Should You Hire a Full-Time Sales Leader Yet?

You know the team needs someone running it. The obvious answer is to hire a full-time sales leader. Post the job, wait a few months, pay a recruiter, and hope the person you pick is as good as their interview.

Sometimes that's exactly right. Often it's too early. Here's how I'd think about it if it were my business.

Why the full-time hire is a big bet

A senior sales leader is one of the most expensive hires a small company makes, and one of the slowest. It takes months to find the right person and get them started. Then it takes a few more months to know if they're any good. If they turn out to be the wrong fit, you usually find out about six months in. You start again, and most of the year is gone.

The bigger risk is hiring someone to run a process that doesn't exist yet. A good leader can run a team. Asking one new hire to invent the whole sales process from scratch, learn your market, and fix the team at the same time is where most of these hires fail.

Signs you're ready for a full-time hire

• Your team is big enough to fill a leader's whole week. As a rough guide, eight reps or more.
• You want someone in the building every day, for the culture as much as the numbers.
• You already have a clear sales process written down, and you need someone to run it, not build it.

Signs it's too early

• You have two to seven reps and nobody running them.
• The process lives in your head, not on paper.
• You can't afford a bad hire this year.

What to do if it's too early

Start the habits yourself, or bring in part-time help to start them for you. A weekly look at every open deal. A short coaching session with each rep on a real call. A simple scorecard the whole team can see. None of it needs a full-time title to begin.

Plenty of owners do it in that order. They get the process written down and the weekly rhythm running first, then hire full time once the role is clear. The new leader walks into a system instead of a mess, and the hire is far more likely to work.

Keep reading: the weekly deal review that catches deals before they slip, a sales scorecard your reps will actually use.