By Fernando Berrocal

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One of the first things you must understand as a brand-new startup entrepreneur is that creating a successful sales team for your business may be quite a difficult task to accomplish. When it comes to achieving your organization's overarching objectives, it is not sufficient to just invest time and energy into developing a strong sales staff. You will get in-depth advice on how to create a high-performing sales force in the next following points in the present article.

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• Avoid hiring too many salespeople too early. In the fledgling stage of your startup, founders should be able to sell (and should be selling) the product they develop. Even if you are a very technical engineer, you must understand how crucial it is to market your product properly. Perhaps you have never sold anything in your life, or you feel it’s an activity that doesn't match you.  Regardless, you are still in this position and must overcome these notions of self-doubt. Realize that your days of being an "non-sales" person are finished .

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In this particular business position, you'll always be selling. So, your main objective is to identify a "pattern" of the kind of individuals who are best depending on what you are offering and who your target audience is. You'll need some input so that you can keep improving your future startup hirings.

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• Sales are what you need–not salespeople. If you are a very technical professional in the engineering field, then consider yourself to be a "Revenue Engineer" rather than a "Professional of Sales". After internalizing that, you must be aware that you won't recruit a sales "manager" as one of your first startup employees, since it will make more sense to develop a "manager" internally (rather than just hire an external one).

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Note: it's crucial to not get distracted by many different fancy business titles that exist nowadays.  Instead, concentrate exclusively on the money your business will eventually raise. Finally, you should be prepared for a genuine headache when choosing selling professionals. They're as prepared as other professionals, but salespeople are fundamentally distinctive in a few different ways.  They have specific business strengths; and areas for improvement.

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• Agile approaches are also effective in sales.  These approaches may be used to improve the selling process as with any other regular business process in a business. Refine the slides, the demo script, and any supporting materials. Take note of the lessons the top performers have already learned, then share them with others. Your story and pitch should be becoming stronger every day when your business is still in its early phases of operations.

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• Avoid the tendency to design complex compensation plans. You are overcomplicating regular things if calculating the final commission necessitates using a spreadsheet with several tabs and a variety of lookup options. There are no need to make things more difficult things than they already are. This can be different and you will have plenty of time afterward to confuse yourself and your sales team. Start basic at the initial moment of operations and start to develop as you learn the sales process.

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• Always connect rewards to the success and satisfaction of your customers.  You will obtain a variety of deals if you simply reward "deals getting done”–but at an excessive cost. You can encounter resistance, such as claims that salespeople have little or no power over the customer's satisfaction. Remember that customers are "picked", expectations are created, and the amount of "convincing" is managed.

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• Make sure you comprehend the essential economics of your business.  The first step is to calculate your overall Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).  This particular expense covers marketing team members, sales representatives, and all of the advertising campaigns. In terms of spending on sales vs. marketing, various businesses have distinct demands. Make sure neither becomes too out of sync.

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• Know how much revenue you expect to generate per customer, or Lifetime Value (LTV).  This value should be greater than CAC, which was measured previously. It's time to start turning the crank and scale the business by adding additional salespeople once your LTV reaches a multiple of your CAC. However, act cautiously if your LTV is significantly lower than your CAC. You have an issue if LTV cannot possibly increase over CAC. Wait until the economics start to make some sense before attempting to employ more salespeople.

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• Track all the information available.  You'll need to know things like: what was sold, to whom, when (date and exact time), where, and for what price. In the future, as you start to scale your business, this useful data will be priceless. Keep in mind that you probably won't have the volume (or time) to examine the data in the early stages of your business. However, to use it shortly, you should at least attempt to collect this data and store it in a recommended database.

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• Start keeping an eye on how your sales funnel is shaping out as early as possible.  Better still, plan and determine your flywheel. Ask yourself these questions: What number of leads do you receive each month? How many of them result in chances? How many of those end up becoming paying clients? How many of those clients are now raving fans because they were so happy? As soon as you comprehend your flywheel, you can gradually make adjustments to your system to close the "leaks".

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If you’ve built (or are about to build) an early-stage sales team, try responding to these questions: 

• What are your thoughts and insights? 
• What knowledge have you gained? 
• What advice do you have for those who didn't grow up in the sales industry? 

Then, since you will constantly be selling a product, continue to learn more about the selling process.

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Ready to bring your startup to the next level? Apply to MassLight’s next batch. MassLight supplies capital and a dedicated tech team. We take equity in return. Have questions? Refer to our FAQ page.