Startup Sales
Should you hire sales with experience? – JR Butler
July 10, 2018
Show Notes Starting his career in EMC as a reseller and grew into sales from there. After noticing his clients ordering less and having less activity, he spoke with them and got a demo of a new product they were using (Turbonomic) and he was so impressed that within 2 months he was knocking on their door to come sell for them. The biggest lesson he learned from moving to a leadership role from a individual contributor is that what made him successful (as an individual contributor) may not be what makes others on his team successful as a startup sales person. When hiring, look for someone who has the uncoachable traits; been through adversity, competitive, being passionate about something, natural curiosity and the ability to be liked. His team is split between enterprise and SMB companies then broken down by territories. They have a training program to get their sales reps up to speed on cloud infrastructure. Has a two to one sales rep to sales engineer ratio as the product is more technical. Had about 100 SDR’s to help drive the growth however having newer, less knowledgeable SDR’s closed some doors which they are trying to repair now. He prefers this as he would rather call someone and have them say they heard of you because you called me for a year straight instead of never hearing of your company. Started with their resellers opening the door for them and his sales team would do the heavy lifting. Would sell to partners by selling the idea that his service would allow the partner to a unique ability to open new doors with a product no one else had. This would allow the partner to onboard new clients to sell other solutions to as well. Make sure you incentivize your sales team to work with partners the same as if not with the partner, if not more. This is to reduce conflict down the road. Standardizing the sales process has been very difficult because he is hiring experienced sales reps. LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrbutler/ Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? Extreme ownership - Jocko Willink Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Tim Ferriss Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Yes, is available 24/7. What is your favorite tool used for sales? LinkedIn What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? You have to know your why and have fun!