Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 167: 2 approaches to bringing on your first sales team

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167: 2 approaches to bringing on your first sales team · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sales Bluebird podcast, where we help cybersecurity companies grow sales faster.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a seller, marketer, leader, or founder, we give you tips, tricks, experiences, examples, ideas, and inspiration from people who know a thing or ten about building great cybersecurity companies.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and today we are talking about that stage in your process when you're ready to hire your first sales team.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you're in a situation where you've got your first design partners, your first early adopters are on board.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are often friendlies, people you know, people the VCs know, whoever it might be.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're ready to say, we need to scale a team.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get a sales team in place, we need to get the selling motion working and get more and more customers.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, what do you do?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of ways to do it, lots of different models to do.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you look at the company, you know, the market they're going after, the size of transaction, things like that are all big, big parts of it.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that I'm approaching this conversation today is from the standpoint of the traditional mid-market or enterprise cybersecurity startup, they're going after those markets, and they've got something, you know, not really low price point, but not maybe millions either, maybe in the hundred to five hundred to million dollar ARR kind of range.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, what's the best way to do it?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my experiences, I've seen two ways to do it that have worked more often than not.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of different ways to do it and lots of nuances around it.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm simplifying a little bit when I go through these two ways to do it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll go through them, I'll give you the pros and cons of each and then give you a couple ideas towards the end.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is based on my experiences, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Having worked at uh some startups and also consulted with some startups in the last two or three years as well.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So this is this is based on these experiences.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna call it plan A and plan B.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is plan A.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is when the CEO stays as the de facto leader of the sales team, but hires two or three sellers to report into him or her.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're still the figurehead, they're still involved and all the rest of it, but they've got some people doing some work underneath them.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So pros of this approach, first one is that, and this is probably the most important one, is the founder is still embedded in part of an integral part of the sales process in the sales team, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're a key part of it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: They'll have a role to play for sure in pretty much every single sales cycle for the foreseeable future.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll maybe have multiple roles to play, multiple meetings that they take part at, depending on different factors.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: But they are part of the sales process.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're they know inside at, they're talking to the team daily, having calls weekly, getting onto prospect calls, the whole thing, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a big part of it because you you know, having that title, having CEO andor founder as someone who's part of the process, people like that stuff, right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's got a certain weight to have that.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is they can say to the people that they bring on, look, we're gonna start building some of the fundamentals of our playbook.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to listen what I've been doing and saying uh these last months or years, depending how long it's been going on for.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to start documenting it as our playbook and working on it as our playbook.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they're able to say, just, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, I'm gonna be involved in the sales process.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I'm involved, let's memorialize that and start creating the playbook.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good way to help that transition move.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And a third thing, and I hate to say it, I mean, it's gonna be the cheaper model to go with.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sales leaders are not cheap.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this way, if you're not bringing on a sales leader, but you're doing the sales leading yourself, you know, essentially you're probably saving, you know, an OTE of 400K plus or minus, right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a little bit higher if you're in a tough market, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the stock that you're gonna have to give away as well.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So in this earlier stage, you probably have to give more stock to the person who would be your sales leader.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So from a money out standpoint, especially right now, I'm recording this in October 2022, recession either here or looming, depending on uh on who you believe.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely there's cybersecurity companies out there that are feeling the pinch a little bit and they're tight in their belts, and there's been layoffs being going on.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're feeling a little bit nervous about taking on someone with a big OTE, big base, and uh what that might mean for your burn.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So doing it this way is definitely gonna save on burn, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cons of this approach, though, let's be real about this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So at a certain point, sales leader is not a part-time job.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, maybe it's a little bit later, maybe it's earlier, but it's so important to the success of the company to get those early stage wins on board.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And many will feel that once you've got design partners on board and maybe one or two customers, this at this point, when you're trying to rebuild, is not a part-time job.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You need to allocate the time appropriately.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Second one is it's actually tougher as a CEO founder to attract great sales talent and know how to choose great sales talent, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're the most charismatic CEO founder out there and people just gravitate to you.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are, and this doesn't apply to you.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for a lot of CEO founders, if they're uh honest about it, is you know, they're trying to attract people they're not used to dealing with.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to go out there into a market they don't know with a network they don't have to try and attract some great sales talent.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not easy to do at all.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is one of those areas where the old phrase, you know, A players attract A players and B players attract C players.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: This might be one of those areas.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm a top seller making a ton of money at another startup or a more mature one now, maybe it's in a B or C run, looking to go back to more earlier stage and where I go, I'm not sure I'm gonna be going somewhere where I'm gonna be working directly for the CEO.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: At least a question mark.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to go somewhere where I'm working with a professional, proper sales leader who gets what I do, who I don't have to justify things to, things like that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go work in that environment, maybe, than working directly for the CEO.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure some people would love that, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But uh my hunch is from experience is that number might be quite a bit smaller than those that actually like the idea of working for a proper sales leader.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: So be careful with that, right?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You might end up getting people that are not the best talent.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you a quick story.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: A few years back I was at a company, and in their very early stages, when the CEO, great CEO, really competent, great vision for what they were doing, won the first two or three design partners, and I think even got the first main customer on board.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And his decision was that he was going to be this player coach, no uh part-time leader of the sales team.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they hired three very junior people at a big, big software company.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: These were people that were not long out of SDR type roles, got into proper full cycle selling, but in, you know, I don't know, SMB versus enterprise things like that, and brought them into this startup, right, with very little experience, maybe I don't know, a year of proper sales experience and maybe a year or two of being SDR.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: They have a role to play, but you know, these are people who are not that experienced, don't have a bunch to fall back on, have not been trained in how to do full-cycle selling and are used to maybe having a bit of a few things around them at the bigger company, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that's the right sort of approach.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you think about hiring junior people or B or C players, startup selling this early on, in my mind, it's the hardest type of selling.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It really is.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the place to have people who are not really good at what they do, really experienced at what they do.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's another con there to think about.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Third one would be as you move into proper selling into people who don't know you and you're going through enterprise buying cycles, things like that, knowing what's coming around the corner is a big deal.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: This can often be the difference between a sales cycle that lasts five months and the one that lasts 10 months.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just knowing where the gaps are intuitively because you've you've been doing it so long, is very different from someone who who's trying to feel their way a little bit to know where the gaps in the sales process might be, where the gaps in the deal might be to know what to head off, as opposed to just experience them as they're coming at them.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So knowing what's coming is something that you probably won't have if you got the CEO as the leader and you've got more junior or maybe less competent salespeople out there in the in the sales team.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing I'd say by the cons is that um early selling is still learning, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Half the job is learning and half the job is selling as a seller.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if you've got someone who's more junior or perhaps not quite so accomplished, they might not be so good at this, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because it requires a certain skill set to say, you know, I want to approach this to, you know, from a real sales hat, but I'm also approaching this to learn and ask good questions just because I wanted to learn how they're thinking about it.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I can feed this back to everyone at the company about you know, learning about our go-to market and what's working, what's not working.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Being able to really drive that and help those those people in the team get it and get good at it can be tough, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not used to doing that.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say those are at least the cons that come to my mind, you may have more or less than that as well.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's plan A, right?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move on to plan B.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Plan B might be where the CEO actually hires a head of sales, and that head of sales brings in two or three sellers that they know and trust from their previous lives.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the CEO's taking the plunge and said, uh, we're gonna invest and we're gonna bring in uh a head, a leader, and uh and some a couple of sellers underneath them.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So pros of this, back to what I said before, a sales leader is now a full-time committed job.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have someone who's 120% of the time, let's be honest, right?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's all in, all hours of the day.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're committed to making this work, they're deeply involved in everything, and not just some of the deals or part of the deal.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: At that stage, the sales leader is all in at that point.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, at that stage, without giving them a territory, they've probably got territory, right?
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be doing their own work, their own prospecting, reaching out to people, things like that, right?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: At this point, it's very much a team sport with the small group that are there.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember recently I interviewed Eric Apple, who's the head of sales at Island.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: He got there, he was the first in the door in the sales team, and he hired two very experienced sellers to come and join him that he knew.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, I wasn't gonna sit there with two people reporting to me, not selling, since I just kind of, you know, metaphorically picked up my bag and went out there and started meeting people as well, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So they divvied up the country and the US and and started working deals, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Which is the right thing to do at that point.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the sales leader is, you know, you're not saying to them you're a player coach, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be the leader.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They absolutely need to be the leader.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the smart leader in that position will say, heck, I can't just sit here.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get out there.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let me go out there and tackle some of this and let's all do this together, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you got a leader who's committed and deeply involved.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Second uh pro, I would say, of this approach is you have a much better chance of hiring right.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just a heads up for a red flag for you, if you're hiring your first sales leader, they're not bringing in as their first hires people they know.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be very curious why not.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the advantage of bringing in a sales leader is they've been selling for quite a long time and they know some people who are really good and they trust them to do a good job and they know how they work together.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's not that awkward phase of learning how we work together and who you are, who I am, or what's motivates you into that.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: They just know it all, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a much better chance of that person bringing in the right talent to work for them.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when that talent comes in, you know, they're committed because not only do they want you and the company to succeed, often what they're doing is committing to a friend that they're gonna make this work.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you in from experience, the commitment to a friend.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna let my friend down.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've known John for 15 years, he's hard to be in this position.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I am not gonna let him down.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is a much, much, much, much stronger motivation or driver than saying, I've just joined a company where I don't know the CEO, I don't know the head of sales, but you know, I'll do the right thing, kind of thing, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of trust there.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna hire right, much better chance of hiring right as new people come in.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: The third pro in my mind is this person has been selling for quite a while.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they know the playbook, they know how to do comp, right?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: They know what tools are needed and not needed, different stages.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: They know how to run a sales cycle.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: They've done, they literally run hundreds and hundreds of sales cycles, both as an individual contributor and also as a first line leader and then a second line leader, maybe, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they're just intuitively get sales cycles, the ins and outs of it, what's coming around the corners, where the gaps are.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: All those things are almost intuitive to them.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're usually not going to be blindsided by that as they're coming in.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And ideally, if you're hiring someone from the cybersecurity space, you've got someone with a network of CISOs.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Again, to me, this is an interesting area because you really want to drill into this because everyone will claim that they they know SISOs, but you really want to understand what that means.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: How well do they know them?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Can they pick up the phone and say, hey, Bob, I just joined a new company.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's some really cool stuff.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get together for some lunch.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's great, right?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or, hey, I don't know if you remember me, I sold something to you 10 years ago.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yeah, I was a I was a tall guy at that company.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you remember me, you remember me, uh let's get together for lunch, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very different conversation.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I ideally they're gonna come in with that network of CISOs that they can start uh tapping up to go and have meetings with.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then fourthly, what I'd say is that uh you've got someone coming in with the maturity of being a sales leader who can then understand that part of the role is to learn, learn, learn, and adapt.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Learn and iterate, learn and iterate, learn and adapt, not just trying to sell some stuff, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna have someone who comes in who can instill that into the team, give them the confidence that uh that's part of the job.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: One of the interesting things I'll tell you, I I I joined a, remember my experience of this was I joined a startup probably, I don't know, eight, 10 years ago now.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was my first real proper startup.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We were pre-product.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: We were still in stealth when I joined.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd be in sales for almost 20 years at this point.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, my thing was, okay, I'm here to sell.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here, but you know, who, where's my territory?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Who do I talk to?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do I say?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of shocked when after the first couple of months, the CEO and the head of sales said, you know, if you just get you know one or two orders this year, we're gonna be happy, just so you know, right?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think we the best win for us is to learn about how we sell this stuff and all the things that we need to put in place to make it easier for customer 10, 20, 30, right?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that me to me at the time, that was that was crazy talk, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to learn some stuff.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've been selling for 20 years, I'm here to sell some stuff.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me a little bit just to get my head around that, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, just again, thinking about a leader coming in and making sure that's instilled into the team as they join.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's to me the pros, cons.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: First one, it's gonna increase your burn, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be expensive bringing in a sales leader.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Good sales leaders these days, I don't know.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I give you the band 350 to 500 OTE is probably in the band.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, whatever stock you can give them to bring it down a little bit might be uh the way to think about it.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the other way is going to increase your burn, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it is gonna be expensive.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, is you need the Goldilocks one.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not too senior and not too junior.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: You need someone who's kind of in that middle bit, right?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want the person who spent 10 years an SVP at Palo Alto, right?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's someone who's not the right fit.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you want someone who's more junior than that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll come into this more in a second.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about the idea of that, right, mentality is a big part of it, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: You want someone who completely gets the idea that in essence, this is a sales job with leadership on top.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a leadership times five job where they might show up on a call or two with prospects.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they kind of really need to get that.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want the person who thinks they're the big time.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, I've been at companies, you know, reasonably big, not huge companies, but bigger companies.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the top leaders in the company in sales never actually taught the prospects, believe it or not.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't believe it was part of their job.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember uh there was one guy, and uh you reached out to him saying, you know, we've got an important meeting at big company next Tuesday, need you there, kind of thing.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he would just delegate it down all the time.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, speak to your VP, he'll be there.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anyone at the company actually got that person to go to a go and visit a prospect.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy, right?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta be careful with this.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you get someone who's a planner or a strategic person, or do you get someone who's still a doer?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And make sure that they haven't lost touch with customers, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you want someone who relishes the idea of being in front of customers, not behind a desk or a spreadsheet, and not someone whose natural habitat is sitting there behind their desk.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean then?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It means that you want to find that up-and-comer.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's easier said than done sometimes, but you know, this is someone who's got a long track record of selling, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: They've carried a bag for quite a while and they've run some sales teams.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they've they've been that at least that first line manager, and they should have done that at small companies and also medium companies.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might not need the person who's done it at first sales hire type of level, but maybe they've been at a B or an A stage company, B C stage company, so they get the idea of what it's all about.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're not going into this completely blind.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But they've also been at a bigger company where they've had mentorship and training and growth and things like that, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can't ignore that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so someone in somewhere in there in the middle is the right sort of person.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would think of it as someone who's got that tenure, the experience, the gravitas, who now wants to take on their first big-time sales leadership role.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: They know that writing on their shoulders is a lot of paychecks at the company, a lot of do we get funding or do we not, things like that, right?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But they're ready to take on that role because they've been doing similar roles, but without quite that importance, maybe, or quite that gravitas for a while.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they they get selling and they're now ready to go into that early stage and they want to make their mark, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're thinking, I'm gonna go somewhere and I'm gonna make my mark.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: That even if the company doesn't make it big, big time, I can say I was the first sales leader in at that company, we grew it from this to this, and uh something happened, some big outcome happened, or exit, or even if there wasn't one, they say this is what we achieved, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the Goldilocks zone you want to find.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, next question is you know, do you go with A or B?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here's how I would put it to you.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: I would go for B as soon as you can possibly afford it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that's the when I look at the companies that are more solid, let's say, and how they're getting going and the growth, things like that, it is when they've been able to afford to have a sales leader who comes in and builds a small team to start with, very small team to start with.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have the funding to do it, right, don't scrimp on this.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: This should be the one of the big things that are gonna determine your success.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So don't scrimp on this.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the money and you're worried about the burn, especially right now, then maybe plan A is the right option.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: But walk into it knowing the pros and cons I talked about and what it really means.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna be easy and you know they're gonna be demanding of your time, but uh you know, maybe that's the more prudent option if you are worrying about burn and you're thinking we need to get our runway through the middle end of next year rather than shortening the runway down to springtime of next year.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: The final thought I'd give you though is whichever way you go, you have to hire the people that you want to hire and you have to trust them.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have to really listen and trust them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that might sound a little bit basic, but uh I can tell you that doesn't always happen.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think too often the way that this is approached is well, let's give them a try.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's give it a try.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's give that person a try.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see how it goes for three months.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see how it goes for six months, right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you approach it from that standpoint, intuitively and maybe subconsciously, you're less likely to commit to them and less likely to invest in the things they need to be invested in, the tools, the various things they need, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're literally telling them I'm behind you, but then you're standing back a little bit and saying, well, not quite all the way.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my ask of you is the phrase I tell people is you're either all in or all out with sales and with salespeople and sales leaders.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've either got your backing 100% or you better find someone else.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can't have that slow drift zone of let's just see how this works out before we decide what we're gonna do or whether we're gonna need to make a change or whatever.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as you're not all in, you have to say to yourself, I'm all out, I need to make a change or do something different, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, thanks so much for uh hitting play today, and uh see you next time.