I’m a big fan of the writings of entrepreneur and author Eric Reis, because he expertly articulates what it means for an early-stage company to test hypotheses, iterate based on results, and evolve over time. Most Founders start with domain expertise, ambition, and connections, but very few are able to build the test-centric culture which Reis advocates.
Many Founders debate about whether to hire a marketing leader before a sales leader or vice-versa. Rather than fixating on the responsibilities and goals of those respective roles, think about the tests your business needs to conduct. It only makes sense to build a sales team after you have proven certain hypotheses, because a sales team is an amplifier and accelerator of product-market fit, not a builder of product or market. Consider the examples listed below:
Try to answer some of the left-side questions before you scale a sales team. Then, make sure you have sales representation (individual contributors or a leader) while you are testing the items on the right side of the table. Mixing up the order of these steps will frustrate your underutilized sales team, or it will stunt your ability to hone your product-market fit. The lessons on the left side can be learned by founders, alongside product and marketing leaders.
Of course, in reality, each column has many more rows of questions that can be added. Which questions are missing from the left and right sides of the table?
Check out this post and other resources like it directly on UpTempo’s website: https://www.uptempo.work/resources/marketing-before-sales-or