Startup CXO

Chapter 60Scaling the Sales Organization

I would not suggest scaling (from a revenue perspective) until you have a consistent viewpoint of the buyers of your product or service. If you're still at the whiteboard stage, no matter how passionate and optimistic you are about the future, it will be difficult to scale. You'll need to be at the PowerPoint stage if you want to scale. You should have answers to questions on the buyer's problems, you should have a good understanding of the competitive landscape and where you fit, you should have a philosophy on your value, and you should have a methodology that allows you to know where you're at in the pipeline and what's forecast in the future. Without a solid understanding of these basic elements, scaling is just a pipe dream.

In the very, very early stages of a company, when you haven't stratified to the point where you have enterprise sales or small and medium‐sized business (SMB) sales, you'll have all those sales in one person or possibly in one “type” of sales rep—people who are jacks of all trades. If you have a person who is a go‐getter and they can tell the story as an entrepreneur, they will likely have the ability to close large enterprise deals and to speak to mid‐market. As the CRO, you should make sure that they can close business in all those segments to feed your enterprise. You'll probably find that smaller sales happen quicker than enterprise sales, but you should validate that with your business. The worst thing, ...