What to Do Before and After You Hire Sales and Why it Matters

$150K is the floor. $500K is the real cost when a sales hire doesn't stick — and for founder-led or founder-dependent orgs, it usually isn't the person's fault.

This session isn't about hiring better. It's about what has to be true before you hire at all — whether it's your first sales hire, your second through fourth as you scale a small team, or a re-hire after the last one didn't work out.

The strategy almost never lives anywhere but the founder's head.
You can't onboard someone into a system that doesn't exist.
That's not a people problem — it's a sequencing problem, and there's a right order to solving it before the search even starts.

Key Takeaways:

The real cost curve of a sales hire — why ramp time is the exposure nobody budgets for
What breaks internally (team confidence, client relationships, market perception) that never shows up in the hiring budget
The three things that have to exist before the job goes live, and three that can build while the search runs
And what to do after day one to ensure success