Podcast episode
How to Lead a Sales Team From $0 to $100M in 8-Years
30 Minutes to President's Club21 Nov 202437 min
Description
Mark Kosoglow walks through the key skills, responsibilities, and attributes for a Sales Leader at each phase of company growth Doer Phase (0 to $1M ARR): The initial stage focused on finding product-market fit. The sales leader handles everything, including cold calls, demos, building sales systems, and refining the sales process. They act as an individual contributor, ensuring the company moves forward without distracting other key team members. Key trait: Being a hands-on, self-reliant executor. Builder Phase ($1M to $10M ARR): The leader transitions to hiring and scaling the team, typically starting with individual contributors (AEs and SDRs). Still involved in selling but begins to set foundational systems, processes, and training. They document best practices and create repeatable frameworks while maintaining some "doer" responsibilities. Key trait: Hiring and building effective teams and processes. Doctor Phase ($10M to $25M ARR): The leader becomes more metrics-driven, focusing on diagnosing and optimizing performance based on data. Begins managing managers and spending more time collaborating cross-departmentally (e.g., with RevOps, marketing, and customer success). Key trait: Using data and metrics (L1 and L2) to prevent thrash and fine-tune the organization’s operations. Architect Phase ($25M to $100M ARR): The leader’s role expands to a more executive level, crafting the overall blueprint for the sales organization in alignment with other departments. Focus on segmentation, pricing strategies, and designing compensation plans that drive desired behaviours. They influence larger strategic initiatives and ensure the execution aligns with organizational goals. Key trait: Seeing the big picture and designing a cohesive GTM blueprint. Communicator Phase ($100M+ ARR): The leader’s primary role becomes communication: setting clear expectations, timelines, and evaluating the mental models used by the team to meet goals. The focus shifts outward, ensuring alignment across broader organizational and market dynamics. Key trait: Clear and effective communication to drive alignment and execution at scale. RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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Wow. And one of them is still there as one of the top AEs at Outreach. So that kind of allowed me that the SDR or we did a great job hiring there and, again, hired a lot of people that we knew. Late 30s, early 40s, more mature people, first sales job, and just, like, trained them the right way. So that was kind of how we started. “I don't think that that should be a typical way that you start.” But what you should make sure that you do as a sales leader as far as, like, what am I going to keep and what I'm going to do is your job is to, like, slowly move out. So in the beginning, when you hire that first person. You do everything together. It's tag team. They're with you. Batman and Robin do your thing.
So that was kind of how we started. I don't think that that should be a typical way that you start. But what you should make sure that you do as a sales leader as far as, like, what am I going to keep and what I'm going to do is your job is to, like, slowly move out. So in the beginning, when you hire that first person. “You do everything together. It's tag team. They're with you. Batman and Robin do your thing.” Once you get that person to a level of competency where they can handle some things, then that's when you start to back yourself out and work on the stuff that surrounds that. So, for example, let's say that you get them really good at discovery calls. That's your chance now to go, let me figure out and write my manual on discovery calls.