Do I hire lead generation or sales executives first?

It's the classic chicken or the egg isn't it? Do I start building brand awareness and generate leads, or do I hire sales executives who are tasked to find leads and close at the same time?

In my experience, you need to do a few things first. Below is a high-level list of activities you have to consider before you even think of hiring:

- Build out your TAM (Total Addressable Market)

- what is the total possible value of your targeted audience?

- Segment your TAM and stay VERY focused

- start small, stick to your core offerings. Don't get blinded by the opportunity to go after everyone.

- Have your pricing model and methodology ready

- Understand your vertical industry's terminology and work on creating Persona's

- who are you targeting within an organisation and why? What are their pain points? What do they look for? How do they buy?

There's plenty more to do but this should be a good start.

Next thing for you to consider is, who is going to look after your customers once you win a deal or 2, or 10? My advice is ALWAYS think of the customer first, and hire a Customer Success Manager/Advocate that is commercially savvy as one of your first hires.

Your next hire would be to look for both a demand generation specialist and a sales executive. You will ultimately pair these resources together as they focus on top and middle of the funnel inbound and outbound strategies.

Once things start rolling, you will then want to consider hiring an inside sales rep to focus on either inbound (if you are so lucky to have so many incoming leads that you are swamped) or an outbound SDR who will partner with both the demand generation specialist and sales executive to launch targeted multi-touch campaigns to your targeted personas (social selling, cold call, email, Account Base Marketing (ABM), etc)

Want to know more? Drop me a note and I'll happily provide you with more information.