Coming into an organization as the first sales hire puts a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. You are basically in charge of proving the validity of this function within the company. There are a few things that I would consider and act on in this position: Start with the short term. As a first hire in a sales organization, you are required to deliver results that have a very immediate impact that meets the business needs. This means focusing on some low-hanging fruits in order to deliver results within a short time frame. Build a framework. As a first hire within the team, you should make sure you document your work, and create clear guidelines and processes, with the expectation of adding additional members to the team in the future. This will ensure a smooth expansion of the team while positioning you as a thought leader and a pivotal member of this function. Go beyond your scope. As a junior sales hire, never underestimate the power of tenacity. I always invite my team members to push the boundaries and look for additional scope and responsibilities whenever they feel capable. This is a very strong signal that you are willing to take on more, and when management will face a new task at hand, they will know they can count on you.

I'm going to include some red flags on resumes since I have already talked about common mistakes people make in sales interviews. Some resume red flags: * Resume is multiple pages long (people pay most attention to the first half of the resume so if it's very dense, you will lose your audience) * Having every single job the person's ever had listed on there (relevant job experiences only please) * Having little-to-no quantitative results (e.g. % attainment, conversion rates, etc.) on the resume, especially for sales roles * Basic spelling or grammar mistakes (shows that there was no detail to attention if you have a lot of them)

In today's world it is relatively quite easy to make a very well informed decision when assessing a new role in a different company. These are some of the things I look at and advise my mentees to do too : * If it's a public listed company, look at their financials to figure out their year on year growth. * Check out websites like RepVue which give you a very good understanding about how sales reps in that company are doing * On LinkedIn, check out the trend on their headcount,especially in sales, is it increasing consistently or not. * Check out analyst reports and websites like g2.com to see how the product is rated by their customers. * Check websites like Glassdoor to understand about the culture of the company you are considering * If possible speak with a few customers and partners of the company as well. 

Personally my favorite interview question, which I ask all of my hires from SDRs/BDRs to Sales Directors, is: "Of everything in your life (professionally, personally, academically, athletically, artistically, etc.), what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?" Of the hundreds of times I've asked this question, I've received so many incredible answers. Some people have talked about the accomplishments of building a family, qualifying for the Olympics, summiting mountains, changing careers, moving to entirely new countries and starting from scratch. All were great, and the reality is, there is no one "best answer". To me the reason I love asking this question early in an interview process is, I get to: * Quickly learn more intimate details about someone's life to begin to understand who they are as a person and discover what they value * Listen attentively and observe how they tell a story they are passionate about, and * Use that answer as a jumping off point to probe into other attitudinal & behavioral competencies From that simple question, you can then take the conversation into so many follow on questions like: * What were some of the biggest obstacles you needed to overcome to achieve that accomplishment? (which gets into the topics of resilience & adaptability) * If you were to re-live that experience again, knowing what you know now, what would you change? (which addresses self-reflection and learning) * Now that you've accomplished [insert accomplishment], what are you setting your sights on next? (which uncovers ambition & motivation) I'm curious to hear from you...what do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

It's a great question. I believe that all reps are continuously motivated by earning potential and career growth opportunities, regardless of the stage of the company. To get more nuanced, you'll see earlier hires more motivated by the combination of equity and cash, and you'll also see earlier hires hoping to leverage their early arrival to accelerate their career growth (vs later hires). As an aside, one of the real joys of leading and scaling sales teams is rewarding those deserving early hires with promotions, additional equity grants, etc. We've had the opportunity to do a lot of this at Vanta. More broadly, my advice is to spend a lot of time thinking about the design of your compensation plans (revisiting them at least annually) and also to map out levels and definitions for career growth sooner vs later. Make sure that you're putting your team in a spot where they believe they can hit their goals, and where they understand intimately what career growth means for them, and how to unlock it. Easier said than done. :)

When it comes to determining the timeline for involving internal stakeholders in an opportunity with a customer, several key considerations come into play. Firstly, we need to ascertain if the customer has a genuine business problem that needs solving, if there's a dedicated champion within their organization, and if they have the budget allocated for the solution. Our internal resources are valuable but limited, so it's crucial that we allocate them judiciously. My AEs are tasked with the responsibility of validating that the organization they're working with not only has the capacity but also the capability to execute before we bring in additional resources. During our forecast discussions, I encourage my team to break down the steps they'll need to take to progress an opportunity, including the internal resources required for success, and ensure that the customer is aligned with this approach. While C-suite engagement isn't typically necessary for the opportunities my team handles, we consistently collaborate with customer success, IT, product, legal, and sales engineering teams. Salesforce has a unique structure where some individuals on each selling team focus on a single product. This means that AEs often serve as the initial point of contact, investing time in understanding and qualifying the customer's business problems before involving additional resources. This approach ensures that our efforts are targeted and efficient, maximizing the impact we can make for our customers.

I see 2 different places that sales is headed: 1. Do more with less. Brute force (hiring more) used to be the answer to growing sales. Now the strategy is to load up the top reps, keep them busy, and get the best from them before we even think of hiring someone else. Sales efficiency is key from a profitability standard which is where the market is right now. 2. AI. Not saying the robots are coming for our jobs just yet, but with technology now that automates so many manual processes, is it so far fetched that in the next 5 years technology can tell us who to sell to, how to contact them, and write the email itself? What about AI images that talk and you don't realize that they are not actual people? Does it feel so futuristic to believe AI can dial or Zoom someone, respond based on what is said, overcome objections, negotiate pricing, and automatically send out order forms? There will always be a place for sales in some industries, especially emerging technologies where everything is new.

It's essential to first understand the expectations of your sales leadership, common denominators between successful reps who achieve those expectations, and availability of data to your enablement program. Here are a couple of questions to ask before you get started in creating a measurement plan: * What types of habits do they need to be able to do their everyday work by Day 30-60-90 days? * What are the expectations of your leads? Compare this to enablement insights on what can reasonably be achieved based on historical benchmarks. * Which reps have the most successful ramp numbers? What's the common denominator between all of them? * How long is your onboarding program, including reinforcement training after boot camp? * Do YOU have the data and reports that can show comparative data between reps? A lot of these questions really focus on setting benchmarks on four factors which I've seen are generally performable by many teams: 1. Confidence levels (Subjective): What are your reps' confidence levels around knowing and selling your products increasing over your ramp period? Is there improvement over time? Are you asking this based on various categories such as product, sales skills, and tool usage? 2. Lead Assessment (Subjective): Have their leads fill out a scorecard with guided skill categories based on your sales methodology following your reporting cadence. Make sure that there is guidance on what each category means to minimize the need for calibration. 3. Tool usage (Subjective and Objective): Do your reps know how to use their tools? Do they know where they can access the supporting documentation and guidance after their onboarding program? Are they accessing these tools and using them in the first place? How do they measure up to usage benchmarks - focus on effectiveness later after ramp as I recommend that these should be measured after reinforcement training past onboarding/ramp. 4. Activity, Deal Velocity and Attainment Benchmarks (Objective): How many calls are they making? How many prospects are they sourcing and reaching out to? How many deals are at various stages by 30-60-90 days - are they building and moving deals through their pipeline? Are they achieving the benchmarks/objectives your team has set for win rate and ramp attainment numbers? Hopefully, these categories help to start somewhere. Curious to hear what other enablement leaders have used as well.

Many of the large research firms (ex: Gartner) and other smaller societies exist. They put out interesting reports, whitepapers, and findings that showcase new enablement technology, sales trends, and changes in the learning space. I'd recommend: * Check-out new & topical books * Subscribe or review these firms/sites from time to time * Join a community (Slack or LinkedIn) with like-minded folks

Working closely with field marketing and product marketing teams to evaluate whether we are currently relevant to the market conditions plus are we using the correct sales plays to support your messaging. To be effective you need to review monthly / quarterly so you can understand the success of each sale's play and how long it takes to convert an MQL to SQL to a sales stage 2 lead to closed won, if your sales cycle is 3 months you always need to be thinking two quarters ahead as it's very difficult to build in quarter pipeline and this generally turns into a fire sale and high discount to meet in quarter targets. You should go into each quarter with at least 3x pipeline to quota depending on your win rate.