Knowledge
How to build a sales team from scratch?
How to build a sales team from scratch? Foundations first, recruitment second
Many B2B companies build sales according to a similar pattern: first they publish a job ad, then they hire a salesperson, and after a few months comes disappointment with the results, because usually nobody first asked: what exactly was this person supposed to sell, to whom and how?
Building a sales team should not start with recruitment, because first you need to choose client segments, tidy up the offer, have a tested process, developed communication and establish how the company will know its activities are producing results. Only when these elements have been verified in practice can you hand sales over to another person and expect specific results from them.
If a company hires a salesperson earlier, it sets them a task that, from the position of a new employee, often cannot be done well.
Where does the idea of hiring a salesperson come from
At some point the owner reaches a stage where they already employ several, a dozen or several dozen people, and clients still come mainly from referrals, the owner’s network, published content or campaigns. The owner handles sales personally and usually does it quite well, because they know the product, understand the industry and over the years have learned to recognize which conversations have potential and which will probably not lead to cooperation.
Over time, however, they start running out of room, because sales compete for their attention with project delivery, recruitment, finance, product development and team management. Every meeting with a potential client means an hour they cannot devote to another part of the company, so the thought naturally arises that since they can sell themselves, they should hire someone to take over that task.
The difficulty is that the owner rarely works according to a clearly described system. They draw on knowledge gathered over the years, rely on experience, relationships and intuition, and often cannot explain exactly why they devote more time to one deal and give up on another after a quarter of an hour. Such an intuitive model can work for a long time, but eventually it reaches a limit that cannot be crossed without putting the way of selling in order.
The new salesperson then receives not a ready process but the empty space left by the owner and the expectation that they will achieve similar results in a short time. They do not, however, have the owner’s knowledge, relationships or the experience drawn from dozens of earlier conversations, so they try to build their own way of working, often by costly trial and error.
Why the salesperson should not build everything alone
A salesperson is hired primarily to reach potential clients, lead conversations, qualify opportunities, prepare proposals and bring sales to a close. Meanwhile, choosing the market, defining the segment, correctly formulating the value proposition or designing the whole sales process is a different kind of work, one that requires broad access to knowledge about the company, the ability to make strategic decisions and the readiness to act under great uncertainty.
In this area the owner has three advantages that a new salesperson, for obvious reasons, cannot have.
The first is knowledge of clients, because it is the owner who knows best why existing clients decided to buy, which problems really mattered to them and what arguments came up in conversations that ended both in success and in refusal. This knowledge is usually not in any document but scattered among the owner’s memories, notes and experiences, so the salesperson can acquire it only if the company deliberately passes it on or lets them learn from their own mistakes.
The second advantage is the mandate to make decisions, because choosing a segment means consciously giving up part of the market, narrowing the offer may involve letting go of certain revenue, and setting the pricing method directly affects margin and profitability. It is hard to expect such decisions from an employee who is only getting to know the company and does not bear the full consequences of their choices.
The third advantage comes from the readiness to build something that does not yet exist. Entrepreneurs are used to experimenting, making decisions on incomplete data and creating rules as they go, whereas salespeople, including very experienced ones, usually achieve the best results when they have a clearly defined market, offer and way of guiding the client through the process.
If such a framework is missing, the salesperson does what they know best: they call, send messages and book meetings. Activity grows, but it does not have to translate into sales, because without a well-defined direction even intensive activity can lead nowhere.
In many companies this ends in a similar scenario: recruitment is followed by a few months of attempts, the results remain weaker than the owner’s, and the cooperation eventually ends. The company then concludes that salespeople do not work in its industry because sales are based solely on relationships, while in reality the new person was given a task without clear rules, tools or a point of reference.
How much does a failed attempt cost
The cost of a bad hire is not limited to a few months of salary, because you have to add contributions, tools, a CRM, the time spent searching for candidates, onboarding and the later conversations about why the results are not coming fast enough.
There is also a cost much harder to calculate, related to contacts that were used badly. If a potential client receives a random message or takes part in an unprepared conversation, they may no longer respond to the next attempt at contact, even if this time the company is presented better.
On top of that comes the cost of lost opportunities, because over six months the company could have put its sales in order, made better use of existing opportunities and prepared to scale, and instead it returns to square one with a smaller budget and even less readiness to try again. The total cost of such an experiment would often easily be enough to build the foundations of sales.
What should exist before hiring the first salesperson
Before starting recruitment, it is worth building a sales system that will initially be operated by the owner, because only a process tested in practice can later be safely handed over to another person.
In SalesMachine such a system consists of five interrelated elements: strategy, process, communication, tools and measurement. Their order is not accidental, because tools should support the process, the process must follow from the strategy, and measurement is meant to show whether the whole thing really works.
1. Sales strategy, i.e. whom we sell to and with what offer
A sales strategy does not have to be an extensive document, but it should clearly define whom the company wants to sell to, which clients it consciously gives up, what problem it solves and why the buyer should choose its offer in particular. Without such decisions, the salesperson will aim communication at everyone, which in practice usually means reaching no one well.
The first step is choosing the market, because two companies with a similar product and experience can achieve completely different results simply because one operates in a market with an urgent problem and a budget to solve it, while the other tries to sell where the problem is small or clients do not want to pay for it. It is one of the most important business decisions, and that is precisely why it should belong to the owner.
Next, the segment needs to be defined, and this is not just about the industry but about a group of companies that face a similar problem, make decisions in a similar way and can get comparable value from the offer. “All manufacturing companies in Poland” does not describe a segment; rather, it shows that the company has not yet decided what it wants to focus on.
The next element is the ideal client profile, in which exclusion criteria prove particularly useful. Too small a company, no adequate budget, no resources needed for implementation, or a conversation with someone who has no influence on the decision are signals that let you avoid many weeks of work on an opportunity that from the start had little chance of ending in a sale.
You also need a value proposition presented from the client’s perspective, so every significant element of the offer should be linked to the problem it solves and the result the buyer can achieve thanks to it. Slogans about innovation, comprehensive service or a flexible approach mean little if the client cannot find their own situation in the message and the result they really care about.
At this stage it is also worth establishing the scope of the offer and the way it is priced, because a narrower, clearly described service is easier to present, price and sell repeatably. A pricing model adopted in advance also limits situations in which every proposal is created from scratch and its final value depends more on how the conversation went than on established rules.
At the end of this stage there should be a specific document thanks to which a new person will understand which companies to contact, with what, and why this offer may matter to them.
2. Sales process, i.e. how a sale proceeds step by step
The sales process describes the client’s path from the first contact to the decision, and each of its stages should have a defined goal and clear conditions for moving on. It is precisely these conditions that matter most, because the mere statement that a meeting took place says little about the real state of the conversations.
Much more useful is the information that the client has confirmed the problem, the company knows the decision-maker, the approximate budget and the decision date. The first approach allows dozens of deals that will probably never end in a purchase to sit in the funnel, while the second forces a clear assessment of whether a given opportunity should move on or drop out of the active process.
Before the way of working is handed over to the team, the owner should consciously go through the whole process at least a dozen times, writing down what they do at each stage, what questions they ask and how they recognize that a conversation is worth continuing. As long as one person handles sales, such note-taking may look like unnecessary bureaucracy, but its value becomes obvious the moment someone new has to be onboarded.
Without a described process, the owner can only ask the salesperson to observe their way of working and try to imitate it, which leaves far too much room for guesswork. At the beginning, a simple map prepared in a spreadsheet or even on a sheet of paper is enough, as long as it contains the successive stages, their goals, the conditions for moving on and the approximate duration.
3. Communication, i.e. what to say at each stage
The strategy defines whom the company wants to reach and with what offer, the process shows at which moment a specific step should be taken, while communication answers the question of what exactly to say or write so that the recipient understands the value of the proposed solution.
A good starting point is the Value Triangle, which consists of the Problem, the Result and the Solution — in exactly that order. Technology companies often start with the product, talking about its features, technology and advantages, and then assume that the client will connect this information with their own situation, although in practice they rarely have the time and motivation to do that work for the seller.
When communication starts with the problem, the client recognizes much faster that the conversation concerns their reality, and then wants to find out what result is possible and how it can be achieved. Only at that point does room naturally appear for presenting a specific solution.
On this basis you can prepare the first prospecting message, the outline of the qualification call, needs discovery questions, the structure of the proposal and answers to the most common objections. The point is not to create a rigid manual the salesperson will read word for word, but to prepare materials specific enough for a new person to draw on the company’s experience before they develop their own.
If such support is missing, the salesperson will start creating communication on their own and will most often focus on the company, the product and a proposal of a short meeting during which they will gladly tell more. Recipients will not reply, the salesperson will gradually lose confidence, and the owner will conclude they hired the wrong person, although the real problem will be the lack of a proven way of talking to the market.
4. Tools, i.e. how to organize daily work
Tools come only at the fourth stage, because a CRM implemented before the process is defined merely moves the existing chaos into more columns and fields. The sales stages then remain the defaults, since nobody has set their own, information is filled in at random because nobody knows which of it matters, and reports show numbers from which it is hard to draw any conclusions.
Once the process is described, choosing and configuring the tools becomes much simpler. The CRM can reflect the agreed stages, message sequences follow from the prepared communication, and the prospect database matches the previously chosen segment, so every element of the system has a specific job and supports a consistent way of working.
The tool should serve the way of selling, not try to replace it, so a well-configured system lets a new salesperson see from day one at what stage each opportunity is, what information has already been gathered and what needs to be done next.
5. Measurement, i.e. how to know that sales are working
The last step is translating the whole process into numbers that show how many contact attempts lead to a conversation, how many conversations end in a meeting, how many meetings turn into a proposal and how many proposals into a signed contract. It is also worth measuring the duration of individual stages and the average transaction value, because only the combination of this data shows where the process works well and where it starts to lose effectiveness.
The owner should gather such information based on their own sales before hiring the first person, because this creates a real point of reference. Without it, evaluating the salesperson comes down to the statement that they sell too little, which is only an opinion and does not indicate what actually needs working on.
Far more is said by the information that, with a similar number of meetings, the salesperson’s conversion to proposal is half the owner’s. Then you can look for a specific cause and check whether the problem stems from the way needs are discovered, too lenient qualification, a poor presentation of the solution or perhaps a badly prepared proposal.
At the beginning, elaborate reporting systems are not needed, because an ordinary spreadsheet is quite enough to gather the data and notice the most important relationships. More advanced reporting will make sense only when there are more people, clients and opportunities in progress.
Is the company ready to hire a salesperson
Before starting recruitment, it is worth checking whether the company can clearly define which clients the salesperson should contact and which they should reject at the outset. Equally important is whether there is a value proposition based on the client’s problems and results, whether the process has named stages and understandable conditions for moving on, and whether the company has prepared all the model communication for each stage of the process and tested it on the market beforehand.
The last element of such a test is knowing the conversion between successive stages, because without this data it will be hard to evaluate the new person’s results later. Every “no” points to an area that needs to be put in order before recruitment starts, and at the same time means that a salesperson hired today would have to guess the right answers on their own — at the company’s expense.
Whom to hire first
Once the foundations exist, recruitment changes its character, because the company is not looking for someone to build all of sales from scratch, but for someone who will take over a defined part of a working system and, over time, help develop it.
The first sales employee should rarely be a director, especially in a technology company employing a dozen or several dozen people. A safer solution is usually to hand the new person one clearly defined part of the process, for example prospecting and qualification, while the owner continues to lead meetings with well-matched clients.
The reverse model is also possible, in which the owner continues to generate opportunities through relationships and published content, while the salesperson takes over leading the conversations according to a previously tested pattern. Delegating a selected part of the process is easier to implement and evaluate than handing full responsibility for sales to one person.
If the foundations are well prepared, onboarding takes weeks, not quarters, because the salesperson receives a description of the strategy, a process map, communication rules, configured tools and results they can refer to. In the first weeks the owner should take part in some of the conversations, not to control the new person’s every move, but to pass on the nuances that could not be captured in documents.
A reliable assessment of results naturally needs a little time, because a month is usually not enough to get to know the market, the clients and the offer well. After a quarter, however, the numbers should already show whether the new person is finding their place in the system, at which stages they achieve good results and where they need additional support.
In this model the owner does not disappear from sales entirely but gradually changes their role, moving from being the sole salesperson to managing a system they develop, observe and improve. Withdrawing completely from sales in a company of this size is hardly realistic, but getting most of your time back and making results more predictable is an entirely achievable goal.
The most common counterarguments
“I have no time to build the foundations, which is exactly why I want to hire a salesperson”
This approach may seem reasonable, but it most often leads to an even greater loss of time, because preparing the foundations usually requires a few months of iterative work on refining the process and preparing materials, whereas a failed recruitment and market onboarding can take as long as 3–4 quarters only to end up back in exactly the same place. If the owner cannot find time to describe their own way of selling, they will probably not find it for properly onboarding an employee into a system that does not yet exist either.
“I will hire an experienced sales director who will build everything”
An experienced director can bring great value to the company, but will not replace the owner in making the most important decisions about the market, the offer and the direction of growth. Their earlier successes often came in organizations that already had a defined product, a market position, a budget and a working way of acquiring clients. In a new company they would first have to acquire the knowledge the owner gathered over the years, and then receive a sufficiently broad mandate to make decisions. Such a model can work, but it is an expensive way of testing basic business assumptions and often ends in parting ways after several or a dozen months. Especially since a sales director is there to manage and develop sales, so they need people and something to manage.
“I will hire someone from the industry who has contacts and will start selling from day one”
Contacts can help open a few doors, but they will not replace a good value proposition or a repeatable process. The salesperson’s relationships were built around their previous company and earlier offer, so for the same buyers the new product remains yet another solution they first have to understand and evaluate. Sales based solely on an employee’s private contacts also do not create lasting value for the company, because when the salesperson leaves, the relationships the results were based on usually disappear with them.
“We have a CRM, so we already have a system”
A CRM is a tool, not a way of selling, so merely entering contacts and moving opportunities between stages does not yet mean the company has a process that can be repeated and handed over to other people. If the stages, the conditions for moving on, the information needed and the rules of work were not defined beforehand, the CRM will remain just a database, even if it is extensive, expensive and regularly updated.
Summary
Building a sales team from scratch happens in two stages, the first of which belongs to the owner and covers choosing the strategy, describing the process, preparing the communication, implementing the necessary tools and gathering basic data. All these elements should be created in the right order and verified during real conversations with clients before the company moves on to recruitment and gradually delegating sales.
Reversing this order does not speed up growth; it most often adds several to a dozen months of work and reinforces the belief that only the owner can sell. That is usually not true, because the owner is simply the only person who knows a way of working they have never described or passed on to others. If the company does not know which elements of sales already work and which are still missing, it is best to start with an honest diagnosis. Only on that basis can you responsibly decide whether the organization is ready for recruitment, what kind of person it really needs and what it should expect from them.
Take a quick online sales diagnosis (in Polish) – to see what level sales are at in your company.
Frequently asked questions
Where to start building a sales team in a B2B technology company?
Building a sales team should start with strategy, i.e. defining whom the company wants to sell to, which clients it consciously gives up and why its offer is valuable to the chosen segment. Recruitment should come only once these assumptions have been verified in real conversations with the market.
Does the owner have to create the foundations of sales personally?
The owner should actively take part in building them, because they have the greatest knowledge of clients and can make decisions about the market, the offer and the direction of expansion. They can use external support, but should not hand full responsibility to a person who is only getting to know the company.
How long does it take to prepare a company to hire its first salesperson?
With focused work, describing the strategy, process and communication can take a few months, to which you need to add the time needed to run a dozen or so conscious sales cycles, verify the assumptions and gather basic data. This is still usually a shorter period than the one a company loses on a single failed recruitment.
Whom to hire first: a salesperson or a sales director?
In a company employing up to several dozen people, it is usually better to start with a person who will take over a specific part of the process, for example prospecting and qualification. Hiring a sales director makes more sense when there is already a proven system and a team that actually needs managing.
When is it worth implementing a CRM?
A CRM is worth implementing after the process has been described, because it should reflect the agreed stages, conditions for moving on and way of working, rather than serve to discover them by trial and error.
After building the team, can the owner withdraw from sales completely?
In a company of this size, the owner’s complete exit from sales is rarely a good solution, but they can get most of their time back, hand the day-to-day running of the process to the team and focus on developing it, the most important relationships and analyzing results.
