Millennials have more career options and opportunities today than ever before, and it’s difficult to know what to do. Should you work for a startup? Should you establish yourself at a big company? Or should you start your own company? These are some of the questions you might be facing, and there isn’t one clear answer. We decided to talk to a few startup founders to get their take on what’s it’s like for millennials right now.

Here’s some of the career advice they wish someone would have told them when they were younger:

Adrian Ridner, Co-founder and CEO of Study.com

“At the time you finish college, your learning journey is just starting. Find a job you love that lets you acquire skills you didn’t learn in college, or take classes online — find some way to keep up with your professional development.”

Marc Prosser, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Fit Small Business

“The biggest question you should ask about your first job is “What skills will I be able to learn?” Especially in your first job, the practical skills and knowledge you pick up are more important than the salary. If you can learn a set of marketable skills, you’ll bolster your value to current and future employers.”

Tony Ellison, Founder and CEO of Shoplet

“Believe in your vision, but be realistic. Have a solid plan for how you intend to reach your goals and build your empire, but remember that as the road changes, so must you. When Shoplet was in it’s infancy, I had a lot of critics who tried to convince me that pursuing e-commerce was a mistake. I tuned out what wasn’t constructive but I didn’t ignore core issues that arose as my company developed. Holding onto your vision while remaining flexible is a delicate balance. Don’t be afraid to take calculated, well thought out risks and trust your instincts.”

Isaac Oates, Founder and CEO of Justworks

“Consider going after a job at a big company first. You’ll get experience in a more stable environment. Then you can confidently jump headfirst into the startup world after a few years.”

Simon Slade, Co-founder and CEO of Doubledot Media

“When considering a job offer, don’t focus too much on the salary and benefits package. Place greater consideration on the company and your potential coworkers, which are integral to your professional development and gaining industry knowledge. With that as your focus, you will grow faster and will advance more quickly in your career.”

Hampus Jakobsson, Co-founder and CEO of Brisk.io

“Learning is seldom knowledge but being able to get things done and understanding what to do and how to work with other people. Starting or joining a startup can be the best way to learn as you often get to skip a couple of rungs in the career ladder. Having only theoretical (and not practical) skills can make you unhirable, so figure out how you can become a “tool” for the company so you get to do the most interesting things.”

Roger Wu, Co-founder of Cooperatize

“Take as much risk as you can. You will only get more risk averse as you get older.”

Pawel Cebula, Co-founder and COO of Medigo

“Regardless of your major and career path, develop technical and programming skills. All industries are going digital and moving online. Having technical expertise will give you strong advantage over other graduates and job seekers and you can expect a significant boost in your starting salary. These skills will make you more independent and enable you to be more efficient in your daily work.”

Louise Hendon, Co-founder of Paleo Living Magazine

“Networking isn’t about meeting business associates, it’s about making friends and real connections with people you actually like.”

Travis Truett, Co-founder and CEO of Ambition

“Be intentional about using your twenties for personal and professional development. Go into every job with a plan as to how you will acquire the skills necessary for your dream career. Remember that you are the average of your five closest friends, surround yourself with people who will push you up not pull you down.”

Ondrej Krehel, Founder and CTO of Lifars

“At the end, do not forget: you are driving your destiny, no one else. Choices you make have consequences that may not be visible now. Future success, however, is a collection of small steps while climbing to a Mount Everest of success — discipline of finishing of every step. Can you take next step every day?”

Michael E. Sander, Founder of Docket Alarm

“There is nothing wrong with taking a traditional job out of ‎undergrad. Take the opportunity to learn everything you can about the industry you are in, and spot all of the inefficiencies and ridiculous things that are going on in your company. It’s likely that many other companies experience the same issues, and if so, you may have just stumbled upon your first viable product. Also, learn how to code.”

Brian Sierakowski, Co-founder and CEO of TeamPassword

It’s reasonable to not have everything figured out. It’s easy to be concerned that you’re not going in the right direction, but, if you accept that is okay to not know your exact destination, you can relax and get some really cool experience along the way.

Jeffery, Xun Liu, Founder of Panjury

“Don’t belief the myth that if you want to make a lot of money you have to be an entrepreneur. The most important thing is to find a place that allows you to develop your passions and become great at them — whether this is by starting your own company or working in someone else’s.”

Randhir Hebbar, Co-founder of Convergytics

“Identify interest areas / clubs upfront and take the leadership role in them. Trying to lead peer-groups and succeeding is not only fulfilling and fun, but can also be a great experience for what you will need to do later on in Corporate Life.”

Oren Bass, Co-founder of Pave

“Surround yourself with trusted advisors — whether it’s family, friends, colleagues or mentors — and work with purpose.”

James Garvey, Co-founder and CEO of Self Lender

“Before accepting a job at a company, perform a deep level of due diligence on both your new boss and the company. Everyone has a different moral compass. It’s important that your core values align with your colleagues and your employer. Working with smart, ethical, and hardworking people is really important for future success.”

Bill Fish, Founder and President of ReputationManagement.com

“Your first job is not your last job. The key is to learn as much as you possibly can in the business world in your first year, and then make your decision from there.”

Madelaine D’Angelo, Founder and CEO of Arthena

“Things will not always come easily, and you have to be prepared for that. Always remember that just because you’ve experienced failure doesn’t make you a failure.”

Carl Mazzanti, Founder and CEO of eMazzanti Technologies

“Choose an employer who provides ongoing opportunity to help you learn and increase your knowledge and skills. This could be through peer to peer learning, ongoing online or offline training and or any other method. Know that the better you are for the firm, the better you will be for their customers, and that the mutual investment you make in each other will always pay off.”

Sean Dudayev, Founder and Director of Marketing of Insure Chance

“Stick to what you know and develop that skill. Avoid the trap of “doing what you love.” Eventually even the most passionate of projects becomes a job. Anything you do will require a bit of something you don’t necessarily enjoy. The key to be happy at your work is to be good at it. So don’t let all those years of education go to waste. You’d be surprised how far you can go with laser like focus. It’s won’t always be pleasant, but it provides results, and results bring joy.”

Jessie Deye, Co-founder and CEO of Gild Collective

“Don’t pay attention to your degree. I have a B.S. in Molecular Biology but I’m running a startup in the DIY and in-home party space. What’s important is your passion for learning. You don’t have to know everything, but you have to be willing to fight like hell to figure it out.”

Ben Treanor, Founder and Managing Director of Old English Company

“There’s no set path so don’t stress out — I felt that I had to know exactly what I wanted to do after graduating, however I didn’t have a clue. I put a lot of unnecessary stress on myself because of this. I think very few know what it is that they want to do after graduating.”

Tina Tran Neville, Co-founder and CEO of Calolo

“Be good to people — It’s a small world. And the deeper into business I get, the smaller the world gets. Be kind. Be grateful. Be humble. You never know who you will work with.”

Brandon Seymour, Founder and CEO of Beymour Consulting

“Take inventory of the things you look for in an ideal work environment and factor that in when considering career opportunities. Even if you’re making six figures right out of college, chances are you won’t last long if you don’t enjoy what you do.”

Erin Zaikis, Founder of Sundara

“If you get a job that doesn’t thrill you, realize that there are always ways to impress your manager and go above and beyond. Wish your organization was a little more charity minded? Set up a volunteering day after work and invite your coworkers. Interested in social media? Come up with some sample Facebook and Twitter posts that might boost your company’s brand and submit them to the boss. Take the initiative and you might end up really impressing your coworkers.”

Sandie Luna, Co-founder and Director of BD of PUNTO Space

“Consider your natural talents vs. what you are passionate about. The two don’t always match up. If they don’t, figure out a way to marry the two. Consider not ignoring either. If you can figure out how to do this, you’ll have a unique way to follow your dreams.”

Patrick Rice, Founder and CEO of Lumidatum

“Don’t be afraid to experiment. There are big companies and small companies, industries that have been around for centuries and ones invented yesterday, keep trying your hand at different variables until you find something that really resonates with you.”

Todd Horton, Founder and CEO of KangoGift

“Find a mentor. I wish I had a more experienced professional offering me advice at each career juncture. Someone who can answer the questions around “should I take this job,” “should I go to grad school”? Be proactive to seek out mentors.”

Jonathan Kendall, President and CEO of Succeed Fast

“Learn to sell. It is no secret that selling is still the fastest way to earn success in life. But many of us have to overcome the Fear and Anxiety. It’s worth it. Nothing happens without the happy clients buying your product and services.”

Winthrop Jackman, Founder and Executive Director of Limulus Systems

“Do something you are passionate about: any job has it’s highs and lows, so if you aren’t passionate about the job at the start, the lows will feel that much lower.”

Sioux Messinger, Founder and CEO of Cream of the Crop Leaders

“Approach challenges rather than avoid them. Doing so actually creates confidence, and results in a virtuous confidence cycle which builds upon itself. Taking healthy risks is empowering.”

Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder and CEO of Mavens & Moguls

“Finishing college is not the end of your education, you will be a student for the rest of your life so never stop learning new things. Your education is just starting to get really interesting and the grades don’t matter anymore. Be a sponge for knowledge & enjoy the learning process.”

Have some of your own career advice for millennials? Let us know at community@closeriq.com

Originally published at blog.closeriq.com on September 1, 2015.

This is a guest post by the Director of Marketing at Ambition, Jeremy Boudinet.

In theory, building a ROI-driving sales culture seems easy but in reality, it’s one of the most difficult challenges a B2B startup will face. As Director of Marketing for Ambition, I’ve spent the past 13 months actively involved in that challenge — we’ve gone from hiring our very first sales rep to having a budding sales team complete with Sales Operations Director, SDRs, and tightly synced Marketing and Customer Success initiatives.

Here at Ambition, we know firsthand three things to be true: The opportunity will never be greater, the stakes will never be higher, and the ability to cross the thin lines that separate failure from success will depend on a healthy sales culture.

Sounds daunting, right? It sure is. But you’re up to the challenge. Implement the following 5 principles in your B2B sales strategies and watch healthy culture start to take shape in your sales team.

Rule #1 of B2B Sales Culture: Recruit passionate talent.

I’m not much for sage quotes, but even I have to bow down out of respect to this one: “Customers will never love your company until your employees love it first.”

In a hiring decision between two candidates with equal skill-set, experience and base compensation, hire the candidate who comes closest to demonstrating 360 degree passion toward the opportunity. To do so, break the opportunity into six components:

1. Role
2. Company
3. Industry
4. Startup
5. Mission
6. Product.

Then ask yourself: How passionate is a candidate towards each component? And which ones is he or she the most and least passionate about? The components descend in order of need for passion. If candidate 1’s passion skews towards 1–3, he or she is more likely a safer bet than a candidate who skews towards 4–6.

Rule #2 of B2B Sales Culture: Embrace volatility.

It is pivotal to let your team know, from day one, what the realities of life as a B2B Startup Sales rep are. Simply put, you have to set proper expectations.

What happens when your company loses a huge account? When a core member of your business team leaves for a cushier position? When you switch softwares mid-horse and have to adapt on the fly?

Those have all happened here at Ambition and, though they were unexpected, we didn’t lose our cool because our executives have instilled the right mentality in us — volatility is just a hazard of the job. It’s a far cry from working in corporate America, where there’s a greater feeling of insulation from potential job loss and company disintegration. You need to be a certain type of person to thrive in a B2B startup, especially during the more tumultuous times.

In our experience, we’ve done well sourcing new talent from more stable, secure and lucrative positions to take on a higher-risk position at Ambition. One example is our Director of Customer Success: He was previously an Account Executive at two mammoth SaaS companies but left to pursue a role with Ambition that would “enable him to be proactive” and have “an immediate, major impact on his organization.”

The more your sales team accepts and even embraces volatility, the better.

Rule #3 of B2B Sales Culture: ABC — Always Be Communicating.

Communication tools, like Slack and HipChat, are great for building camaraderie and encouraging strategic team discussion. You can set up different channels to have conversations specifically focused on those topics. Additionally, the platform allows you to search through old conversations to recall important information shared by your team.

It may seem counterintuitive, but ongoing, consistent communication has actually been crucial to our sales team success here at Ambition and will likely be just as important to your B2B startup sales team as well.

Why? Because during the early stages of building a sales team, there’s a constant influx of new information into a young B2B sales team — leadership are establishing processes, reps are getting competitor intelligence from prospects, and so forth. Sharing this information is crucial to getting your team on the same page and making sure everyone is aware of new discoveries that can optimize their performance.

And you’d be surprised how our sales, marketing and customer success members here at Ambition talk all day — and 95 percent of it is strictly business. While you may think this level of communication can be detrimental to our work, it actually enhances our focus.

Rule #4 of B2B Sales Culture: Self-Reliance. Self-Direction. Team-Accountability.

The high mortality rate for SaaS startups — coupled with scarcer marketing and training resources than the typical Mid-Market or Enterprise company — requires a proactive, resourceful and naturally self-accountable sales team.

In terms of evaluation, taking a qualitative approach at the individual level is a must, as you’re still ironing out your process and discerning the proper expectations for your team. Everyone’s still figuring things out.

From a quantitative standpoint, I would advise focusing on team benchmarks (e.g. month-over-month growth). Making team benchmarks a heavy point of emphasis in our sales operations at Ambition led to dramatic improvements in team continuity. They’re good for culture and make a lot of sense for B2B startups up against a high burn rate.

Rule #5 of B2B Sales Culture: Promote Personal Growth.

The professional opportunities that come with selling for a young SaaS company are bigger than most realize. Just look at Mark Roberge, Aaron Ross and others who got in early, helped scale billion dollar companies, and are now industry legends.

To put it in perspective, Roberge might be the most respected Sales Executive in all of SaaS. And he became an industry legend in the same time it takes a first year medical student to become licensed and actually practice medicine.

Granted, you don’t have to become an industry legend to get uniquely valuable professional experience, a massive income, and frequent leadership opportunities from your sales role at a B2B startup. My younger brother graduated with a communications degree from the University of Tennessee and, three years later, he’s making his way into the six figures selling enterprise SaaS software.

The opportunity is yours for the taking. As Jason Lemkin once said, if you can get 10 unaffiliated, paying customers for your B2B startup, you can get 10,000. Share that message with your team and let them know that the opportunity before them goes beyond making big commission checks. I recommend watching Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” video, which is actually a codified part of our onboarding process here at Ambition.

So much of B2B sales success is about believing in yourself. Celebrate wins with your team and push them to succeed not just for the company, but also for themselves, and you’ll have a healthy sales culture.

Building your B2B Sales Culture

With these five tips under your belt, you can take on the challenge of building a B2B sales culture. Best of luck to your B2B startup, from the Ambition Team to yours.

—

Originally published at blog.closeriq.com on June 11, 2015.

As a recruiting platform focused on helping startups hire top sales talent, we converse with candidates on a daily basis about how they are evaluating their job offers.

In a competitive hiring market, such as the one we are in, the playing field for the interview process have been leveled. Startups need to treat each candidate like future family members — this mentality increases your offer acceptance rates and the value of your brand in the community.

We have reduced the list of drop-off reasons from candidates to three main categories: timing, interview experience, and compensation. While some nuances are specific to startup sales, we recommend you consider the concepts on a broader level, as they can be relevant in the recruitment of all roles regardless of company type.

Timing

It is extremely important to understand where a candidate stands in their interview and decision-making process — do not wait until you have made a final hiring decision before having this conversation with your candidate. We recommend outlining the interview process with the candidate from the get-go so they have an idea of what to expect and raise concerns, if needed.

As for the interview timeline, efficiency is the way to go since it shows the candidate you value their time. You should try to limit your interview process to 3 total meetings — an in depth phone screen, a first meeting, and a final pitch — as candidates can get frustrated with multiple round interviews where they meet one person at a time. Rescheduling interviews and adding more interviews to the schedule are other moves that elongate the hiring process and increase the odds of losing out on a great candidate.

The Interview Experience

Whether you realize it or not, you are creating an everlasting impression of your company for the candidate from the very first communication and every correspondence there on out. Three simple ways to create a noteworthy interview experience are: facilitating positive communication, including leadership in the hiring process, and promoting mutual discovery between the candidate and the company.

1. Positive Communication: Courteous, considerate and candid communication can build trust quickly and separate you from competing offers later on in the process.
2. Include Leadership: A major selling point for a candidate looking to join a startup is exposure to the executive leadership team, and an opportunity for rapid career advancement and personal growth. If a 30-person startup cannot get their founders to attend a final round of interviews, it can be a warning sign to a candidate. Make sure your executive team is not only present, but is actually focused on engaging in a meaningful conversation — a 15 minute interview with a founder who is preoccupied on their smartphone is counterproductive.
3. Mutual Discovery: With each interview, do not talk down to the candidates — make the tone of the interview conversational with the goal of mutual discovery. Give the candidates a comfortable environment to ask questions throughout the interview and pitch the opportunity as you go along.

You are losing out to competition if you are waiting until you have made a hiring decision to “sell” the candidate on the role and the company.

Compensation

The two common sore areas for candidates when it comes to startup sales compensation plans are the OTE (on-target-earnings) and equity incentives.

Generally speaking, if a candidate has concerns about the OTE, it is because they do not understand or believe in your commission structure. Make sure your commission plan is fully baked. A simpler compensation structure is fine as long as you address how revenue generated is commissioned (e.g. how churn impacts performance and what sales goals leads to attainment of quota). If you can provide conservative, baseline and stretch scenarios to demonstrate how the payout would work, you will make the OTE a lot more tangible.

While ultimately each startup has their own comfort level with providing equity compensation details, we recommend you error on the side of being more transparent. While stating a “500 shares option grant” may be sufficient for some candidates, it is a bad way to start the conversation for a candidate who knows 500 shares provides little insight to the overall equity stake.

Being upfront about what is being offered is a great way to build trust for startup career opportunities. Chances are, they will eventually find out anyways so it is better for you to add context up front as to how you justify the grant and control the messaging.

Final Words

There is no downside to providing a candidate with a great interview experience. Even if you end up passing on the candidate, a positive interview experience will create an everlasting impression about the brand (and the appeal of your team) for their future job prospects, their friends, and their referrals. With the three aforementioned tips on how startups lose sales recruits during the interview under your belt, you can keep recruits interested in your startup.

Originally published by Jordan Wan at blog.closeriq.com on June 16, 2015.

Sales have come a long way since the 1800s, when the structure for goals and sales steps was formulated. The traditional process focused on the customer’s need and not the product — it was a script that moves the customer through that value identification. While much has changed, a lot of the principles have remained the same.

Currently, customers start the conversation having done their research and being equipped with information about competition, pricing and a clear understanding of their problem and the solutions available. By adapting to the evolution of the customer and preserving traditional steps, a salesperson can harness the best of both worlds.

Below are 8 sales strategy tips for how you can evolve to keep up with the modern client using basic sales principles:

Offer something online shopping cannot. In the current day and age, most customers have experienced online shopping and probably enjoy the perks that come with it. But the Internet can only offer so much. Customers are looking to you to make the exchange easy, provide insight and keep the conversation productive. Try asking, “How can I help you?” Then determine what else the customer might require so you can add value beyond what they find online.

Change the method for the media. You are the expert in your arena that can personalize your solution to your customer. This can be done in person, on the phone or by email.

Offer recommendations. Know your solution arena and show that you care about the customer experience by making recommendations. How often has an enthusiastic waiter convinced you to try something they like?

Give without expecting anything back. Understand what your customer needs to make this buying relationship successful. It may be personal or it may come down to keeping his job.

Give them space while helping them explore. It is important to be appropriate and respectful but if you are not pushing the edges of the box, the customer is not learning. Help them explore by having a set of questions at the ready that help you learn what will delight them. You will need to tailor the inquiry and you only have a few minutes to get them into a conversation.

Understand what your customer wants. Since customers have refined requests and questions, it is important to understand where they are and what need so you can matter to your customer.

Make commitments and keep them. You are the voice of your organization and what you do speaks to what a customer can expect of the relationship. So when you make commitments to deliver information, be sure to keep them.

Don’t waste their time. Keep communications short. Deliver what they asked for first. Have you ever tried putting the price at the beginning of the proposal and saying that the following pages cover what is included? It changes the conversation because now you can talk about value.

While the tips above are great starting point, they are not set in stone. As the customer continues to evolve, so will the sales strategies and tips. Sales Professionals need a new set of tools to assist with customer insight, setting priorities and managing critical communications. With solutions that alert you to next steps, you can enter into strategic social conversations and track relationships through your pipeline.

The race is on. Let’s roll!

Originally published at blog.closeriq.com on May 21, 2015.

Congratulations! You have a few offers from different sales companies. Now what?

Of course, you’ll want to evaluate and compare your options, but you might be wondering what to consider aside from your ultimate salary. And while that’s important, there are other pros and cons to weigh as well. A difference in salary of $5k might seem like a determining factor, but your sales career is also about personal growth. The difference between a good opportunity and a great one might not be apparent from the salaries you’ve been offered.

So before accepting a sales job offer, ask yourself the 10 questions below to help figure out which gig is the right one for you.

About Your Base Salary

• What is your role? More direct impact on revenue generation should mean higher compensation.
• How difficult is the sale? Are you getting fed inbound leads or are you hunting and closing deals on your own?
• Is the company well-funded? If the company you will be working for is venture-backed with millions of dollars in funding, expect a reasonable base salary.
• Is the company a startup? If the company is a early-stage startup with no venture capital or funding, don’t count on the above ranges.
• What kind of opportunity do you want? Would you rather help a small business grow or dive into an already successful company?

About the Commission Structure

• Will your potential commission motivate you to hit your revenue goals?
• Are your targets reasonable? Are you confident you’ll be able to hit them?
• What are the best and worst case scenarios for each month? Give yourself a range of how much (or little) you could be making. Some companies set their target knowing that 30 percent of the company can reach that goal, while some companies set their target knowing only 5 percent of the company can make their goal.
• What percent of the company is at or above the target goal? Ask the company to find out. Targets are based on activities such as number of phone calls or meetings set compared to revenue outcomes. Estimate whether or not you think you can meet those objectives.

About Your Equity

• What, if any, equity will you receive? Evaluating equity is tricky and might be the most complicated part of your offer. Venture Hacks has a great article that can help you figure it out.

If you have any other questions about your offer process, email us at community@closeriq.com and we’ll have someone from our panel of sales leaders respond to you directly. Good luck!

Originally published at blog.closeriq.com by Jordan Wan, CEO of CloserIQ

Want to know how to turn your new sales hires into a dream team? Read on, then rent the 2000 Vin Diesel movie, “Boiler Room.”

If you run an early-stage startup, your first sales hires — and how you train and introduce them to your company — will set the tone for the next stage of your startup’s growth. After all, it’s likely that this will be the first time your product will be sold by someone other than you or your cofounders. It’s the first time that people without the context of your company’s history will represent you.

And these early team members are especially critical because they’ll become leaders for the next batch of salespeople that follow them; their habits, skills, and experience will rub off on new team members to come. So think of your first salespeople as founders of the sales team.

And as a founder, it’s your job to put your new salespeople in a position to be successful. (After all, poor sales management leads to high sales churn.) They need to feel inspired and involved. Here’s what you can do to make that happen:

1. Always hire more than one salesperson at a time.

Any time you’re hiring salespeople, hire more than one. In your company’s early days, you won’t have data to help measure a sale hire’s progress. You won’t know what, exactly, “good” or “bad” performance means. Hiring two or three people can help you figure this out, create competition among them, and also protect you if someone quits or needs to be let go.

Hiring a batch of salespeople will also benefit your new hires. Being the lone first salesperson at a new company is hard: there are no precedents in place, no examples of success. So make sure your first sales team is a pair or a group of peers who can experience the job together.

2. Schedule their first day for a Saturday.

First impressions are everything. The chaos of a Monday morning should not be the way your new team members interact with you for the first time. (This works in your favor, too; you know that running a startup is a constant battle against time, so why waste a precious weekday on training?) Instead, plan to have your new sales team start on a Saturday when you can really focus on teaching them the basics and introducing them to the rest of the company.

Here’s how a Saturday spent onboarding your new sales team might go:

• 9:00 a.m.: Have breakfast, make introductions, and fill out legal paperwork.
• 9:30 a.m.: Give a fun presentation on your company’s history and how you got to this point. Don’t forget to take questions!
• 10:30 a.m.: Tell your new team about your industry. Who are they selling to? Who are the players? Why are we doing this?
• 11:00 a.m.: Go over your email and phone scripts and what they’ll be expected to accomplish by the end of their first week.
• 12:00 p.m.: Have lunch.
• 1:00 p.m.: Train them on basic CRM and sales tools, like how to contact people and use lead lists.
• 2:00 p.m.: Review the scripts and make mock calls so your team can start making calls and sending emails Monday morning.
• 3:00 p.m.: Get drinks as a team, and invite investors and even customers, if possible.

Now when your new sales team comes back in on Monday, they’ll already know what they have to do to be successful in their new jobs.

3. Don’t overload your new sales team with information.

All your new sales hires need to know at this point is how to be successful in their first week. If their first task is to schedule product demos by making cold calls and sending cold emails, train them only for that. This early on, there’s no need to show them every aspect of your sales process, how to send an invoice, or even how to conduct a demo (and even if you do teach this information right away, it likely won’t be retained).

Instead, cross each bridge when your salespeople actually reach these points with real prospects. Practice scripts with them so they get better at scheduling demos; once they’ve nailed that, then they can conduct demos themselves. Essentially, learning the next step in the sales process should be a reward for mastering the previous one.

(You can see this tactic at work in the movie Boiler Room. Each new hire is only allowed to cold call prospects. Once they qualify a prospect, they have to watch a senior salesperson take the deal from there. After they master that first step in the sales process, they earn the right to close their own deals.)

4. Document everything (and we mean everything).

Starting as a salesperson at a new company is like drinking through a fire hose. Retaining the amount of information necessary to do the job is impossible. So help them out by carefully documenting every part of your sales process, including scripts, frequently asked questions, CRM processes and definitions, and even trivial things like proper email signature structure.

Give your salespeople the ability to look up anything on their own. When they ask you a question, refer them to the materials. (It may seem mean-spirited, but it’s the best way to establish that they are expected to follow directions.) Plus, it’ll save you from having to answer the same questions over and over again.

Encourage your sales team to contribute to the documentation too. As they learn new tips and tricks on how to sell your product, they should be sharing it with everyone.

As a real-life example, here’s what the sales onboarding documentation at my company, Smart Host, looks like:

The “Sales Onboarding” document explains all of our sales processes and definitions, including getting set up with Close.io, our CRM.

Yes, we’re thorough. Over-communication is key. If you want your sales team to operate with a certain level of professionalism, give them a step-by-step guide of how to operate at that level.

5. As the old adage goes, lead by example.

Organization and attention to detail will rub off on your team and create a culture of excellence. If you lead by example, and follow the above steps, your new sales team will practically onboard themselves.

Written by Nick Persico, Co-Founder of Smart Host

Originally published at blog.closeriq.com

A little about me: I went to MIT, majored in computer science, and after about 5 years in finance and engineering, I went into tech sales. Crazy right? I don’t think so.

Engineering graduates are often uncomfortable with sales. I’ve spoken to many tech founders who had misinformed notions of sales as a “used car” profession, and others who think they can’t sell because it’s not in their DNA. But sales is an invaluable skill set I saw in a lot of people I admire, from Steve Jobs to Richard Branson. So I jumped at the opportunity to sell and manage a sales team during my time at ZocDoc.

And now, having done sales myself for a few years, I can assure you it’s not only a highly intellectual profession, it’s also something engineering grads can, and should, learn. Here’s why:

1. You’ll develop better product intuition, making you a better engineer.

Selling to your target customers will help you understand their day-to-day lives, their decision-making processes, and what they truly care about. When you gain a better understanding of your customers’ wants and needs, you’ll be able to engineer better products for them.

2. You’ll learn what to look for in a great salesperson.

Through selling products first hand, I developed a much better understanding of the qualities of a great salesperson. So when I had to hire a team of salespeople, I felt a lot more confident and qualified to interview and making important hiring decisions.

3. You’ll become a pro at building relationships.

Like bad code creates bugs, bad salesmanship creates poor relationships. As a salesperson, you’ll learn how to avoid mistakes in communication and presentation. Being a better communicator will dramatically improve your relationships — not only with your clients, but also your team. You’ll become more than just a cog in the machine — you’ll develop skill sets required to become an effective organizational leader.

4. I loved it. You probably will too.

Sales is entrepreneurial, easy to measure, and incredibly challenging, even if you are working for “The Man.” Unlike a lot of other jobs, most sales roles require just you, your hustle, and your skills to create quantifiable outcomes. This is an amazing contrast to being an assembly line engineer stuck in corporate workflows and not-so-agile software development cycles.

5. You’ll get a ton of respect.

To the outside world, you’ll widen your credibility beyond just a software developer, but someone who can build a product customers will love and take it to market. Internally, you’ll feel invincible, as you’ll be just as comfortable jumping on a call and handling a nasty customer as you would crushing your engineering backlog. With your combination of tech expertise and people skills, who’s to stop you?

Are you an engineer who has done some sales — or wants to try it? Let’s trade tips. Email me at community@closeriq.com.

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Written by Jordan Wan

Founder & CEO of CloserIQ. Previously Head of Analytics at PayPerks, Sales Manager at ZocDoc, and Trading Strategist at Bridgewater Associates. MIT CS

This article originally appeared on blog.closeriq.com

For quick and dirty prospecting: Rapportive

Rather than go through the hassle of looking up a prospect on LinkedIn, just add Rapportive to your Gmail account. Rapportive inputs info from your contact’s LinkedIn profile directly in your email window, so you can easily access their photo, work history, social media links, and connections that you both share.

For meeting prep and researching your contacts: Charlie

Don’t have the time to Google your clients? Charlie syncs with your Google calendar and, before your meetings, scours the Internet for information about who you’re meeting with and creates one-page reports on them. With Charlie, you’ll know your contacts’ passions and hobbies, as well as news and stats about their company, before you even shake hands.

For a scheduling “assistant”: x.ai

Hate going through the back-and-forth of scheduling meetings? x.ai offers “Amy,” an AI personal assistant that schedules meetings for you. Instead of playing email tag with your clients, simply cc “Amy” and she’ll communicate with them on your behalf to find a time and place that works for both of you and add it to both your calendars.

For calendar sharing: Calendly

Like x.ai, Calendly avoids the frustration of email tag when scheduling meetings. This app lets you create a calendar with your availability and scheduling preferences that you can send and share with your clients. Your customers can then easily pick a spot on your calendar that works best for them, and Calendly adds the scheduled meeting to your calendar.

For scheduling that’s easy for your clients: Assistant.to

Assistant.to syncs with your Gmail account — when you’re setting up a meeting through email, it allows you to choose a selection of available time slots from your Google calendar and imports them as links in your email. Then, the client can click on the date that works for them and it’ll automatically schedule the meet-up on your calendar. Assistant.to even remembers your most frequent meeting locations, so you don’t need to type in the same location over and over.

For email tracking: Sidekick

Want to know if your emails are being read? Sidekick informs you which of your emails are opened, when and where they’re opened, and the device on which they’re opened. It can also schedule your emails to send when you want them to go out, and gives you info about your contacts (much like Rapportive), like their work history and where they live.

For email templates and tracking: Yesware

Like Sidekick, the free version of Yesware lets you know when your emails are opened. You can also create email templates to blast out to your contacts — and Yesware will even give you reports that show you which templates were opened, read, and clicked the most.

For an inbox that never lets anything slip through the cracks:Boomerang

Do you forget to follow up with your prospects? Boomerang sends you reminders to follow up within your desired time frame. This app can also “boomerang” important emails to the top of your inbox, which lets you address them at a later date without the risk of them getting buried and being forgotten.

For creating presentations: Prezi

Tired of PowerPoint presentations? Prezi is a cloud-based tool that creates unique-looking presentations that let you zoom and pan around freely, rather than go from slide to slide — giving your decks a fluidness that makes them stand out from standard PowerPoints. Plus, it syncs across all your devices so you can present any time, any place.

For quick and easy screen sharing: join.me

Need to give a remote demo? Screen sharing isn’t a pain in the neck anymore. This app lets anyone in the world watch your screen — just by entering a code into join.me in their browser. You can also enable audio to chat live.

CloserIQ doesn’t get paid to endorse products or services — we only recommend stuff we love or that we’ve heard great reviews about from the community. If you have an app you love, shoot us a note about it at community@closeriq.com.

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Written by David Berezin

David is a freelance writer/editor at CloserIQ. In 2010, he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English. He has written for publications like Patch and the CHARGED.fm magazine. Currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree in Media Studies at The New School.

This article originally appeared on http://blog.closeriq.com/

If you missed Saturday Night Live’s epic 40th anniversary special, you should check it out on NBC.

Not only was it a nostalgic look at 40 years of comedy, it was also a mind-blowing display of how a relatively small organization (only 141 cast members in 40 years!) can dominate an entire industry.

But how was anyone to know that 19-year-old Eddie Murphy would become a legendary comedian back in 1980? Or that young, 20-year-old Robert Downey Jr. would eventually crank out Hollywood blockbusters? The answer is simple: they didn’t, but they saw potential. SNL is the American institution it is today because it has been extremely successful at recognizing promising actors and developing talent.

In the startup recruiting industry, companies seem to be focused on hiring “A players.” But as someone who spends every waking moment helping startups find sales talent, I think we should take a cue from SNL.

For one, you only know that a candidate is an “A player” once they’ve already proven themselves. In today’s competitive war on talent, not many startups can afford to pay for these “A players” (not to mention dealing with the challenges of retaining them as the company grows). Meanwhile, there are plenty of high-potential, but unproven candidates looking for the next PayPal Mafia.

Startups should target candidates with high potential and focus on developing their recruits rather than chasing “A players” — just like in the early days of SNL. The original 1975 cast was known on-air as “The Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” and included supposed “B players” like John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase. Not bad right?

Today, SNL has become such a colossal star magnet that new hires are instantly destined for the comedy A-list. “A players” are now flocking to join SNL.

About the Author: Jordan Wan is the Founder/CEO of CloserIQ, the sales recruiting platform for tech startups. Twitter: @jordanxwan

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