your customer better than you and the whole point of a sales team is to use this knowledge and your ad hoc process to create a scalable, repeatable process that generates revenue. So before you get into hiring a great/expensive sales team. First, get a basic understanding of what needs to be done, ready.
