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The Top 8 SaaStr Tips to Building an Effective First Sales Team
The most important tips and best practices for founders when building out their first sales team:
Get sales experience yourself first
Close the first 10-20 customers yourself to understand the sales process
This will give you critical insights to effectively train and manage your first sales reps
Structure compensation to incentivize early sales reps
Consider letting new reps take home 50-100% of what they close in the first 1-3 months
This helps them “eat” and get motivated, before scaling back to a more standard 20-25% commission
Hire sales reps you would buy from yourself
Since no one has heard of your product yet, each lead is precious
Hire reps that you would personally trust to sell your own product
Hire at least 2 reps to start
Having a “control” group allows you to better understand what drives success
Provide hands-on training and support
Be available to help your first reps all day, as they learn the product and sales process
Formal training processes can come later, but initial on-the-job learning is key
Prioritize smarter, more experienced reps
The learning curve will be steep, so more capable reps are better
Use a simple “round robin” lead distribution
Split leads evenly between reps at first, to keep things simple
Hire reps with some relevant SaaS experience
Look for reps who have sold products at a similar price point before
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I asked Perplexity AI search to summarize the best saastr articles on building a first sales team. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start.
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