Make It Snow: From Zero to Billions

3Hiring and Deploying Your First Sales Reps

“You’re someone who has a chip on your shoulder. … Someone who questions everything.”

—Kyle Rourke

KYLE WAS THE first sales rep I hired at Snowflake. We’d known each other for more than 10 years and we later worked together as peers at EMC. When I moved to Aveksa, I asked him to come work for me and run Aveksa sales for the Pacific Northwest. I called him again after I landed at Snowflake and hired him as head of sales for the West Coast. Kyle was employee number 35. I also hired Vince Trotta around the same time to run the east coast and one other field sales rep to handle the central US region. We too had a history before Snowflake. That was the core sales team for 2014. So, I started building a sales force around these first three leaders and I let them hire reps underneath them. By then, I had already hired two junior business development reps to help make cold calls.

Start with Who You Know

I can’t stress this enough. The earlier the stage of a company the more crucial the hiring process. You not only need the best but you need people who are excited about your product and see your company as a great place to work. The investment you make with new hires is much higher early on. There are no systems in place and no training programs. So it was on me to personally get each new sales hire up to speed on the product and enticed with Snowflake—the company. All the while, I was still reaching out to thousands of prospects each ...