On July 13 Salesforce.com sponsored a seminar on Sales & Business Development at the ATI.  ATI’s Aruni Gunasegaram moderated a panel consisting of Adam Berman of TVA Medical, Shelia Burns of Luminex, Jason Mathias of HomeAway, and Randy Potts, recently of Convio.

Much of the discussion focused on the issue of finding the right sales talent for a startup.   Here are some of the points raised:

Some salespeople are good at the evangelistic stage, don’t require much guidance, and can develop their own processes and support materials.  Others may have great quota-busting resumes but be totally dependent on being in structured environments where all they have to do is sell a known product.  In my opinion, the former are a rarity.  (I’ve always said it’s easy to sell something that has already been developed; a real salesperson is one who can sell something that is still being invented.)

So how do you differentiate between a startup salesperson versus a structured salesperson in an interview?   Beyond industry knowledge and basic sales skills, you try to assess “mindset.” Will that person understand personal accountability and not claim to be the victim if goals are missed?  Will he or she tolerate disorder? Will there be any sense of being “owed something” by the company?  Is there a commitment to be in the top third and not just to be comfortable?   Does the person understand how his or her actions and results will affect others in the company, or is it “all about me”?  (You’ll have to be a darn good interviewer to discern all this.)

Obviously the best predictor is previous sales success in an actual startup, but you may have to wait in line for candidates with that credential.

It was acknowledged that some companies hire a sales person too early, even before the product, target market, and the value proposition are figured out.  That’s a recipe for failure.  If you hire at that stage, you have to hire someone who can create a sales process from scratch and not expect to use anything already in place.

How do you compensate for sales – pure cash commissions or options? The latter will appeal to someone who has made a good living on commissions and is ready to have a voice in building something and wants to create net worth.  An audience member asked a good question about vesting that equity – temporal or sales performance based?  A panelist responded that pure performance ties may not work; there needs to some correlation with how key someone is to the future of the company.  Some sales people may deliver on quota but never rise to the level of being a key player in the business.  They make their numbers and move on, and options aren’t the best answer for them.

A good observation was made that as a salesperson’s career evolves, it’s more about listening than talking and more about trust than technique, not just vacuuming money from the customer’s pocket.  People don’t always buy the best product; they buy from the salesperson that earns their belief.

Most startups are on what I’ve always called the SNAKE program – Sell Now And Keep Eating.  Maintaining a proper perspective on sales hiring under that pressure is never easy.

<photo of Texas Garter Snake from Proctor Museum of Natural Science>