Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Big-Company Sales VPs Frequently Fail As First Startup Sales Hires

Richard Harris · Gainsight Paid Him $10k+ To Figure Out Sales in 2013, What He Recommends Now · May 8, 2021 · at 13:19

Sales advisor Richard Harris explains why hiring big-enterprise sales executives as a startup's initial sales hire is often a mistake.

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“If I go see people hire VPs of sales from places like Oracle, Or some other big company as their first rep, the biggest challenge, the biggest reason they don't work out is because they haven't actually built something from the bottom up. They haven't built the process from the bottom up. They've never built a sales playbook and a sales script. Like it's been so long since they've been in the trenches that that's what, that's often what I see happen.”

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