I think that my age-old approach to solving the "Chicken or Egg Question" is correct, but I thought that it would be a great question to pose to you this morning and get your advice.
Last week, I found myself doing a Whiteboarding Exercise with a new customer in NYC. For our customers and for us, these half day Whiteboarding Sessions provide a perfect means to map out current sales and marketing processes and literally to work side-by-side with management whiteboarding potential changes and figuring out in real time the potential improvements in sales and marketing productivity.
In this case, the company is a recently-funded startup
Driving to answer this question very definitively, we then used most of the whiteboard outlining the positives and the negatives for both sides of the equation
Hire the Sales Manager First-The Positives
Hire the Sales Manager First-The Negatives
Hire the Salesperson First-The Positives
Hire the Salespeople First-The Negatives
I probably left out a number of other bullet points, which I'm sure you can comment on, but I'm already moving on to my own recommendations.
My answer has always been to quickly proceed full speed down two parallel tracks at the same time.
In a startup, it's all about putting points on the board while working through the go-to-market and revenue models. To have the perfect go-to-market model, but no sales doesn't help company management or its investors.
Since time is the critical medium during the initial one or two years of a startup, I'm always going to opt to bring in a heavily experienced salesperson first...unless I can identify that heavily experienced Player-Coach.
So, this is where I'd like to hear from you by noting your comments and ideas below...
Have a great long weekend...and relax just a bit.
In the meantime... GOOD SELLING!
Have specific sales questions that you want to bounce off me or any of our other Coachs, just email me, and we'll set up a time to talk?
Head Coach
Derby Management...for 25 years
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Box 171322, Boston, MA 02117
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http://www.brainshark.com/derbymanagement/vu?pi=zEAzcyC9XzFFz0