For technology companies
Your product works and people are buying it — usually from a founder. Building a sales function around that is a different problem from hiring a salesperson. This page is the order we would work through it in, with the tools to do each step.
Who this is for
The product is validated, the founder or a technical co-founder has closed the early customers, and the business now needs commercial capability that does not depend on them.
We are not filtering by headcount. The transition matters, not the org chart — and it arrives at very different sizes.
Sector lens: SaaS and subscription software · Software and platform businesses · DeepTech, science and engineering-led products · Other technology-product businesses. UK-first, with international searches where we can run them credibly.
Before the first decision
Six questions worth answering honestly. Every one has a legitimate 'not yet', and a not-yet is a cheaper answer than a mis-hire.
If yes: Written down, in the customer's words, it becomes the brief, the advert and the first week of onboarding.
If not yet: Keep selling founder-led until it is written down. A new seller cannot reverse-engineer a reason to buy that nobody in the business has articulated.
If yes: Repeatability is what a hire scales. One repeatable route to a yes is enough to start from.
If not yet: If every deal closed for a different reason, the next hire will be running an experiment rather than a job. Decide who is running that experiment first.
If yes: Name them now. Their time commitment belongs in the role definition, not in a hope.
If not yet: An unmanaged first seller sets their own standard by default. Either free up founder time deliberately, or consider a hire senior enough to run themselves.
If yes: That is the scorecard. It is also the fairest thing you can give a new joiner.
If not yet: Define the outcome before the title. Working backwards from a title is how businesses hire a closer for a prospecting job.
If yes: Then the package can be structured for the job rather than for the first quarter of it.
If not yet: A role that has to pay for itself immediately will pull the seller towards whatever closes fastest, which may not be the business you want.
If yes: Stability is not required, but the seller needs to know what is fixed. Say which parts are settled.
If not yet: Where nothing is settled, the honest answer is often to wait, or to hire someone whose job explicitly includes discovery rather than quota.
These are prompts, not a scoring test, and we do not publish a readiness threshold — the answers belong to your business rather than to an average.
The first decision
There are four honest answers, and one of them is 'not yet'. Each option below states when it fits and what people get wrong about it.
Fits when: Demand is thin, or the founder can close what arrives but nothing arrives predictably.
Watch for: Someone has to write the message, choose the segment and coach the outreach. An SDR hired without that support will spend three months guessing.
Fits when: There is more inbound interest than the founder can follow up properly, and deals stall for lack of attention rather than lack of demand.
Watch for: Check whether the deals really close themselves. A closer joining a business with no demand engine becomes an expensive prospector.
Fits when: There are already one or two sellers, and the constraint is coaching, forecasting and process rather than capacity.
Watch for: A leader hired to build a function is a different person from a leader hired to scale a proven one. Decide which job it is before you write the brief.
Fits when: The product is still changing shape every month, or nobody can describe why the last five customers bought.
Watch for: Hiring will not answer that question. Sometimes the honest advice is to keep founder-led selling until the repeatable reason to buy is written down.
The next two decisions
The order changes with how your product is bought, not with how many people work there. Each column below is a possibility with its condition attached — none of them is a template, and copying the wrong one is how businesses end up with a prospector who cannot close or a closer with nothing to close.
Looks like: People can start using the product without talking to anyone, and sales exists to convert and expand the accounts that already show intent.
Changes if: Signals are plentiful but low quality. Then the constraint is product and lifecycle work rather than another seller.
Looks like: Demand arrives from content, marketplaces, partners or reputation, and the deals are large enough to need a conversation but small enough to close without a committee.
Changes if: Inbound is really one channel with one owner. If that channel is fragile, protecting it can matter more than adding a seller.
Looks like: Nobody is looking for you yet. Buyers are identifiable, technically literate, and will not respond to generic outreach.
Changes if: The message is not settled. An SDR hired to invent positioning will spend the ramp guessing, so settle it — with the founder or a specialist — first.
Looks like: Multiple stakeholders, technical due diligence, procurement, and a cycle long enough that the first hire may not close anything inside their own ramp.
Changes if: You expect early revenue from this hire. In a long-cycle business, judging a senior hire on closed business inside their first months usually measures the pipeline they inherited rather than the work they did.
Each step is a tool on this site. You can use them without speaking to us, and bring the output when you are ready.
Step 1
Work out whether the next hire is an SDR, a closer or a leader, what it depends on, and what to fix before opening it.
Hiring sequence plannerStep 2
Settle scope, ownership and reporting line before the role is written or advertised.
Roles we recruitStep 3
Assemble the brief, then generate a job specification, advert and search strings from it.
Hiring brief builderStep 4
Structure the package deliberately, and see how attainment changes what the seller is really paid for.
Sales compensation plannerStep 5
Design a stage plan that tests the job, and see where the process will lose good people.
Hiring process designerStep 6
Produce a weighted scorecard with rubric anchors so two interviewers mean the same thing by a score.
Sales role scorecard generatorStep 7
Bring the brief to us, or start with a conversation about what the business actually needs.
Tell us who you're hiringAfter the offer
A first sales hire inherits knowledge that only exists in the founder's head. These are the stages that transfer it, with the owner named — stated as outcomes rather than a fixed number of days, because ramp length depends on your sales cycle and not on ours.
The new hire can tell the story of two or three real customers without being prompted, including what nearly stopped the deal.
Owner: Founder or whoever closed the early customers
They can run a first conversation with a technical buyer unaided, and they know exactly which questions to take away rather than guess at.
Owner: Product or engineering, in scheduled time rather than ad hoc
The definition of a qualified opportunity, a stage and a lost deal is written down before the first pipeline review, not argued about after it.
Owner: Whoever owns the CRM, even if that is currently the founder
They have run deals with the founder present, then without, and the difference in outcome has been discussed honestly.
Owner: The named manager for the role
The first formal review uses the same criteria as the interview, so the hire is judged on the job they were offered.
Owner: The named manager, with the original scorecard
What changes in a technology business
Hiring sales into a technology or DeepTech business is not the same as hiring sales generally. These are the differences that decide whether the first hire works.
In a technology or DeepTech business the buyer often knows more about the problem than the seller does. Someone who cannot hold the product conversation without a solutions engineer in the room will slow every deal down.
Technology fluency alone does not close anything. The reason a buyer says yes is still a person asking the right question and being trusted with the answer. We assess both, deliberately, rather than treating one as a proxy for the other.
Whoever joins first defines what selling looks like in your business, what gets recorded, and what the next hire copies. That is why the definition matters more than the CV.
The knowledge that closed the early customers lives with the founder. Onboarding is where that gets moved across, and it is the step most first sales hires never get.
Roles usually in scope
Broad Sales and GTM coverage, with most first-team work concentrated in these three.
Go deeper
This page is the decision order. Where a guide already owns a question in detail, we link to it rather than repeat it here.
When Adroit can help
The tools and guides on this site are deliberately free and ungated. These are the points at which bringing us in usually saves time.
A conversation about pipeline, deal shape, who currently sells and what has already been tried. If the answer is to promote internally, fix enablement or wait, we will say that.
We turn the decision into a brief, a scorecard and a process you can actually run, using the same tools published on this site.
Sales and GTM search with technical credibility and human selling skill assessed separately rather than one taken as a proxy for the other.
Sequenced team builds, where each hire is defined against the one before it rather than all at once.
Common questions
It depends on which part of the revenue engine is missing. If demand is thin and nobody owns outbound, the gap is pipeline creation and an SDR or BDR addresses it — provided somebody owns the message and the coaching. If interest already arrives and stalls for lack of attention, the gap is conversion and a closer addresses it. If you already have sellers and the problem is inconsistency, the answer is usually management rather than another seller. The hiring sequence planner walks through this against your own pipeline.
Headcount is not the deciding factor. What matters is whether the product is validated enough to commercialise and whether anyone can describe repeatably why customers buy. We work with businesses of around five to ten people building a first commercial hire, and with fifty to a hundred person technology companies going through exactly the same transition later than they expected.
Technology is our primary lens — SaaS, software, DeepTech and other technology-product businesses — because that is where the combination of technical credibility and genuine selling skill matters most, and because it connects to Humand's technical recruitment heritage. It is a lens rather than a rule; we take briefs outside it where we can run a credible search.
Yes, and it is often the most useful part of the conversation. We will work through pipeline, deal size, who currently sells and what has already been tried. If the honest answer is to promote internally, fix enablement first or wait, we will say so.
We do not publish a figure for this, because any number we quoted would be someone else's average rather than your business. The practical cost is the salary, the lost quarter, the pipeline that was not built and the pattern the next hire copies. The tools on this site exist to reduce the chance of it.
Yes, and mostly with the sales motion rather than the size of the company. A product-led business converting existing intent, an inbound-led mid-market business, an outbound-only business and a long-cycle enterprise or DeepTech business each have a different bottleneck, so the same three hires arrive in a different order. The section on this page sets out what each order depends on and what would invalidate it. There is no sequence that is right for everyone.
The step most first hires never get is the transfer of the founder's account of why customers buy. Beyond that: enough product credibility to hold a technical conversation unaided, an agreed definition of what gets recorded in the CRM, a move from observed deals to owned deals, and a first review that uses the same scorecard the person was hired on. We publish that as stages with owners rather than as a fixed number of days, because ramp length depends on your cycle.
Deciding between a player-coach, a builder and a scaler, what to test in a sales leadership process, and how to avoid the classic over-hire.
How to hire a frontline Sales Manager: what the role owns, when a team genuinely needs one, how to test coaching rather than personal selling, and the promotion decision.
How to brief, assess and hire an Account Executive: matching deal size and cycle, testing discovery properly, and reading quota evidence honestly.
A decision tool for hiring an Enterprise AE: when the business is genuinely ready, what evidence to insist on, the stages that test committee selling, and the mistakes that waste two quarters.
Tell us what you are trying to build. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.
