A Technical Founder’s Notes on Sales Team Management

Some very good points. Most of this advice is more relevant for latter stage companies and it&#x27;s an important distinction to make.<p>Founders often make the mistake of hiring closers (the kind of sales people this article describes) too early. They should really be looking for biz dev types who can go out and identify target markets, quality referral channels and refine the pitch to be eventually handed off to a true &quot;sales person.&quot;

So what I don&#x27;t really understand is what exactly the &quot;right&quot; sales people are doing that the others aren&#x27;t. I totally understand that there is distribution of competence for anything - but what is the real difference?<p>I can only come up with a few things I can figure out on my own so maybe someone can tell me if I am missing one:<p>1. Understand the customer better through research&#x2F;interaction and pitch a cleaner &quot;value&quot;<p>2. Drive the CTO&#x2F;CEO to refine the product to match customer need better<p>3. Find the right person in the organization<p>4. Have personal contacts prior to joining the organization that convert better<p>5. Use &quot;psychology&quot; or whatever to gently coerce a sale<p>*6. Manage other sales people well<p>What am I missing?<p>It seems like the better a product is the less variability in competence would matter - so in that sense the difference between ok and awesome is just the speed at which they can convert.

Great article. I don&#x27;t totally grok #2 about not turning over existing leads&#x2F;deals to sales. That seems like a decent place to get started with minimal downside (as long as person has even the slightest discretion on shedding suboptimal situations).<p>I also get concerned when sales learns that it can ask product for anything and get it. My experience is it&#x27;s generally better to &quot;sell what&#x27;s on the lot&quot;. This avoids the endless delays in closing pending some future enhancement.

Why should lead generation be outside the control of the sales group? Isn&#x27;t marketing about a lot more than just lead generation? I always thought the best salespeople either come with there own long list of leads, or they are good at generating new leads, or both.

Thanks, this is helpful. You mention having marketing by the time you hire the VP Sales, and you link to a few posts on hiring VP of Sales- do you have any links&#x2F;thoughts on hiring marketing?

How much commission is typical for sales people? Is it a percentage of the amount the deal is closed for? Is it a percentage of the customer LTV?

Thanks, lots of great insights in here. Jives with my instincts, but important to hear it from someone else as well.

How to manage salespeople: round them up, pile them into a dump truck, and release them from the edge of a high cliff.

Interesting to see the justification for screwing engineers on the pay.<p>EDIT:<p>To clarify--the idea of commission is effectively an equity stake in either the revenue or profit (depending on the setup, right)?<p>So, the sales folks see an immediate return on their work. The engineers, while salaried, have no such visceral link to the performance of the product...just some trivial paper and the thin sliver of hope they won&#x27;t be fucked over during an exit.