Scaling Beyond Founder-Led Sales: Making Your First Sales Hire
Written for founders and owners making their first sales hire, and for those whose first attempt has not worked out.
Step 01
Steps 02 and 03
Steps 04 to 07
Steps 08 to 10
A practical guide to scaling beyond founder-led sales and making your first sales hire successfully.
It shows you how to define the role, find and choose the right person, and give them the conditions to succeed, while avoiding the pitfalls that so often cause a first sales hire to fail.
It is published by Kingman Lennox, specialist sales headhunters working across the UK. We work only on sales and business development roles.
- 10 practical questions
- Finding and assessing candidates
- A one-page hiring brief
When growth still depends on you
The business is growing, but the next sale still depends on you. Hiring someone to sell starts to feel like the obvious next step, and it often is.
Three hires and the same disappointment
One founder could not understand why three salespeople in succession had failed to reproduce his results. The business had grown significantly, and he was a respected technical figure in his industry.
His early customers were people he knew or people introduced through his network. His standing and deep knowledge allowed him to improvise successfully, and he had never needed to make his approach explicit to anyone else.
There was no clear, compelling value proposition, no defined ideal customer profile, no sales process and no forecast. Each recruit was expected to repeat his results without his advantages and without an established approach to follow.
Changing the salesperson left that expectation unexamined. What the business needed was a role designed around the work still required to make sales less dependent on him, and someone able to build that approach while selling it.
The ten questions that follow help you define the role, find and assess the right person, and agree how the hire will work.
Can a new salesperson sell the way I do?
Before deciding who to recruit, look at what has made selling work for you. A buyer who already trusts your judgement starts in a different place from one who has never heard of the business. Overlook that difference and it becomes easy to ask a recruit to match your results while giving them a harder task.
Key point
Use the evidence from your own wins to set the starting conditions of the job.
The full step, with the table of what the hire must account for, is in the guide. Download the guide
What should my first salesperson actually do?
Once you understand how sales happen today, it becomes easier to see where another person could help. Handling enquiries you cannot keep up with, reaching customers beyond your network and building a sales approach where none yet exists are different jobs, and they suit different people. Combining them changes the experience required and how quickly the hire can release your time.
Should my first sales hire be a sales director?
Many owners are drawn to making their first sales hire a sales director, someone who has run a team, can build the function and will eventually lead the people who follow. Sometimes that is right. More often the first year is about winning customers personally, and a leader recruited from a larger business can find that reality hard.
Key point
Hire for the work that will fill most of the first year, and set the title to match.
The full step, with the three kinds of first sales job and when to hire a seller or a leader, is in the guide. Download the guide
What needs to be in place before my first salesperson starts?
A role can sound clear while the conditions needed to perform it remain uncertain. Someone joining to win new customers will usually assume that the target market and proposition are already understood. If you expect them to develop those things, you are recruiting for a broader job. Making that visible now helps both sides judge the opportunity, and avoids discovering the mismatch after they start.
How should I pay my first salesperson?
A pay plan designed around your own results can make a good hire look like a poor one, and the strongest candidates will spot the problem before they accept.
Key point
Be explicit about what exists and what must be built, and pay for the job as it really is.
The full step, with what to have in place, what the recruit will build and five principles for the pay plan, is in the guide. Download the guide
How do I find and attract the right salesperson?
Everything so far has been about what you need. The strongest candidates are asking the same questions from the other side. For someone already succeeding elsewhere, a first sales role in an owner-managed business is a considered move.
There is no sales team around them, the business may be unfamiliar to the buyers they call, and their results will be visible from the first month. The people best suited to it are usually doing well where they are, so few of them are reading job advertisements. Reaching them, and giving them a reason to move, is part of the work of hiring.
Key point
The right person is rarely looking, so plan how you will reach them and what you will say when you do.
The full step, with what strong candidates weigh up and where to find them, is in the guide. Download the guide
How do I check a salesperson’s track record?
Strong revenue figures often reflect established accounts, a recognised brand or substantial support as well as the individual. Those results still matter, but you need to understand whether the person can do the work your business needs. Explore how they won business, what they did personally and what support they relied on, then compare those circumstances with the role you are offering.
Key point
Look for relevant personal experience and evidence of learning when things went wrong.
The full step, with interview questions that test a track record, is in the guide. Download the guide
Can a salesperson work effectively alongside me?
Even a capable salesperson will often need your expertise to win complex work. That is a useful partnership, provided they keep responsibility for the sale and know when to involve you. Without that judgement you get drawn back into every conversation, or discover that promises have been made without the right advice.
Key point
Assess the working relationship and the support required as carefully as the selling capability.
The full step, with interview questions on working alongside you, is in the guide. Download the guide
How do I assess a salesperson before making an offer?
A convincing interview can make a hire feel settled before the important claims have been checked. Salespeople are practised at making a good first impression, which is part of what makes interviewing them difficult. Agree the criteria before the interviews and use more than one source of evidence, so that candidates are compared on what the job requires rather than on how confidently they present. That gives you a reasoned basis for an offer, or for continuing the search.
Key point
Treat every unverified claim as a question still to resolve.
The full step, with how to set the criteria, observe judgement and corroborate the claims, is in the guide. Download the guide
How do I hand over sales to a new salesperson?
Hiring the right person does not give them the judgement you have built up over years. You recognise a promising customer or sense a problem without stopping to explain why, and a recruit has to learn that reasoning and be given the authority to act on it. Without both, they tend either to pursue unsuitable work or to come back to you for every decision.
Key point
Hand over your reasoning and your authority, and make your own commitments as visible as theirs.
The full step, with how to share your judgement and who owns what, is in the guide. Download the guide
What should a new salesperson achieve in the first 90 days?
You want reassurance that the hire is working, and the salesperson needs to know how they will be judged. Someone inheriting active opportunities starts differently from someone building a new pipeline. Agree expectations before they join, using your sales cycle and any work still needed on the approach. That gives early reviews a fair basis and keeps attention on commercial progress.
Set revenue expectations around your actual sales cycle: a standard 30, 60 and 90 day target looks rigorous, but where the first order takes six months it mostly measures the calendar.
Key point
Judge the buyer’s response as well as the salesperson’s activity.
The full step, with the five areas to review and the evidence to discuss, is in the guide. Download the guide
What should I do if my first sales hire is not working?
When results disappoint, it is tempting to conclude that you hired the wrong person, and sometimes that is the answer. Replacing them without understanding the cause, though, is how the business in the opening story came to make three hires. The brief, handover and reviews now give you something concrete to examine. Use real opportunities to establish whether the issue is execution, missing support, an assumption about the market, or a combination.
Key point
Revisit the evidence and the brief before carrying the same expectations into another hire.
The full step, with how to test the forecast and find what is holding progress back, is in the guide. Download the guide
What should a first sales hire brief include?
Bring it together on one page. The one-page brief sets out the questions to answer under the ten headings below, and you can download it with the guide. Write your answers in a document of your own. Complete it separately if more than one of you is involved in the decision, then compare answers. Where something is not yet clear, write down the assumption, so it can be tested before it becomes an expectation of the recruit.
- Why you are hiringSteps 01, 02
- How you win customers todayStep 01
- The jobStep 02
- Starting conditionsStep 03
- PayStep 03
- The case for joiningStep 04
- Evidence you needSteps 05 to 07
- Handover and authorityStep 08
- Early progressSteps 09, 10
- Still openAll steps
Send us your completed brief and we will review it with you
connect@kingmanlennox.com
Download the guide and the brief
The full guide as an 18-page PDF, with the one-page brief to work from.
- 10 practical questions
- Finding and assessing candidates
- A one-page hiring brief
How the story ended
The founder in the opening story made his fourth sales hire through Kingman Lennox, as Head of Sales. He brought the combination the business had needed all along: a strong grasp of strategy, structure and process and, unusually for someone at that level, a real appetite for winning customers himself.
In his first year he transformed the business, more than doubling turnover. He has since been promoted to Chief Commercial Officer and has landed further significant clients and partners. The sales team has grown around him, recruited through Kingman Lennox too, and they rate him all the more because he still rolls up his sleeves and sells.
The story at a glance
- First hire
- Second hire
- Third hire
- Fourth hire
Each expected to repeat the founder’s results without his advantages.
Head of Sales through Kingman Lennox. Turnover more than doubled in year one. Now Chief Commercial Officer.
Is this your first UK sales hire?
If your business is based outside the UK and this will be your first UK sales hire, the same questions apply, with more resting on them. The recruit will often be the business’s first presence in the market, building recognition as well as a pipeline, usually some distance from you and your team. Our page on your first UK sales hire explains how we approach those searches.
Talk to us about your first sales hire
Kingman Lennox works only on sales and business development roles. We give you what a guide cannot: a wider choice of candidates, including people who are not actively looking, and greater confidence in the decision.
Sales recruitment and executive search
We find and approach the people who can do the job you have defined, and assess each one against the evidence the role requires. Every placement carries a 12-month replacement guarantee.
Sales Hiring Assessment
If you have already found your candidates, we interview and assess your shortlist, testing the claims behind each track record so that you can decide with confidence.
Start with your brief
Send us your draft, or just the questions you are still working through, and we will review it with you in a short call, whether or not you go on to work with us.