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In this episode, we talk about the messy shift from founder-led sales to something more scalable. A lot of teams trip up here. It's not just about hiring the right people, it's about whether the company is actually ready for them.
Early sales hires often fail because the structure, process, or timing is off. The conversation introduces the idea of level awareness, a way to figure out if your setup matches the stage you're in. The same problems tend to repeat, whether you're at $1M or $50M ARR.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (02:12) - Challenges in Founder-Led Sales
- (05:36) - Diagnosing Founder-Led Sales Issues
- (08:36) - Hiring Challenges and Misconceptions
- (11:12) - Framework for Scaling Sales Teams
- (13:39) - Levels of Sales Maturity
- (19:20) - Defining Level One
- (23:27) - Hiring for Stage Level Fit
- (25:25) - Common Founder Regrets
- (27:13) - Hiring Sales Leaders with Level Awareness
- (34:53) - Challenges of Premature Scaling
- (36:31) - Conclusion
- (37:37) - Next Week: Is Remote Work & AI Making Us Less Productive?
Creators and Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
Founder-Led Sales and Other Scary Transitions
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[00:00:00]
Introduction
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Toni: Today we're talking about the scariest parts of building revenue engines. The transitions that are invisible as they happen, but are glaringly obvious in hindsight. To give you an example, we'll focus on a transition every team went through moving away from founder-led sales, and we'll explore how the same mindset applies with more scaling challenges than you think.
Going from 10 to 50 million in ARR and now enjoy.
Raul: The whole model actually does not start with founder-led sales. It starts with founder sales. And, uh, there's a distinction there, this phrase of,
Toni: oh, we've hired the wrong people and, and therefore it doesn't work out. This is not only something that someone is, is using when they're in a failed or struggling to make this transition work out.
Those are also phrases that I used hiring a bunch of sales reps and it didn't work out.
Raul: When I talk to founders about what they regret, it is something that they did. And did too early or were [00:01:00] not ready yet for, rather than something that they didn't do and they should have done sooner. Either I was too early in advancing or trying to push the envelope in something, or I was too late. Hey,
Toni: it's pretty much the end of summer. It already feels like, at least here in Copenhagen, right? So it's August one, you know, day of recording, and it's been raining all last week. It's actually been raining. Germany also for the last month, I feel there was like this spike of 38 degrees and then it was this rain for two weeks.
Um, those were coincidentally also the two weeks I was in Germany for holidays. So. Great. Good timing. Perfect timing.
Raul: Um, where, where did you spend your summer role as usual? I spent a big part of my summer in Romania. I am not sure. It could actually be called summer though. Uh, like even there where it's always typically 35, 40 degrees even sometimes it was, uh, it was raining a lot.
It was raining a lot in Germany too. Um, and it still is even technically though, we're, we're in [00:02:00] on August 1st, so, um, I'm a bit disappointed with that. We, we, we kind of need a summer getaway here
Toni: and, and while we were sitting inside and thinking about the rain and, you know, what else we could do, um.
Challenges in Founder-Led Sales
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Toni: We were starting to think about what could be a cool topic to talk about today.
And that really started to fall a little bit around this founder led sales. Um, I wanna call it a, a, a myth, it's actually not a myth, but kind of that, that, you know, very difficult area to navigate. Um, because first of all, it's super interesting. Second of a couple of people have asked us about it, but third of all.
This was kind of the key of our conversations. Like, yes, there's this issue for the founder led sales transition to a sales led sales, uh, I guess transition. Um, but the mechanics to go from A to B are actually some of the similar mechanics you need to do in order to scale from 10 to [00:03:00] 20 million and kind of figure out how that works or kind of you start a new team and how, how does that actually work?
Or if you think about adding a new AE to the team. There are a couple of those mechanics that are, um, parked under the sales, uh, founder led sales transition that are super applicable for the rest as well. So that's why kind of we're calling it founder led sales, the 10 million a RR edition year today.
Um, so let's, let's jump, let's jump right into it.
Raul: The funny thing about the term founder led sales is that it's been picking up velocity in, in usage and, and people are using it more and more for all kinds of different situations. Uh, it's one of those terms that everyone seems to know. But not everyone agrees on what it actually means, and nobody ever actually bothers to think about.
So it's this weird conundrum where people talk about one thing and another person hears another thing, uh, from that one single word. And it's actually not very useful in communication. Um, but most of all, even more than that, I'm not even sure that people right now are [00:04:00] using it very well to actually enhance their business and grow more.
And, uh, that's kinda the point of today, right? So what is actually the, the, the meaning of founder-led sales and most of all, how does that help you? Uh, and, and there's much more to it than just the, the one term that people are. I think the idea of founder-led sales has kind of spread throughout the GTM world within the 2010s.
Um, David Sachs actually is very closely connected to, to that term, although he was not the only one to use it, and no one
Toni: these days knows David Sachs anymore. By the way, it's like, it's, it's so crazy to me how some of the, you know, I wanna say greats of the last 15 years, I just completely forgotten.
Tomish. Who's that? I don't know. Never heard of the guy. You know,
Raul: it's crazy. I guess. I guess we really are boomers then Tony, you and me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, so look him up. David Sachs, another guy you might know who's been popularizing the term a lot is Jason Lemkin, right? Yeah. Or the Y Combinator guys who are just running around telling people to do founder led sales all the time.[00:05:00]
Yeah. So it's, it's not like he's, he's the only person, but I guess we really are boomers then, right? So that term has been popularized a lot lately, but the. The usage of that is actually typically just connected to, hey, when you're early stage, what you need to do is do founder sales. Um, and that seems very useful only to early stage companies, but it's actually much more than that.
And there's, there's more meaning to it. There's a whole model and that model is used to describe and can be really helpful in scaling a department, but also scaling your whole company. So one of the
Toni: things, let's kind of start out with that, is.
Diagnosing Founder-Led Sales Issues
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Toni: I think talking to you about it, I have found out that I've been using founder-led sales, the term, um, in a true loose of a way to be, um, to be helpful to diagnose, uh, folks that have that issue kind of myself, diagnosing myself, understanding where I am on that, uh, journey, but also with, you know, founders.
I've been talking about [00:06:00] this, right? So let's. Let's take the, um, uh, magnifying lens to what founder led sales in that transition. You know, what those different stages or those different levels are, and to make it a bit more crisper. I want to follow on,
Raul: so this is a bit detailed right now. Um, you don't actually need this necessarily.
Maybe it's interesting for you, maybe not. What matters is the idea behind that. So whether you remember those terms or not, whatever, but you've heard them once now, so. The, the whole model actually does not start with founder-led sales. It starts with founder sales. And uh, there's a distinction there, a pretty significant one, which is founder sales is what typically is the first thing, which is you and me, Tony, we start a company, you're the person building the thing.
I'm the person who's gonna sell the thing, meaning I'm the founder, I'm doing the selling, hence founder sales. Right. That's the first thing. We're two founders, or maybe three, four. I'm doing the sales part. It's founder sales. I'm doing it in one person. I'm owning it. I'm [00:07:00] owning every process in my head. I might not even have a CRM.
Everything is happening through my own sheer commitment and will. And, um, that then moves to founder led, which is typically what people talk about a lot. Uh, oftentimes these two are used interconnected, but they're not actually, and founder led refers to, there is something that is being led by the founder, meaning typically either a team.
Or automations and or processes that are executing some of the GTM function. And this is pretty significant because this means that already new requirements are needed for what are, what is happening in that company. Um. There's maybe to, to foreshadow this, there's, uh, a lot of challenges that are happening on the move from founder sales to founder led sales, and a lot of stumbling blocks.
I have heard many, many times, even this year. Um, maybe not exactly the same story, but versions of this story, and I'm sure you're aware of this, uh, or you're familiar with this, Hey, um. Just, uh, [00:08:00] we're an early stage company and we just moved from founder sites to founder led sales, whether they know these terms or not.
And, uh, before that I did 20, 30 K-A-R-R-A month. Uh, and now I'm, I hired three people and we're also doing 20, 30 K-A-R-R-A month. How can this be? How can it be that with three professional salespeople that I hired, uh, I'm as productive as I was before. I'm not, I'm not even a professional salesperson who's been doing that their whole life.
Uh, obviously these people must suck. This is a very common challenge and all kinds of versions of this are even problems that we've worked on in the past.
Toni: You know what this, this phrase, which.
Hiring Challenges and Misconceptions
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Toni: It's obviously a half truth and a half, you know, half, half is not true actually of, oh, we've hired the wrong people and, and therefore it doesn't work out.
This is not only something that, uh, someone is, is using when they're in a failed or struggling to make this transition work out. Those are also phrases that I used hiring a bunch of sales reps. Um, and it [00:09:00] didn't work out. And kind of, it's, it's always the other sales reps don't work out. And the that's the problem actually.
Right. And I think one of the big takeaways and realizations here is like, well, well maybe it's actually not the people you hire. Uh, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's the structure, maybe it's the onboarding. Maybe it's the process. Maybe it's how you teach them. You know, there, there might be so many other things, but, and I think one realization that should click for everyone, um, is.
Whenever you catch yourself or your leaders or someone in the room, maybe the CEO saying like, oh, but those guys were bozos, so therefore it didn't work out. I think whenever you catch yourself, you know, with a version of that, you probably should, after this episode, stop and be like, okay, wait a minute.
Actually I think we are, we are being the BOS here. Um, and I think that's really. Um, I think that's the first insight here from, from how you described the problem, right?
Raul: To be fair, also a bit of a shadowing here. Um, who produced those bozos? [00:10:00] Like Yeah. Let's assume that these who hired them, these people actually did suck as Yes.
Who hired them. And, and maybe this is a little bit of an issue already, which is like, yeah, okay, but there's always gonna be a fail rate. And that's true, but. Maybe part of the reason that you didn't proceed to to grow enough yet, or you, you didn't advance as you wanted to and you did hire those bozos, is because of your maturity in understanding what kind of sales person you needed, and then also getting that person attracted to your company, interviewing them, maybe paying the right amount of money, maybe finding the right compensation model.
There is a lot that goes into finding those people, so at least, yes, there's some variance to it, but. At least assume most of the responsibility of getting those people in there. Um, and, and, and maybe it's much more than just saying, yes, it's my bad. I'm sorry, ro it's not, it's, that's not what I'm going at.
It's not just taking responsibility. It is then understanding that there's a mechanic behind producing those bozos. So if you don't want to repeat that, yes, acknowledge that maybe you're, you're at fault. But then be like, okay, [00:11:00] how could we. Improve the job description. How can we improve so that we have a better funnel?
How can we understand better who we're we're talking to? Um, and that's already foreshadowing how to solve these things. But that is a mechanic of founder led sales.
Framework for Scaling Sales Teams
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Toni: And just kind of finishing the, the framework here a little bit. We have, uh, we started with the founders doing the selling. Then the founder is hiring an AE to help him or her with the selling.
Um, then we have the next step is founder is too busy managing too many AEs and doing all kinds of other things. Founder hires a sales leader into the position and in the beginning, that, and whether that's transitory or not, you know, TBD, but that's a, you know, um, and, you know, the sales leader's assisting, it's not really yet leading the team, but it's assisting.
Right? Um, then the next step would be the sales leader actually owning the whole thing. Right. And I think, you know, all of these different steps are scary in, in different ways, I feel, um, and they have different symptoms connected to them. Um, [00:12:00] but I think in many cases, um, the solutions that we're discussing are kind of connecting through those, right?
I mean, how, how do you, how do you see, what's the red threat for you going through all of these different transitions?
Raul: Yeah. And so this is valuable in my opinion, for any company at any stage. Um, maybe we're not talking like, uh, super corporate enterprise. Maybe things break down a little bit there. But up to that world, the nice thing about this model, whether you're.
Wherever you think you're at right now, or even if you're beyond the scaling part is. The point is it's not just about describing how scalability works, it's also that there's all these other levers that have to move in unison, uh, or at least according to the phase you're at, to enable the next phase, uh, of, of the founder led dech model.
So. It's kind of like, uh, if you play video games, uh, or an RPG or like any kind of games with like evolutions and levels, uh, you're a [00:13:00] wizard and you have strength and intelligence and whatever, dexterity, and to move to the next level, you need to have strength at level five and you need to have achieved this and that and the other.
And you need to have intelligence at level five, whatever. Um, even if you're not familiar with that, I think it's a very logical thing, right? You need to kind of like get to certain levels in certain areas to achieve the next level. It is the same in sales. It's just that the game engine does not, uh, prohibit you from hiring salespeople, but rather by failing, uh, you would, we will have to come to realize that you are actually not at the level yet that you needed to be to hire three or five or 10 or 500 salespeople.
Levels of Sales Maturity
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Raul: So the idea basically is there is levels to everything and, um, you kind of need to get to a certain amount of levels to be able to do the next thing.
Toni: And I think the, you know, analogy of levels. Kind of makes sense, but let's make them a little bit more tangible here. Right? If I were to say level zero, um, would that be basically, hey, I'm, I'm the founder [00:14:00] and I'm just winging it.
Uh, you know, I'm, I'm still figuring things out myself. You know, I don't, I don't even know if I have a process, and maybe I do, but I'm not aware of it. And hiring someone into this situation of you winging it and trying to teach someone else how to wing it. That would be a tangible example of, ooh, this is probably gonna be difficult, right?
Yes. Like, can you, can you expand on this a little bit? Can you give, give you know, audience a little bit more of like an understanding, you know, what, not necessarily what level one and two and three or whatever is, but like how, uh, how can they think about those different levels? Kind of what's, what's the requirement to, to, you know, achieve level one?
Basically and kind of graduate level. Yeah,
Raul: so the way that I think at least about these levels is, um, and I don't think it matters too much what exactly the distinctions are and the terms are, but is. There are different parts of your engine organization, whatever you wanna call it, right? There's CRM, there's processes, there's people, there's the data part, there's the GTM motion itself.
There is where the leads are coming from. So however you wanna structure that is actually not that [00:15:00] important. I think you're gonna find all kinds of different versions of this. Um, I, for example, like to go with people, processes, uh, strategy data. And, uh, tech and, um, that is kind of like, okay, you can be in tech.
You don't need to be at level five yet. You can be at level one and you will advance. What does tech mean, for example, CRM, right? So, uh, this is a very typical one. Hey, what kind of CRM setup do you need to be able to hire the first salesperson or the first three? So far, I've been doing all the sales myself.
Now I'm gonna hire three salespeople. What kind of cm do I need? Do I even need one at all? Can I just work with Excel and, and how does that work? Right? And there's just some best practices to that. Right? And, and depending on your business, the answer might be a little bit of a different one. But what is Sure is that to get to.
The first three sales hires, you need some step forward, probably. Why? Because all of a sudden you're not working alone anymore, but you're working together with people and you probably need some sort of way of [00:16:00] communicating, even if that is a very shitty excel that you're using to make sure that you're not talking to the same accounts at the same time, but you will need something to make that happen in a good way.
And when you move from three to 30. That needs to take a next step. So maybe all of a sudden the Excel step, uh, thing is not enough anymore. Maybe you need to move to Pipedrive, and then from 30 to 60, maybe you need to move to Salesforce. And why will you do that? Well, because all of a sudden you have much higher automation needs, more people working together on higher complexities with more departments, on different products in different markets.
So there needs to be currencies in there. There needs to be time zones and all kinds of things that maybe in Piper are not enabled. And that is the most logical progression of. How you need to level from level zero, which is everything is your own head to level one, which is an Excel table, level two, which is maybe Pipedrive and level three, which is Salesforce throughout your development of your sales, uh, development, if that makes sense.
Toni: Yeah, I think that does make sense. I think usually, [00:17:00] uh, some of the folks listening when we talk about like CRM, the ice glaze over mine too by now, by the way. Um, but the, I think let's, let's work maybe on another example that, you know, kind of is forming in my head and maybe you can help me complete it.
You started out with, um, you know, you need the Excel and the, and the CRM in order to. Organize, which accounts you're working on and, and, and so forth, right. Um, but to the, to a very similar degree. Um, let's just talk about the sales process and the pitch and the ICP kind of these, these kind of things that are super, super crucial, but a little bit more soft and intangible to a degree.
Right. Um, and it actually starts out, and this is my own experience from all of this, is in your head, and by the way. It's actually not yet really in your head. It really starts out with, well, these things are kind of forming, right? You know, what is really my ICP, you know, what is the sales track? You know, all of these things are kind of in your head, right?
And at some point you get to, um, the level where you're like, oh, I figure I figured this out now. Um, and [00:18:00] now imagine you hire someone else into the role, right? My, the, the first thing is like, well, how, how am I going to take what's in my head and put it into her or his head? Like that's, that's the first transition there, right?
And, and maybe that means you need to document things. You need to think through things and, uh, you need to, uh, maybe have a conversation with the AE to, you know. Because maybe you need an external view on what it is you're actually doing, or it helps, you know, give this some structure, right? Um, then, you know, maybe it's not one a anymore.
Maybe it's two or three suddenly to think about like a, a meeting cadence suddenly to think about, you know, how do you align those three reps that they're actually all saying the same thing, and how do you make sure that they're continue to do the same thing, especially as you build new product and have new features and the pitch cannot, needs to get updated and so on and so forth.
Right. I don't have kind of the next step currently in my head, but that's, at least for [00:19:00] me, a way of, um, going from level zero to level one in this. Example would be everything's your, in your head to, I've written down the key pieces in a notion document, um, and my a understand what I've wrote there, right?
Is, is that, is that another example of, of the step
Raul: function that you're thinking about?
Defining Level One
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Raul: The crucial point there is. It is not that there's just one answer for what level one means it, it will be different in every company. And as you said, maybe level one of your processes, um, will be that you just wrote them down in notion, or maybe even you did a voice memo in, in notion or whatever, but you got it out of your own head and you now made it possible for two, three salespeople to step in, listen to that, rambling in the voice memo, make sense of that, but now kind of work together as a team of four people together with you.
And that is. Considerably different from before that everything was in my own head. Right. And, and that's the point. It could also be that level one is already you starting to use like some [00:20:00] nice process maps because maybe it does help and maybe it is very complicated. Whatever the answer is, the point is that to go to the next level, you need to advance your next game.
And there is, it's, it's not necessarily a step function as in there is really these very strong steps and every. Two, 12 months, you need to upgrade the entire system. Um, it's that these things become a bit more gradual, but then sometimes all of a sudden you look back and realize, oh, we've actually reached a new step without even noticing.
Toni: I'm just kind of listening to you. I'm just seeing some of the parallels that I run into managing, you know, 20 and $50 million, um, revenue engines, basically. Mm-hmm. Right. Issue number one is, okay, we've expanded into a new geography. But even in, in the company, we didn't call it product market fit because we had PMF, so we were 20 million.
Um, but actually in this new geography, we didn't have 20 million. We had zero million. Um, and, and we started calling it product geography fit. Um. [00:21:00] For some way to say regionalized PMF basically. And the process there to reach that was actually very similar to how you reach it in general, in the first place, in your first geography, if you will.
Right. Um, need to figure things out. Every, nothing is really kind of fully locked in. You might have different competitors, you might have different willingness to pay, you might have different ICPs. Like there are things that will be slightly different in this new geography, in this new market. And going from.
Um, you know, taking your level five that you have in your home market and deploying it onto kind of this new world, it probably doesn't actually work out. Kind of some of those procedures and structures and ways of doing things might actually not fully apply yet to your new area that you cannot of expanding into.
You need to have a much more entrepreneurial, you know, going from zero to one instead of from one to 100, uh, kind of approach there, right? That then over time it matures. Over time. Yes. You wanna actually also that region, that team, you wanna grow that into, you know, whatever level [00:22:00] 4, 5 20, um, uh, where, where the rest of the organization is. And another example here was for us actually, um, uh, in, in the $50 million company was expanding into the enterprise. Like a very typical thing, right? Um, and, you know, it's not like you're gonna, you know, not use the CRM, but. Yes, in a lot of cases you will probably just start out with one rep. Um, 'cause you can't afford more 'cause it's super expensive already.
Uh, maybe that one rep will work extremely closely with the VP of sales or even the founder on figuring this thing out. Uh, you know, there will be a product market fit issues like what features to develop and you know, when and how and so forth, how to price and so forth. Right? And, and there again, you're actually going through those different levels and I think, um, if there's one issue that we.
And we've run into bot talking to founders and series A companies and, uh, and, and, and running big organizations. It's like you, you kind of need to have a, um, your, your [00:23:00] level needs to kind of match the situation, right? Um, there are many, many cases where if you get it wrong, you'll kill the whole thing, right?
Mm-hmm. So there's the, I'm opening up a new market and I'm applying the same playbook, the same rigidity, with the same scaled news. To that new market, it's gonna fail, right? Because you applied level five to level zero, it's not gonna work like that. Um, or another thing, very, very tangible.
Hiring for Stage Level Fit
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Toni: Um, let's just say you are still an earlier stage company.
Maybe you are five to 10 million, um, and you're hiring a CRO or VP of sales or something like that. That person needs to. At least have an understanding of what level are they dropping into. Uh, because if you're hiring the guy from Salesforce that is in level 1000 and, and you wanna put them into your level two super scrappy kind of thing, uh, that person will struggle.
Like, and that is, that is already, you know, people know this by now. [00:24:00] Like, Hey, don't hire for the big logo, hire for the fit here. Right. It's what we're talking about is kind of a translation of that, right? If you, if you want to have that scaled leader, you need to make sure that your organization can actually support this, that you are at that level in order to achieve that.
If you have not, then you also need to realize you're gonna get that very expensive person in and that person hopefully is capable. To help you level up, but it's gonna take six months for him or her to do that before they can really unfold the actual job that they were kind of hired for. Right. And I'm just kind of trying to make it super tangible for people on how that way of thinking applies 1000% to you, whether or not your 1 million or 50 million in ar.
Would you actually agree with that rule? Kind of. Did I, did I mess this up somewhere? It's kind of more in your head actually than, than in mine.
Raul: No, absolutely. And that, that's, that's the point I was trying to make and, and you as well, is. This applies to basically any kind of situation, uh, and any kind of a [00:25:00] RR or, or maturity of your company.
Now, I'm not gonna talk a lot about like the Siemens and Daimler of this world since I don't have that experience that much. But I do know, uh, for companies even up to pre IPO or pre-ex exit, what that looks like. And this applies even up to that point. And I would say that one common thread. Which, which kind of maybe a little bit describes what or gives it, gives it more weight, what you were talking about.
This is anecdotal.
Common Founder Regrets
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Raul: I didn't run the numbers, but um, when I talk to founders about what they regret, um, all kinds of stages, very often, at least two thirds, it is something that they did. Did too early or were not ready yet for, rather than something that they didn't do and they should have done sooner. Um, so almost always, I would say two thirds, 70% of the time.
Yeah, these regrets are. We shouldn't have hired those salespeople yet. We shouldn't have expanded to, to this region [00:26:00] yet. Uh, we should have taken a couple more months to probe out the tax situation with this and that and the other. We should have, uh, taken more time to hire people, whatever it is yet, right?
So, or we should actually have, uh, spent more time on the processes, because now I see where that led to. And sometimes the, I should've handed over sales
Toni: faster, right? Yes. Um, that, that sometimes is kind of the. The opposite, actually, not too late, but too early.
Raul: Yes. So I would say though, that also happens obviously, so I should have done something sooner. Um, but very often, typically what combines those, it's something is about timing. Either I was too early in advancing or trying to push the envelope in something or I was too late. Um, and so, but both or. Two sides of the same coin, which is, uh, I missed the boat either because I was too late or too early in advancing to the next level, given the circumstances and the opportunity that I had in the business.
Now, that's a very broad definition of things, but this is actually what this is about, [00:27:00] right? So build the levels, go to level one here, go to level two there, and then advance to the next level. Do the right, uh, uh, strategic moves. But I actually also think, and this
Toni: is somewhat the difficulty, right? I think a well-known concept is already.
Hiring Sales Leaders with Level Awareness
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Toni: Let's just say you hire a new salesperson or sales leader and it's less so important that they come from the same industry. I know if it's great if they're in sa, I agree. You know, it's less so important. What's really actually what is important is um, and that's the well-known focus. How much money are they asking from their customer, right?
Kind of what's the a CV level fit, right? If you get a super scale DPO sales that has been doing SMB and you know, 5K year maximum tickets. And you want to give that person now a hundred K tickets, that's not gonna work out right, because the, uh, the process just looks different. The hiring profile looks different, kind of the way he needs to, or she needs to behave.
And, you know, work with the customers looks completely different. They just simply don't have this playbook. Um, and their [00:28:00] nuances of that where, um, well maybe you haven't done a hundred K, but maybe you've done 50 k. What is actually key here is that whoever you, you hire is, is aware. That's a thing, right?
Kind of that, um, you are to a degree, a CV aware or process aware, um, I wanna say, right? And I think what we are uncovering here and making clear for everyone listening is like, you probably need the same awareness ability in your leaders for those different levels, uh, that you're going through and where you are.
Right? Crazily enough. This doesn't only apply to your VP of sales, um, on, hey, you know, it's a hundred K ticket or it's 5K tickets. I think this also applies to your VP marketing kind of, they need to understand, you know, where they, where the organization is, what the next level looks like on which, uh, dimension they need to upgrade.
Next, where, where's the next bottleneck? What, what's gonna, what's gonna, um, you [00:29:00] know, f us in, in the, but uh, if we don't take care of this next right. You, you kind of. Hire those been done, that folks should tell you that. Right? What I've seen many, many times, and this is not for VP marketing, this is also, you know, rev ops, it's, it's the whole spectrum Cs even product, is that they, um, that they aren't aware of, that actually they're not, they're not level aware.
Um. Uh, sometimes coming in, uh, you know, okay, I'm the big CRO from big company over here, going to a startup with three sales reps. The first thing I'm doing is I'm buying Salesforce and Gong, because those are the tools, you know, and this is really just a tangible, tangible example. I don't wanna talk about tooling, but as a tangible example of someone coming in, being like, Hey, those are the tools, you know, this is the stuff I need and we need this now.
Right. Without understanding and being aware, like. I think this is over engineering for where you are right now. Right. And I, [00:30:00] how would you actually, and maybe this is a good question for, I think you're really strong on that, but how would you, in an interviewing process, um, how would you ask for that? How would you, how would you kind of get this out of people to understand if they understand this?
You know, not specifically the framework we're discussing, but this level awareness,
Raul: I would actually expand even and say, and this is one of the actual tips that I would give to solve this is. Yeah. Every person that you're hiring in your GTM function should bring something to leveling up this engine and this whole machine, every single person, even the AEs, even the SDRs, and even if it's just two or five or 6%, whatever, um, and everyone can contribute to that because if you do leave it to just the CEO or just the CRO, uh, or the commercial founder, it's overwhelming.
It's gonna be too much. Even at a later stage, you do need people to bring you forward. I do think it's not a good idea to only rely on rev ops or only on the CRO [00:31:00] to do that, the leveling up game, right? This is a collective effort. And what that means for, uh, in reality is that you do want salespeople who are aware of.
Processes a little bit, and, and they don't spend 98% of their time on processes, but from time to time, they will give some good feedback. From time to time they will go to lunch with marketing and, and product and, uh, and, and report back to you what might be, uh, uh, what might be a good solution for a problem you're having right now.
From time to time, they'll keep an eye open on what's happening in customer success and making sure that the whole, uh, chain of the, of, of the maturity of the process is going down, uh, the right way. From time to time, they will contribute to the sales. Stacks or the onboarding of salespeople, and they will aspire to that as well.
And this is stuff that in the interviews you should already consciously go for. Of course, when you're hiring for an ae, what matters is that they sell. And if you have a rockstar seller that is going to sell everything that you have, uh, and gonna sell the house out, obviously you'll hire them even if they don't have [00:32:00] that.
But try to go for as many people as possible that have a little bit of that in them. Um, and I find that these orgs just work really well. And that's typically how do you test that? Um, it is a lot about the ambition that people have and the entrepreneurialism, right? So not just people who want to fulfill a function, but who wanna contribute to expanding and, and getting to the next stage of the business.
Toni: It's so funny actually, now that we're talking about this, there's so many examples flopping up in my head. Uh, so back then we, uh, had a bunch of. A few AEs from like Salesforce, Gartner, and IBM, because that was like a thing in Copenhagen. Um, and we were like, I don't know, sub 5 million or something like this.
Um, and based on that, we created the rule. Never ever hire from those companies again. I kind of, that was basically kind of a rule like, like that, you know, we can never do that again because that was obviously silly. And then fast forward, I think five years, we were like 40, 50 million and we were interviewing those sales directors.
Um, and I think we ended up going for [00:33:00] two sales directors from Salesforce. Um, and they ended up like scaling the, the craziest, uh, you know, through this organization, be extremely successful managing their reps in this wonderful way. We never had so good E-E-N-P-S. Uh, you know, the forecast was there. They kind of drove those deals.
Home was a fantastic fit. Right. What changed was the business has changed, you know, not the people that we basically hired. The profile was obviously this one was a director, and this other one was an ae. But we as a business mature to the point where suddenly we could actually utilize those Salesforce and Gartner guys and, and when they came in, it was still kind of like.
You know, I, I, you know, talked with them in the corner and they were like, nah, you know, like these are, these things they don't really work out yet. So they were aware that it's not fully there yet. Um, but it was kind of working out that they could take us there if we would've hired those people five years earlier.
If they would've been like, this is [00:34:00] a mad house. You, you know, there's like, nothing here resembles what I need. Um, and then it just wouldn't have worked out. I kind of, and I really, I really started liking this way of thinking, um, of this, let's call it level awareness, like a whole bunch. Um, because I think this is a little bit the hidden reason why some of those, why some of those hires frankly fail, right?
It's not only this one dimension of. What's the a CV that you've been selling at? And are you a good, capable person, but also do you have stage level fit with where we are right now? And, you know, can you actually take this thing forward whether you're an S-D-R-A-E, uh, you know, that's why people call it sometimes the founding ae because that's the person that deals with the most craziness versus, uh, and, and then all the way to VP, basically.
Right? Pretty cool stuff.
Raul: I'll give one more thing though.
Challenges of Premature Scaling
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Raul: It's specifically for companies around plus minus 10 million. A RR is. [00:35:00] They are very often premature in assuming the stage that they're at, and this is kind of what you were saying, but in a different way, which is, um, I see so many companies around 10 million are already going for the, uh, Salesforce, uh, director and the CRO and whatever, or the people who work those, uh, enterprise companies, which is maybe even four or five levels.
Too early. Um, and, and they're already acting as if they were at 500 million a RR even though it's 10. And I think that it's obvious, it's logical. Hey, don't hire too early for, for that. I think it's because in a naive way, and I'm not belittling anyone here, but I do think this is actually true. Um, it's a lot of founders kind of see so much happening from zero to 10 million and from zero to 1 million, then from one to five, and then from five to 10 and it, there's like, yeah, there was all these steps that were happening between, and a lot of founders will nod their head.
Either they've been through that or they see it in front of them and they're like, yes, yes, I can see all the evolution that needs to happen. But then they think that from [00:36:00] 10 to a hundred is actually just one more step, but it's probably much more. And, and that's kind of where I was going with that today.
There's probably another five levels ahead of that. And because you think that 100 is the next level, uh, you are already hiring for the 100 million, but actually maybe 12 million or 15 or 20 is the next. And this is actually significant in execution. So maybe break down these jumps, especially the ones in the future, uh, a little bit further.
And that would be very helpful to understand where you actually need to go tomorrow and next year rather than in 20 years. So
Conclusion
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Toni: as we're talking about this, right? So I mean, it's. This is something that is, um, in roles in my head. Um, some of that role you've also written down already, but it's not yet fully, um, polished and stuff.
Um, if you guys want to hear more about this, please just ping either of us on LinkedIn. Um. We'll, we'll probably keep producing some more content around this whole stage level fit idea. Um, because I think it's really, first of all, it's new. I haven't seen [00:37:00] anyone else talk about it like this. And number two, I think it's a fairly large reason of why folks start stumbling on, on any kind of scale.
Like whether it be like after power market fit for a million or up to a hundred million, this, this level awareness and kind of getting that right. Um, I don't think, first of all, it's easy, but it's also even not easy to be aware of that. Um, and maybe let's end it here for, um, yes. Today. Um, everyone thank you so much for listening and, uh, you know, if you haven't it subscribe or maybe send this to your CRO.
Um. And, uh, see you next week. Cheers. See ya. Next week.
Next Week: Is Remote Work & AI Making Us Less Productive?
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Toni: We're talking about how AI and remote work is making us dumber and less productive, not because it's a hot take. Or because I particularly believe in that, but because there's now clear research that supports this notion, and if you don't wanna miss this conversation, hit subscribe and see you next week.
The main [00:38:00] headline here, report Found that remote workers per day work an average of two and a half hours less.
Raul: There's a large difference to me, not necessarily in working hours, but in. What's happening in those hours. I would rather take a team of people working six hours a day, not checking their phones and not wasting their time than people, uh, 10 hours a day in the office who are half the time asleep, uh, on their phone.
Toni: Probably very likely work less, maybe learn less on the job. Plus, hey, this AI thing is kind of happening and it's making us a little bit dumber. If you combine those two things together, like that's a significant productivity hit, we're actually currently experiencing and taking.