What customer counts does the speaker mention as examples of founder sales experience?

Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Secrets to Hiring Successful Sales Reps: The Calm Approach

31 Aug 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:33

Jason M. Lemkin advises founders hiring their first sales reps to use a simple litmus test: only bend hiring rules for candidates you yourself would buy from. He counsels founders to stay calm, leverage founder-led sales experience (having closed customers) as authoritative evidence of how to hire, and to prefer candidates who would personally convert the founder. Lemkin gives illustrative customer-counts (10, 15, 20, 100) as milestones indicating founder sales experience.

Questions this video answers

10, 15, 20, 100 customers.

Chapters

When you go to hire your first sales reps yourselves, make sure, no matter what, even if they haven't sold at your price point, even if they seem to need some support, even if the industry they come from is more complicated, even if their last job was easier. You can bend a lot of rules if you would buy from them yourself. And you have to make sure that you don't bend any rules if you wouldn't buy from them yourself. So what I mean is, be calm as a founder. If you're doing founder led sales, even if you're doing it poorly, at least if you've closed 10 customers, 15 customers, 20 customers, 100 customers, at least you know how to close those customers.