How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Authors: Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
To recap, in week three I reflected on “Nailing the Niche“. Nailing the Niche is all about finding what works best for your company. You will not succeed in hyper growth if you do not have a specific focus.
Week four I reflected on Nets-Marketing. Once you find you niche, strategize your marketing plan (inclusive of a Revenue Team).
In Part III of From Impossible to Inevitable, Ross and Lemkin covers (6) break out topics:
- Learn from Our Mistakes
- Specialization: Your #1 Sales Multiplier
- Sales Leaders
- Hiring Best Practices for Sales
- Scaling the Sales Team
- For Startups Only
I have decided to hone in on Hiring Best Practices for Sales because boy oh boy, hiring the wrong people can kill your business faster than a terrible product or service.
Let’s start with talent acquisition. In order to know what you are looking for, you have to know the job. Ross and Lemkin say in the opener of the chapter that Throughout All Phases “The CEO and all cofounders need to be selling. Even if one of you is “the main salesperson,” everyone needs to participate in sales cycles and talking with customers.”
Mastered predictable outcome? Now it is time to outsource. Anyone can have a “great resume” and spew sales numbers, but can the do it for every company? Start with hiring a Sales Development Rep (SDR) that supports you (the CEO). Coach them carefully for at least 3 months while ramping up and figuring out their system. This is great advice. Dropping someone in the deep end to see if they sink or swim doesn’t always work because everyone’s learning curve is different.
Simple Hiring Tricks (page 149)
So how did you find that perfect fit or first SDR? Recruitment. I love how Ross and Lemkin correlate recruitment to being another form of sales and marketing. To attract the best you have to market the best. How are you describing your company or work environment? Is it communicated in a way that makes the best and brightest talent want to knock down the doors and join the team or is it a place where employees will come just to earn a pay check?
Hiring and building a team is also about building people (professionally). Don’t just hire the established professional, “hire people who show past success as well as people with untapped potential”. Here are a few things that the authors want us to consider:
- Coachability (#1!)
- Prior success
- Work ethic
- Curiosity
- Intellegence
Don’t be afraid of doing it all yourself.
Final Advice from Paul Fifield.
