Cautionary times? Sure!
Just when I was feeling somewhat comfortable with where the economy was going, I attended the New England Executive Healthcare Network conference yesterday morning with a panel of five experienced investors that reinforced the cautionary stage of early stage investing:
A great organization and speakers! Nothing really new in what I heard that I am not experiencing in my own fundraising for our new startup, but it was very good to hear it all consolidated with deep expertise and practical experience plus makiong new connections at the event.
And then this morning on WBZ, as I was driving into Boston, I listened to the downward caution (business confidence enters pessimistic territory) issued by the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, where I'm a board member. Again, no real new news here in this environment of unknowns and caution.
Personally, where I would not make cuts is in the Sales organization where today, I would actually be investing in deeper and more frequent sales training in process, in uniform tools and in platform technologies. All aimed at increasing productivity, not in reducing personnel.
The reason is the math of getting to what we term as "ramp speed". By the time I make the actual decision to hire, go through the recruiting process with repeated interviews, presentations, skills reviews and attribute assessments plus a rigorous onboarding process, my actual timeline is going to look something like this. Then with that new warrior in place, it's time to quickly ramp. In complex product or service sales, the math will look like this:
Plus, I need to make sure that I do not lose anyone I want to retain along the ramp buildup, and unfortunately, in tech sales, the average life of a salesperson in the same position is 2.8 years.
In a year where the unknows and uncertainties are going to continue, for me, this is the time I would be doubling down on:
Just some thoughts for the beginning of the last month of the most important quarter of the year!
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Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.