Do sales teams or customers come first?

Common Questions

On occasion, I am asked for advice about creating a sales pipeline, scaling a sales process and hiring a team. More often, the team has been hired and is not working, and I am asked to help fix it. Hiring people without a plan is a poor idea, so these are my answers to the most common questions about hiring sales. We’ll look at how to put a plan in place after the fact next week.

Should I hire a CRO?

If you hire a Chief Revenue Officer then you should expect a few things. They will design the sales process, they will favour a particular Customer Relationship Management system and add-ons for marketing automations, and they will expect to determine pricing. In turn, this leads to directing how the product evolves. If you have those things in place, or don’t want to spend money on them, or aren’t ready to change your product, don’t hire a CRO.

Why does the CRO determine how the product evolves? Because they understand the sales process, from impactful marketing and the buyer’s journey, to the point at which sales come unstuck. The CRO is the one responsible for listening and responding to customers. If you don’t do these things, you risk getting stuck in the doom loop of hiring and firing sales people.

“Yes, but no one told Steve Jobs what to build.” In fact they did. Jobs disliked mobile phones and it took a team of close confidants considerable time to convince him that the iPhone was a good idea.

“Henry Ford’s customers would have asked for a faster horse.” This is the “great man” myth of business and there is no evidence for it.

The first steam powered vehicles travelled at 2½ miles an hour, far slower than any horse, but curious customers tried them out. Rather than Ford being a visionary genius, most likely the car evolved the way most technology does. First come the innovators, who realise its potential, then the early adopters, the mass market and the reluctant laggards.

Even if Ford was a visionary, it doesn’t mean all founders are. Many innovations are close to market, solving problems the entrepreneurs themselves face before discovering others feel the same way. This is as close to building before you have customers as any successful innovation gets.

Should I hire a Head of Sales?

If you don’t want a CRO then maybe you need a Head of Sales. If so, they will expect to have a team underneath them, a say in choosing the CRM, and input into pricing and product development. You must grant them the space to be right or wrong.

A HoS has influence on pricing and product development for the same reason that a CRO demands it. They are listening and responding to customers, which is how a business scales.

“But I know my customers, I know what we can build and what we’ve sold.”

All true, or at least you should. But while you know your business inside out, this does not mean you know what new clients want. If you make someone responsible for the sales process then you must grant them authority over it. Responsibility and authority are two-sides of the same coin.

Should I hire sales people?

If you want people to sell what you have built, then you need a proven sales process in place. You can then teach it to new joiners. The more the process is in your head, or is flexible, or requires you to push the team to run faster, the less you need a sales team. Founder-led sales do not scale if they rely on the founder’s personality.

The easiest route to scaling with sales people is with inbound marketing. This means creating a customer pipeline through social media, website registrations and advertising. When customers come to you, then you may ask what they want and how much are they prepared to pay. Word of mouth works the same way.

When you go outbound through cold outreach, attending events and introductions, people will ask what you offer. They will most likely ask what it costs. The idea that you can pitch companies on their problems and not talk about price till later in the process, relies on selling to big companies with established budgets. If you are not in enterprise sales you need a clear idea of your product, its purpose and its cost. Without that your business development team, sales representatives, or whatever you call them, will be lost.

Teach before Automating

I often say if you can write it down you can automate it. But before automating your sales process, try teaching it. The simpler it is and the more often it works, the more junior the sales people you need to hire.

Questions to Ask and Answer

1. Am I the person who makes most of the company’s sales?

2. Does each sale require negotiation over product and pricing?

3. What part of the process can I write down and teach to people?

When you are ready there are three ways I can help:

1. Schedule a call to ask questions about AI with my tech team.

2. Resolving Team Conflicts: A free email course tackling an issue that no one teaches you as a manager.

3. The Profit Through Process Planner: My flagship course on how to design and invigorate a business that scales. I share 30 years of experience of researching, investing in and running companies, intermingled with the science and stories of business.