Technical sales needs technical background...or does it?
The best sales guy I ever hired, Andy B., flew out from New York to Mountain View, camped in our lobby, and forced a meeting with me. He said, "I am the best sales guy you will ever hire"...who could resist such a pitch? I asked, "Why?" He said, "Because I will sell twice as much as your best guy, and I won’t charge you anything to try me." "Really," I said, "what's it really going to cost me?" Without letting me finish the sentence, he said, "10% flat; no retainer, no expenses—just 10% of what I sell." I like to think I am immune to sales and marketing types, but this guy had me at hello. :)
Trouble is, technical guys who are good engineers rarely can close a deal—they can generate a ton of interest, but they lack the gene to persuade a customer to pay.
In general, the better the engineer, the worse the sales person.
You don’t want a superficial sales guy, but you want someone who can see the bigger picture.
What's great about more technically oriented sales people is they think strategically, so will be more inclined to do what's best for the company rather than themselves. Most pure sales people are coin-operated, so compensation—not strategy—drives their behavior. BUT they still need to be tactical to close.
Great sales people need to be well versed in psychology—they need to be able to judge people and get inside their heads. They need to know what it takes to convince that person to sign a check. Further, they need to figure out the organization they are selling into and who the decision-makers are so they don’t waste time pitching the engineers while the CFO has to write the check and make the decision.
When interviewing a sales guy, its important that they can clearly articulate their process—after all, it’s the most important business process there is!
They need to be extroverts, people-engaged, and focused.
They must be able to explain how they judge people, how they map the target organization, and how they close. Anyone who says they don’t have a process is not hirable.
Sales can be learned, but it's far easier if they have the personality for it—the charming persuader is great if they have some technical background. Some great technical sales guys succeed because they can understand the customer's strategic need and position their product to meet that need immediately. But, even better, in the long term they transmute the sales process from being a single transaction into being a long-term relationship—the customer wants that relationship and knows and trusts that sales person to look after their interests. The company had better empower that sales person to ensure their customers' interests are fulfilled; otherwise, there will be no more sales.
Big-company sales people are big risk to startups—the first thing they want to do is hire a team, and it starts to look like a pyramid scheme. You need someone who is willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work—if there is a team, they should lead by example.
The only way to be sure is track record—so sales history is a big deal.
Sales and marketing positions are the hardest to hire for because these people excel at convincing you of their ability, but their results are not visible for 6 months...and after that, the damage is done. :(
P.S. Andy didn’t double the sales of my best guy, but he came close. And in every year after that, he doubled—I ended up paying him 15% because he was so committed and no matter how bad things got, he never left us. Sales and loyalty don’t often go together—but people who create value recognize each other and want to work together.
