ACCELERATING Your Start-up with World Class Hiring
As we close out February, we are excited to share the first blog in our 12-month series outlining key steps for GTM ACCELERATION. In this post, we are covering the “A” for Appointing a leader and hiring your GTM Team.
Hiring at this stage isn’t about just filling roles – it's about building the foundation for long-term success. The right hires bring more than just skills, they bring capacity, adaptability, accountability, and a shared vision for company culture and success. Smart hiring can ACCELERATE your growth and drive innovation; bad hires can derail your company’s momentum. In a small team, proportionally every person hired has an outsized impact on company culture. The best leaders hire a diverse team with complementary strengths and the ability to augment each other's weaknesses.
Why Your First Sales Leader Matters
Your first sales leader plays a pivotal role in the success of your entire company, beyond driving revenue. She (or he) should be hired before the rest of the sales team so she can select the talent and take responsibility for their success. High-performing salespeople have different styles and come in all shapes and sizes. Sales leaders should be given autonomy to select the team they commit to deliver performance goals.
When interviewing your sales leader, be sure that her philosophy aligns with your company values. Sales teams have a profound impact on company culture because salespeople are a dynamic, extroverted, and confident group that make-up the engine that drives your growth. It takes a lot of effort to create a strong culture and very little effort to destroy it. As the founder and CEO, you should remain involved in the hiring process to ensure your sales leader hires employees who support and augment your startup’s culture. A strong, value-driven sales team strengthens the company’s core identity.
Building a Strong Go-to-Market Team and Culture
In the early stages of a startup, culture is shaped organically by the small, high-performing team you have assembled. As you scale, hiring top performers is critical because A-players can attract other A-players or below, B-players can attract other B-players or below, but B-players cannot recruit A-players. Once your quality slips, it can snowball. As a founder, you want to follow a few key hiring practices that will ensure you maintain quality with each hire while moving quickly.
Build on existing relationships and leverage your network to ensure a high hit rate of successful hires.
Be clear about what professional experience and personal qualities you are seeking before you begin looking and design an efficient process focused on those.
When hiring through cold outreach, be even more diligent in assessing fit and capability; take the extra steps to ensure you know what you are getting.
In addition to hiring your sales leader and giving her the independence to make hiring and operational decisions, there are several other best practices to ensure you are building the strongest early-stage team.
Hire in Groups, Not Alone – Avoid hiring in isolation. Bring in multiple perspectives from across seniority levels in your team to counteract personal biases and ensure you make the best decision. This internal alignment will also create buy-in and excitement for the final candidate once they are selected.
Always Check References – Take the time to check references and talk to people who know the candidate personally. This extra effort goes a long way to know what you are getting, including strengths and weaknesses.
Treat Hiring as a Team Sport – Keep each other accountable to maintain high hiring standards and prevent missteps. When you are trying to move fast, it can feel like it is taking too long to find the right person. Make sure you and your team are not trading high quality for urgency to fill the role.
Common Hiring Mistakes to Avoid
Hiring well is a skill. Over decades of hiring and managing people, the Venture Guides team understands what to look for and knows common mistakes that can be made, especially in a fast-moving start up. Here are our recommendations for hiring mistakes to avoid:
Startups require resilience. Salespeople who move jobs frequently are not likely to be resilient.
Salespeople are great at selling themselves. Do not be swayed by charisma alone; dig into their past experiences to determine if they can sell your product.
Overvaluing big brand experience. Just because someone worked at a well-known company does not mean they can thrive in a startup environment. Ask questions that will reveal whether they have the resilience, creativity, and motivation to make the hard transition from working in a big company to a startup.
Hiring someone who is too senior. If they have advanced too far in their career, they may not be willing or able to return to the hands-on work required in a startup. Again, ask questions that get at what they enjoy doing day-to-day and what makes them feel impactful.
Relying too much on personal connection. While liking a candidate is important, it should not be the main factor in hiring. Hire in groups to ensure different perspectives on each candidate’s skills, mindset, and ability to perform in your startup’s unique environment.
Your first sales leader is a foundational hire who will ACCELERATE growth or stall your momentum. Take the time to find the right person, give them autonomy to build their team, but ensure they align with your company’s culture. By following best practices and avoiding common pitfalls, you’ll set your startup up for long-term sales success.
All of the Venture Guides portfolio companies are hiring - Contact us to learn more!