4 Signs That You’re Ready to Hire with Annelies Husmann

We meet plenty of founders who are itching to hire salespeople. Some of them seem to think that all of their sales problems could be fixed by bringing on a VP or a few account managers. Others just hate the prospect of selling and would prefer to hand the task off to someone else.

In reality, this isn’t going to fix anything. There are a few things you need to have in order if you want your new hires to truly thrive.

Annelies Husmann, Head of Sales & Account Management for Mode Analytics, recently joined our founders for a discussion on the hiring process. She spoke about identifying the skills you need to look for in your candidates, offered some interviewing advice and shared what she’s learned from mis-hiring in the past (see the highlight reel below).

[Video]

Perhaps most importantly, however, Annelies outlined the processes that need to be in place before anyone is hired. According to her, there are four key boxes that you want to have checked-off before you bring any new team members onboard:

You Have A Solid Customer Base

If you haven’t sold a single product, it doesn’t make sense to hire anybody. According to Annelies, you should have closed a handful of deals with complete strangers (selling to your friends or family doesn’t count here) before you try to bring anyone else onboard.

“Do you have a customer base of people you don’t know that are signed, launched and happy?” she asked the group, “If your answer to that question is ‘yes’, fantastic."

You Understand Your Sales Process

Every customer buys things differently. By figuring out what it takes to sell to your customer, you’ll be able to create a template that your future salespeople can work from.

“Make sure that you have a repeatable process in place before you go out and hire someone,” she says, “They need to be able to come in, look at the process and say, ‘Great, I can mimic this. I can implement what you’ve already learned to be successful in my goal.”

You Have A Plan for Finding New Customers

There’s hardly a seller on earth who could walk into a new job and start generating their own leads. It’s your job to identify the profile of your target buyer and to develop a map to help your salespeople find them.

“You’re not going to hire an SDR or an AE and say, ‘Welcome to the team now go forth and conquer,” Annelies says, “You need to be able to say, “We have this process in place and we also know how we’re going to acquire new customers.”

You Have the Resources to Support Your Customers

If you can’t give your customers what they paid for (or any additional support they might need), don’t hire people to sell it to them.

“There’s nothing worse than getting a customer in-house and saying, ‘Oh, we can’t actually fulfill that,’” she says, “Make sure that you have an idea for when you actually get deals closed. How are you going to support them? How are you going to bring them to market and be successful?”