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Yes in general I thought this was a good article. But I also found some of it odd. In general sales people hate coming in with a clean slate. They want to pick

Yes in general I thought this was a good article. But I also found some of it odd. In general sales people hate coming in with a clean slate. They want to pick up some existing customers and existing deal flow so they can learn quickly how the product is actually used (to help with positioning it accurately) and what the objections and issues are in the sales cycle. Perhaps the author was more implying "don't stick them with weird old BD/partnership stuff that isn't really 'real' to bog them down early)

kwindla 12y ago
Yeah, the "BD vs Sales" thing is exactly what I was trying to get at. My experience is that companies hiring salespeople for the first time often don't have much of a sales pipeline yet, but do have a backlog of not-very-similar bizdev and partnership conversations going on. Salespeople who jump in on the bizdev "opportunities" -- which are not what a sales lead would actually call "opportunities" -- can spend a lot of time spinning their wheels. If, on the other hand, you've got a real pipeline and existing dealflow, by all means route that to your new sales reps.
oostevo 12y ago
I think you're absolutely right about not wanting to bog down your salespeople with old relationships. Here's why: It seems to me that a lot of companies who are at the point where they'd hire a full-time sales staff struggle with their early clients and not-quite-clients. In hiring salespeople, companies are defining themselves as established players with an established product to sell, whereas the relationships with early customers centered much more around being the new guys on whom the buying company is taking a risk and often getting a say in feature development and a discount compared to the competition. Re-framing those early relationships, especially "with middle managers from dinosaur companies," is a very long and frustrating process for all the parties involved. I could absolutely see why you'd want to avoid your news sales staff getting sucked into those relationships and instead do what they're fantastic at: parachuting in, developing new relationships quickly, and pivoting those to closed deals. (Background/assumptions: I do bizdev-ish things for a large tech company. From the tone of the article, I'm assuming that we're talking about B2B businesses with products priced such that the relationship with individual clients takes time to develop.)

kwindla 12y ago

Yeah, the "BD vs Sales" thing is exactly what I was trying to get at. My experience is that companies hiring salespeople for the first time often don't have much of a sales pipeline yet, but do have a backlog of not-very-similar bizdev and partnership conversations going on. Salespeople who jump in on the bizdev "opportunities" -- which are not what a sales lead would actually call "opportunities" -- can spend a lot of time spinning their wheels. If, on the other hand, you've got a real pipeline and existing dealflow, by all means route that to your new sales reps.

oostevo 12y ago

I think you're absolutely right about not wanting to bog down your salespeople with old relationships. Here's why: It seems to me that a lot of companies who are at the point where they'd hire a full-time sales staff struggle with their early clients and not-quite-clients. In hiring salespeople, companies are defining themselves as established players with an established product to sell, whereas the relationships with early customers centered much more around being the new guys on whom the buying company is taking a risk and often getting a say in feature development and a discount compared to the competition. Re-framing those early relationships, especially "with middle managers from dinosaur companies," is a very long and frustrating process for all the parties involved. I could absolutely see why you'd want to avoid your news sales staff getting sucked into those relationships and instead do what they're fantastic at: parachuting in, developing new relationships quickly, and pivoting those to closed deals. (Background/assumptions: I do bizdev-ish things for a large tech company. From the tone of the article, I'm assuming that we're talking about B2B businesses with products priced such that the relationship with individual clients takes time to develop.)