Learning to hire your first B2B sales reps : Here is what you need to know.

Growth remains a top priority for every B2B Startup, be it 2021 or 2050. CEOs and founders are looking to expand their sales team or to hire their first Sales Reps with a strategic approach to business growth.

Hiring Sales Representatives can give you an early stage, much-needed boost and help you to convert potential leads into long-term customers. But converting leads into customers is a science and an art, and also hard with just a traditional approach. Unfortunately, most startups jump in too soon to hire sales reps or they wait for too long. In both cases, the startup loses the potential leads.

You can hire at the right time using these three business assessments:

1. Track the current trajectory of sales
2. Understand your ideal customer profile
3. Complete a SWOT Analysis

After you are done with the assessment process, consider the below factors while hiring the Sales Reps for your B2B startup.

1) Why are you hiring them?

Be aware! Sales Reps can only scale up sales and keep sales running. You cannot expect Sales Reps to come in and define your sales funnel. So keep the sales playbook ready and make the Sales Reps follow it.

2) Does the Sales Persona defined for the position match the candidate who applied?

The three business assessments define the type of candidature who can fit into the sales role in your startup. You, being the Founder/CEO, will be the first salesperson of the company; you know what sells and what does not. So ensure the Sales Reps you hire match a profile a comprised persona. Your Sales Persona should include qualities of sales experts who can understand the product/solutions they have to sell, and demonstrate excellent knowledge of the sales process.

3) Is the ideal candidate flexible for the Startup culture?

Since the startup is just scaling, the Sales Reps cannot follow the "traditional sales method" and must go beyond that. Starting from cold calling to nurturing to engaging cold leads, he/she has to be ready to face any sales objections and follow the sales playbook. Not only that, but should have satisfying answers to share with potential leads (future customers) as justification for any rejection. This is where startups fail or miss potential opportunities.

4) Can they pick the road map defined for the Sales
Funnel by CEO/Founder and build the sales pipeline?

Given the playbook and sales mentoring/guidance, make sure your Sales Reps are capable of following the defined sales roadmap, generate leads with an organic approach. Because the main purpose of hiring in-house sales reps is to generate leads organically and successfully convert them into potential leads to retention customers. So, don’t make the mistake of hiring Sales Reps to make sales experiments. Keep the measure metrics established in the form of OKRs to measure the performance and for the ease of the sales process.

5) Do they have domain expertise and the skill set required to keep up the productivity?

Always choose productivity with creativity. Your ideal candidate is the one who not just possesses the sales skill set, has industry knowledge, and experience, but also knows the startup culture, is ready to take on
initiatives, and is a multi-tasker. When they are provided with the right
toolset (gong, outreach.io, sales navigator, etc.) to make sales, they are not just expected to make sales happen but understand how to engage the target audience and ideal customer profiles through creative and innovative sales methods. This way B2B startups can scale faster by hiring their first Sales Reps and excel in sales opportunities even at a global level.

Following the steps would help to ensure that "growth" dollars for B2B startups are being spent wisely.