In most SaaS companies the founders sell the first deals and look after the first customers themselves. At some point that stops working. There are more leads than the founders can call back, or customers are waiting days for an answer. It is time for the first hire on the customer side, and it is one of the easiest hires to get wrong.
Decide which role you need
Sales and customer success are different jobs done by different kinds of people. A sales person wins new customers. A customer success person keeps the ones you have, helps them use the product, and grows the account over time.
Look at where the business is losing money today.
- Leads are going cold. Enquiries come in and nobody follows up for days. Demos are booked and not chased. You need sales.
- Customers sign and then go quiet. They do not finish setting up, usage drops, and renewals are a surprise. You need customer success.
- Both. Pick the one that costs you more this quarter. Do not hire one person to do both jobs properly. It rarely works, because the urgent job always wins and the other is neglected.
Why the first hire is different
The tenth sales person joins a machine. There is a pitch, a price list, a list of objections with answers, and a manager who has done the job. The first one joins a founder’s notebook.
That changes who you should hire. A person who was a top performer at a large company, with a known brand, a marketing team feeding leads and a clear script, may struggle when none of that exists. You need someone who is comfortable building the script as they go, and who will tell you what customers are saying, including the parts you do not want to hear.
For the same reason, avoid hiring a senior “head of sales” as your first hire unless they are happy to make the calls themselves for the first year. Many are not, and say so only after joining.
What to test for
Curiosity about the customer. Give the candidate a short description of your product and a made-up customer, and ask them to run a ten-minute discovery call with you as the customer. Good candidates ask questions before they pitch. Weak ones start presenting.
Learning speed. Send a two-page note about your product a day before the interview. See how much they have understood and what they ask. Your product will change every month, and this person has to keep up without a training team.
Writing. Most selling and most customer success in SaaS happens in writing. Ask for a follow-up email after the mock call. You will learn a great deal from six sentences.
Comfort with “no”. For sales, ask about a deal they lost and what they did next. For customer success, ask about a customer who was angry and how the conversation went. Listen for calm, specific answers, not blame.
Check the numbers behind the CV
Sales CVs are full of numbers: targets beaten, revenue closed. Ask what sits behind each one.
- Was the number theirs alone, or a team’s?
- Where did the leads come from: their own outreach, marketing, or existing accounts?
- What was the usual deal size and how long did a deal take?
- How many deals a month is that, in plain counting?
You are not trying to catch anyone out. You are checking whether their experience matches your situation. Someone who closed a few large deals a year with big companies has a different skill from someone who closed twenty small ones a month. Your product needs one of them.
For customer success, ask how many accounts they looked after, how they knew an account was in trouble, and an example of one they saved and one they lost.
Agree the pay structure before the offer
Sales pay in India usually has a fixed part and a variable part tied to targets. With a first hire you do not yet know what a fair target is, and a wrong target does damage either way: too high and a good person leaves, too low and you overpay for average results.
Be open about it. Agree a fixed salary the person can live on, set a modest target for the first two quarters, and put in writing that you will review it together once there is real data. Good candidates respect this. It is the honest version of what will happen anyway.
Prepare before day one
Write down what you already know, however rough: who buys, why they buy, the three objections you hear most, the two customers who love the product and why. Sit in on the new person’s first ten calls, and let them sit in on yours. In a month you will have the beginning of a playbook, written by the two of you.
