Build Your Sales Org From The Ground Up. Be Your Own First Sales Director

“The perception of how hard it is to sell something lessens the farther one gets from the actual point of sale.” — Anonymous.

Suppose you were interviewing to hire a Sales Director today. What do you think would be her first question? It might be something like “What does it take to get people to buy this product?”

Do you have an answer ready?

The only way to do that is to have done the job yourself — from first contact, to answering questions, to helping the prospect through the free trial, answering more questions, helping the prospect accomplish something with your product or software, to “asking for the order” (e.g., asking him to become a paying customer).

In the early stages of any company, the most important quality in the sales process is a high-touch connection with every customer. Depending on the kind of product you have, every customer may want and expect a single point of contact to familiarize him with the product and demonstrate how it can solve a problem he’s facing right now.

Even if you personally were the lead developer of your product and know the technical aspects of it cold, you don’t really have a deep understanding of its use and benefit in the marketplace until you see it from the customer’s point of view. And there’s no better way to get that education than to be on the front lines of the sales process, talking with the customer about your product — why he needs it, how to apply it, the sweet spots of its application, the places where it’s not as good as something else out there.

There will inevitably be glitches in the software or product that must be dealt with immediately, during which time communications with the tech team and customer have to be handled skillfully to resolve the problem quickly and to keep the customer from losing interest waiting for a fix.

A recent article, 3 Models Of Effective Sales Team Organization, suggests a few different kinds of sales structures you might put in place.

There’s no way you can or should attempt to make any decision about your sales organization until after you’ve seen how your product is actually bought and used by real customers. Then you’ll be in a position to decide the appropriate structure for your sales team.

For example, if your experience shows you’re getting lots of visitor traffic, you may not need aggressively prospecting salespeople. But if you’ve found it takes a little more effort to find prospects, you may need to have at least some members of your sales team out beating the bushes, and to compensate them accordingly.

And if your customer onboarding process is pretty simple and straightforward once someone says “yes,” you might be comfortable having salespeople hand off to a back-office processing team. But if there’s tailoring and customization needed to make the product fit each customer’s needs, you’ll want to have those salespeople staying close all the way through, continuing to escort the prospect through the process.

You may find you need a few different processes or variations going on at the same time. And your structures may change as your product, your company and your market mature.

The key is to get as much knowledge of your product from the front lines — the point of sale — before setting up any kind of structure and making long-term employment commitments.