Lucent Search’s Post

How do you build a winning sales team from scratch in a startup environment? Lee Anderson, Director of Sales Scotland and Ireland at Microlise and former co-founder of SaaS startup Coastr, shares his proven strategies in our latest episode. 🚀     With over 18 years of experience driving growth across diverse sectors, Lee has mastered the art of hiring, training, and motivating high-performing sales teams. From the most important traits to look for in early hires to structuring data-driven coaching, he reveals his playbook for success.     Key insights:  • Why resilience and adaptability trump industry experience in startup sales hires  • How to effectively onboard and enable new salespeople   • The metrics and KPIs that matter most for gauging sales team success  • Habits and mindsets that separate top performers     Listen now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to learn how to build your startup's revenue engine.     Listen here:  🎧 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3UIcXkM  🎧 Apple: https://bit.ly/3Us3QDp

Trying to crack the code on startup sales hiring? It's a challenge I hear from founders constantly - how do you identify and attract top sales talent, especially in the early stages?     I had a fantastic conversation with Lee Anderson, Director of Sales Scotland and Ireland at Microlise, where he shared his hard-won wisdom from years of building high-performance sales teams. We discussed:     🎯The most predictive traits to look for in your first sales hires  📈 How to use data to structure world-class onboarding and ramp up reps quickly  🏆 The habits and mindset that separate good salespeople from great ones     Lee's insights are a must-listen for any founder looking to build a revenue rocket ship. Check out the full episode of The Lucent Perspective podcast, and as always, feel free to reach out if you need help defining and landing your startup's next sales superstar!     Listen here:  🎧 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3UIcXkM  🎧 Apple: https://bit.ly/3Us3QDp    #salesrecruiting #startuphiring #startup #salesmastery #executivesearch 

What can go wrong with transitioning from founder-led sales? A LOT. Seth DeHart, famous for his article "Sequencing Steps from Founder Selling to a VP Sales" on Medium, has advised over 60 startups in and around the Point Nine community on making the transition from founder-led sales to hiring a sales leader. He knows firsthand HOW hard this phase can be for founders to navigate. Most advice founders receive on the topic comes from people who haven't done it themselves. After chasing Seth for over six months, we spent 47 minutes diving into a lot of topics to make this fundamental and important phase less risky and more successful. Some appetizers in advance: 👉 You need PMF and GTM repeatability 👉 Your responsibilities as a founder 👉 Don't hire a sales leader as employee number 1 👉 If you have never dealt with salespeople before, get an advisor as support Learn from Seth's vast experience and make your transition MUCH MUCH smoother. Link in the first comment 👇 #FounderLedSales #b2bsales #productmarketfit #earlystagestartups P.S. I am always looking for amazing guests for my podcast The SaaS Symphony. Who should come next? 🤔

Recently, Anna Beckmann (a former Headspace colleague and CS revenue maestro) and I were talking about the lessons we both learned in the early days of Headspace’s move from a D2C-only to B2B company. BIG LESSON LEARNED? That leap is really difficult BIGGER LESSON? Early traction (aka - early customers) doesn't = product market fit or guaranteed growth. This podcast (https://lnkd.in/gZhTr7ND) with Mark Roberge (a legend and worth following if you don’t already) and Dini M., the former CRO of Lattice who helped them grow to 🎈 BILLIONS 🎈 is an insightful example of how that transition is done really well. Dini does a fantastic job of modeling what an early sales leader should do in seat. SOME TAKEAWAYS: 🔎 FOCUS. Dini helped Lattice move on from the classic startup quagmire of having too many potential distribution motions (PLG, and sales-led) and ICPs (SMB and enterprise). 🌱 GROW FROM WHERE YOU ARE. They knew the classic PLG wasn’t going to work long-term but they didn’t drop it and go straight to Enterprise. They protected the base protecting their competitive positioning while they crawled up market to find their ICP. 🤸♀️ FLEXIBILITY. Dini came from a traditional ROI-based sales approach but she learned quickly that did not work with the HR persona (I’ll 2nd that). So, she listened, checked her ego, and changed their approach. 🎯 IF IT MATTERS TO THE BUYER, IT SHOULD MATTER TO YOU. Last and probably most importantly, she spent time with their Buyer persona to understand the Buyer’s problem journey. She literally went and shadowed HR folks for a day, not to talk about Lattice but understand what matters to them, because that in business my friends is what matters. Hope you enjoy!

This often gets overlooked... Every situation demands a different plan. There are so many golden nuggets scattered across podcasts that, if you can accurately collect them all, you end up with a gold brick! This is huge for startup founders looking for revenue growth. As a startup founder, developing a strong sales team is critical to driving growth and scaling your business. I found one such podcast: "CRO Confidential Podcast" on the SaaStr YouTube Channel. In a particular episode, Sam Blonde hosted Ashley Kelly, VP of SDR at Rippling. I took the time to list out these golden nuggets for startup founders building their sales teams: 1️⃣ Leverage Your Network First:  Start with warm connections—LinkedIn, investor networks, etc.—to target your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) before investing in cold outreach tools. Trust is key early on. 2️⃣ Get Creative with Outbound:  Personalized, creative campaigns (handwritten notes, small gifts) outperform mass emails. Focus on quality over quantity. 3️⃣ Hire Your First SDRs In-Network:  Early hires should come from trusted connections. This reduces risk and increases the chances of success. 4️⃣ Experience Matters for Early SDR Hires:  Look for candidates with some real-world experience (like a recruiting background) before scaling with fresh grads. 5️⃣ Scale When the Time Is Right:  Use metrics like per-rep productivity to guide hiring decisions. Don’t rush to scale without a solid foundation. 6️⃣ Create a Career Path:  SDRs are your future leaders—ensure they have a clear path to roles like Account Executive, Marketing, and beyond. 7️⃣ Shift Focus from Quantity to Quality as You Grow:  Start by measuring qualified opportunities, but eventually align SDR incentives with revenue targets. 8️⃣ Foster Structure and Autonomy:  Provide SDRs with clear processes but also encourage creativity and autonomy, especially in the early stages. 💡 Building a successful sales team isn’t just about hitting numbers—it’s about nurturing talent and setting up a scalable system. Follow Abid Hossain to learn more about startup revenue growth. #StartupSales #SalesTeamBuilding #SDR #OutboundSales #StartupFounder #SalesStrategy #SalesGrowth

This latest podcast episode by Kyle Norton and Kevin "KD" Dorsey is fantastic. It’s about creating, developing, and deploying playbooks🎙️. If you’re in GTM I’d highly recommend listening. I was so inspired by the episode that I went ahead and put together a high-level summary of KD's best practices and playbooks — find the link in the comments👇. 1. The Five P's Playbook Framework 2. "What Good Looks Like" (Wiggle) 3. "Imitate First, Innovate Second" 4. Quarterly and Weekly "Wiggle" Practices 5. "Volume or Volume" Framework 6. BIPSY Analysis for Playbook Development 7. Practice Before Game Time 8. Active Playbook Referencing 9. Continuous Playbook Updates 10. Dark Week for Working on the Business 11. The "I Am Not You" Leadership Approach 12. "What’s the Cause?" Analysis 13. Roleplay and Simulation Tools 14. Fill-in-the-Blank Playbooks for Onboarding 15. Controlled Burns in Leadership 16. Leaders Don't Work Alone Now Kevin has launched his Sales Leadership Accelerator. Have you taken it? I’d love to know below what you thought of it. #SalesLeadership #SalesPlaybook #SalesManagement #SalesCoaching #GTMStrategy

🎙️ Selling to Enterprise as a Startup Founder: Insights from Zoltan A. Vardy from the Pod! Selling as a startup founder? You should look for specific advice. It's a completely different game compared to selling with the backing of a big company’s established reputation and resources. Zoltan breaks it down: 💼 Large company sales: You rely on brand recognition and infrastructure to close deals. 🚀 Startup sales: As a founder, you are the brand. You’re selling your vision, your solution, and yourself. Customers aren’t buying a logo. They’re buying your expertise and the value you bring. While it’s a challenge for founders, as Zoltan says, it’s also deeply rewarding. Successfully closing deals isn’t about inherited resources. It’s about personal impact and solving real problems for your customers. How do you approach enterprise sales as a founder? Do share your thoughts with us! For more from Zoltan, check out the full episode on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/dp3u5cFd

In this HBR Podcast, Mark Roberge from Harvard Business School reminds us that startups live or die by their ability to sell and market effectively. Yet too many founders, especially technical ones, overlook this because they're too focused on the product. The result? Missed growth opportunities, wasted resources, and a painful realization when it's too late. Roberge argues that sales and marketing aren't just necessary evils - they should be core functions from day one. Your first hires should reflect that. Founders need to roll up their sleeves and dive into sales early, shaping a culture of growth. When it comes to marketing, Roberge says to find the right channels to test and scale. Relying purely on product virality is a gamble that rarely pays off. 💡 Founders, embrace the business side of things. Sales IS your job. Marketing IS your job. Listen to the podcast 👇https://lnkd.in/dzRKfWq7 #B2BMarketing #Founders #Leadership

Dee Murthy (Cofounder of Ghost) shared hot takes and keen insight into what Series B founders look for when hiring executives in our fireside chat. Here are 6 you can use to drive your career and make the big company to startup jump decision: 1) Chaos experience is priceless. 2) There is no work/life balance…speed at a startup is everything. 3) In-person is a requirement for executives. 4) Executives have 90 days to deliver results before getting axed. 5) How do I guarantee an interview for an executive role? 6) Use the ‘Airport Test’. Watch the video recording and more details on the above 6 points here: https://lnkd.in/g83ZgtaJ Live attendance and Q&A to our fireside chat are exclusive to Level Up Career Community members. It is one of many membership benefits (another popular one is watching Ethan Evans live executive coach a real client -- you learn along side Ethan's client and you witness how Ethan coaches). To learn more, click the link above. #startups #founders

Thanks to Harry Stebbings for having me on the 20VC podcast last week. He is an awesome interviewer and nicely unpacked the early days of HubSpot to surface some, hopefully, timeless learnings for today's founders. His points of emphasis include: 1. Be careful about getting pulled upstream too early, especially via an enticing contract that would double revenue BUT create massive revenue concentration in one customer. This potential pothole surfaced in the early days of HubSpot and, fortunately, the ELT denied the contract. The customer would have controlled our product roadmap. It would not have ended well 2. A well-defined Ideal Customer Profile (#ICP) is critical to creating cross-functional alignment (i.e. product/engineering/sales/marketing/CS) and a healthy foundation for a startup. Consider the below 3-category ICP definition framework that we use with our portfolio companies at Stage 2 Capital: 🟢 Green: Strong conviction & good fit. 🟡 Yellow: Not enough conviction, inbounds only. 🔴 Red: Strong conviction to not sell. Update the definition as you experiment and successfully expand TAM. 3. Sales Rep Hiring: Deal Size Experience is More Important Than Domain Experience. While there are a few exceptions, it is often easier to teach an proven big-ACV seller your domain than it is to teach a seller in your domain how to close a big-ACV account. Most founders miss this. 4. Prioritize Coachability in Sales Interview Assessments. No reps start off hitting their productivity goals in month 1. They need to learn the product, the methodology, and the customer. A higher aptitude in coachability increases the probability and decreases the time needed to achieve this goal. 5. Startups Attempt Customer Acquisition via Partnerships Too Early. Founders are intrigued by using a partner channel to drive customer acquisition as a seemingly cheaper, faster, and lower-risk option to hiring a direct sales team. However, these founders underestimate the required two-step process of aligning with the partner exec team strategy and then convincing the partner exec team to motivate their front-line reps to focus on selling your product. It's also very hard to learn through the partner channel and, therefore, best to learn and succeed direct before attempting these relationships. (links in comments) #founder hashtag #funding hashtag #business hashtag #investing hashtag #vc hashtag #venturecapital hashtag #entrepreneur hashtag #startup hashtag #seed hashtag #funding hashtag #sales hashtag #Stage2Capital #HubSpot