Steli Efti - The Sales Hiring Playbook.: Starting from nothing and scaling to your first 25 reps.

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Published by Close Publishing501 Forest Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301
www.close.io

Cover by Close.io
ISBN-10: 1539332128ISBN-13: 978-1539332121 To my mother Anthoula, my wife Diana, and my little super hustlers Georgios and Leonidas.

I truly believe appreciation is the currency you pay the universe. I want to give a huge shout-out to Ryan Frazier, Justin Gold, Ken Grace, MatthewHimelstein, Paul Kudlow, Sarah Landstreet, Roland Ligtenberg, Michael Momsen, Josh Morgan, Christopher Sheehan, and Jilian Voege for reviewing this book. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.

INTRODUCTIONi

iIn 2011, we started a "Sales As A Service" business called ElasticSales. Thevision for Elastic was to build a massive sales infrastructure and empower startups and companies around the world to tap into that infrastructure inorder to scale their sales efforts.

Think Amazon AWS for Sales.
Our mission was simple: never again should a great company fail becauseof a lack of sales.

We started hiring top sales talent, opening offices and signing up clients within the first few weeks. It was clear that there was massive demand for this service out there. Much more than we were capable of handling at thetime. We didnt have a huge sales team with hundreds of reps readily available. We needed to hire more people, fast.

However, there was no experienced VP of Sales around to manage this. We had to figure things out on the fly. How could we quickly scale our sales team and get all those new reps productive in minimum time?

We didnt know the right way to do this. We didnt know what the bestpractices for sales hiring were or how to properly recruit, interview and train sales reps.

So we hacked the whole process and discovered new shortcuts to building a high-performance sales team. What started out as a motley assortmentof tactics over time evolved into a more coherent system for hiring sales reps.

For the first time, Im sharing our playbook in a well-structured and actionable way so that you can build out your team much faster than ever before.

Theres only one thing I ask of you: commit to taking action.

All the knowledge in the world is of no use if you dont act upon it. So whenever you come across something in this book that makes you think, Hmm, we should be doing this, either put the book aside and do it right

iithen and there or write it down and make time in your schedule to executethe task.

If you have questions, comments or encounter a specific challenge in thecourse of hiring salespeople that I dont address in this book, just send mean email. At the end of this book, youll find how to get in touch with me.

With all that out of the way, lets get started!

Steli Efti, CEO of Close.io
iii

During my sales office hours, I often talk with startup founders who arebeginning to see success. They've developed their product to a point wherethe few customers they have keep using it regularly. Their retention rates are okay and they have early signs of revenue growth.

Its time to ask the question: Should I hire salespeople?
Here are the four stages of sales hiring for startups.

The first person to sell your product should be youthe founderand your cofounders. Even if you hate sales and suck at it. Even if you dont haveany sales experience and know-how. Do customer development yourself, and be as close to your prospects as you can.

Begin with the low-hanging fruit and tap into your network:
Friends and acquaintances
Co-workers
Past employers
Alumni
And always ask for introductions left and right
At this point, the objective is not closing deals. Instead, focus on early stage sales exploration:
Gain insights into your marketUnderstand and listen to your customers better
o What objections do they have?
o How do they describe their problems?
o What are their pain points?
o How do they respond to your solution?Figure out which metrics truly matter for your sales outreach and your business
Test different strategies, methods, and tactics to make sales and drive business
Get started with cold emails
Learn sales hacking 101
Write a sales phone script

This phase is all about getting your hands dirty in the startup hustle and figuring out what works in the real world. It's all about lean sales and validating your idea with the power of the hustle. The experience you gainwill help you later evaluate salespeople.

Once you have some success (made some sales, generated somerevenue), the question you will ask yourself next is, How do I grow this?How can I take this to the next level?

This is challenging, because you still need to focus on developing your product further as well. Balancing these two responsibilities isnt easy.
Now is the time to hire your first sales reps. It's about bringing others onboard and having them replicate the results you achieved in stage #1.

Dont hire expensive sales veterans here. You want them young and hungry. And hire two or three salespeople at the same time. Its aboutadding firepower to your sales efforts.

There are four simple reasons why you should hire two sales rep at thesame time:
1.Friendly competition
2.Less dependence on individual performance
3.More data for future sales recruiting
4.More firepower

With two or three sales reps, you will be able to do a lot more, try outmore things. It will energize all your sales efforts and add friendlycompetition.

Now you have a sales teamyoure responsible and accountable for them. Sales thrives in this kind of competitive environment and team spirit. And staying afloat in an ocean of rejection will be a lot easier with a supportiveteam, too.

When you tell your sales reps to try a new sales approach, it might workfor one but not for the other. In that case, you know that the sales approach is working, and the problem is with someone's ability to execute.

If you have only one sales rep, you dont really have anything to measureagainst. Two or three sales reps are still far from perfect for validating data, but it is a lot better than just one.