Before You Hire a Sales role, Read This:

Happy Friday everyone - I'm Ryan from Breakout Capital Group.

Most of the teams we’re currently working with on our Revenue Advisory offering are sitting right around the dilemma of making their first / one of their first sales hires to scale their go-to-market.

There’s a crucial mistake I’ve been hearing in a lot of conversations I’m having.

I had a conversation with a founder last week who told me they were close to pulling the trigger on their first sales hire. Product was working, they had a handful of customers. Good word of mouth. They were ready to “scale”.

I asked them one question: “what are you handing this person on day one?”

They paused. "We're hiring them to figure that out."

Why a Hire Isn't Always the Answer

A sales hire without a proper system of converting cold traffic doesn't accelerate your pipeline. You're now paying someone a salary - plus commission, plus onboarding time - to figure out what you haven't figured out yet:

• Message-market fit.

• ICP definition.

• Which outbound channels actually convert.

• What objections come up on call two.

A lot of “go-to-market” for pre Series A/B companies is scrappy.

It’s tapping into founder networks, going to conferences, hustling warm intros, etc.

Obviously, this is great if you can make it work, it is necessary, and it is effective. I am not trying to say otherwise.

But there is a massive part of your market that exists outside of who you know and are connected to. And if you don’t have a documented sales process to sell to people who don’t know you, and don’t trust you right away - how can you expect a sales hire to figure that out for you?

The Sequencing Problem

Networking is a multiplier. Conferences are a multiplier. A sales hire is a multiplier. None of them are engines.

An engine is a repeatable process with a defined ICP, tested messaging, and a target list that gets worked systematically - where you can tap into your ENTIRE market. When you have that, everything else compounds on top of it.

You can have a sales hire that inherits a playbook instead of a blank page. They can step into something that is already working.

Your conference conversations turn into pipeline because you have a follow-up sequence ready. Your warm intros close faster because you know your objections cold.

Thinking About Your Next Steps

As founders, making that sales hire almost always “feels” like the correct next step for growing your go-to-market motion.

But too many times I’ve seen it become a $100k lesson of:

“Have a repeatable, working sales process your reps can step into before you make the hire”.

Simple one for today, but very necessary for most.

Thanks for reading as always. If you have any questions I can be helpful with, shoot me a reply back and I’m happy to answer.

Ryan
BCG

P.S. As always:

If you're raising $2-100M in the next 6 months and want guaranteed access to investors who can fill your round, drop me a reply about our Capital Advisory offer.

If you have a customer LTV > $50k and want to unlock 6-7 figures of pipeline from a new acquisition channel, drop me a reply about our Revenue Advisory offer.