If I was an early-stage founder aiming to build my first sales team, this is what I'd do
I have worked with 50+ founders and talked probably to hundreds about building their first sales team.
Different products, industries, people. Different stages.
But they all have done (or needed) these steps to build their first sales team, more or less.
If I were an early-stage founder again, aiming to build my first product and my first startup, these are the steps I'd also take to build my first sales team. 👇
1. Define Your Geography
Start small. Pick one region/geography where you already have traction, like customer success stories or brand awareness.
Ensure you have hit at least 5M ARR before entering the new geography.
2. Segment Your Market
Break your potential customers into tiers based on company size or revenue.
SMB (Small-Medium Business): up to 50 employees / X revenue
Mid-Market: up to 999 employees / X revenue
Enterprise: 1,000+ employees / X revenue
This will help you focus your energy on the right targets, and you will specialise your team from the beginning.
3. Create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Get your team together and map out your ideal buyers:
What types of companies would benefit from your product?
What challenges do they face?
How does your solution uniquely solve their problems?
You probably did this when building your business plan or investor pitch.
4. Build Your First Team
Start lean but smart:
Sales Development Rep (SDR): Focus on prospecting and booking meetings.
Account Executive (AE): Run demos and close deals.
Customer Success (CS): Handle onboarding, renewals, and upsells.
Pro tip: Have your AEs keep the accounts they close to ensure continuity and upsell potential.
5. Master Outbound
Start by targeting your ICP and building a list of key contacts.
Leverage tools like Apollo, Lemlist, Clay, Heyreach, and Instantly to build your Tier 2 campaigns.
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to enrich your data and run 1:1 personalised Tier 1 outreach.
Remember your KPIs:
Open rate > 50%
Interested rate >5%
Spam rate <1%
If you already have an inbound notion, try to close at least 25% (aim 30%) of all the MQLs you get monthly.
6. Prepare Sales Materials
Set up a "sales toolkit" in a central location like Notion.
Include:
Sales playbook
Pricing guide
Full and short pitch decks
Demo accounts
Success stories
7. Choose the Right Sales Stack
Here's a basic sales tech stack to get you started:
CRM (HubSpot recommended) to manage pipelines, customers, properties, and dashboards.
Apollo/Lemlist to send out automated emails.
Clay, Instantly for enriching data and managing domains.
Phatom.video record and analyze calls.
Slack for team comms.
8. Set Goals & Compensation
Compensation for the sales team is critical, so try to set them up from the beginning.
Set goals (MRR, ARR) and base bonuses on achieving a percentage of that goal.
Bonus: Add a clawback clause - commissions may be retracted if a customer churns soon after signing.
9. Sales Cycle Management
Map out both new business and existing business sales cycles.
Ensure your CRM tracks progress at each stage, from first contact to closing and beyond (onboarding, renewals, upselling).
It is key to coach your team on each stage, how to grow deals stage by stage, and how to reduce the sales cycle.
10. Sales Onboarding
A good onboarding process sets your sales team up for success.
Focus the first few weeks on product knowledge and sales best practices before diving into role-plays and live calls.
Your new hires should be ready to hit the ground running by week four and have a full goal after month 3.
In Summary
Building your first sales team isn't science. It's a process.
Skipping steps or taking shortcuts, regardless how busy or early you are isn't smart.
Build it for who you are today but also for who you are going to be.
You won't regret it.
Thanks for reading this far. Have a good weekend, and see you all next week.
