Pour One Out for Failed Startups

Steve LudwigPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

image of person dressed in traditional mexican attire for the day of the dead

Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, is a celebration in Mexico held on November 1 and 2. It is a day when friends and family gather to remember and pay their respects to those that have passed. The celebration was brought into the global pop culture consciousness through the Pixar film Coco.  In the same way, the tradition … Read More

When Experience Hurts Sales

Steve LudwigPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

a one way traffic sign

We all want the person with the biggest bat. It’s normal. But that instinct—which is a huge bias—can hurt your efforts in hiring your first salesperson.  We understand the tendency for B2B tech startup founders to look for their first sales hire to have a long resumé, a huge contact list, and swagger. From the outside, that appears to be … Read More

Sector Experience – The Be All and End All?

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Sign stating Restricted Area - Authorized Personnel Only

At The Right Five, we deliver candidates for interview that we know have the skills required to succeed as the first Sales hire in a B2B tech startup. We call them Pathfinders. All you have to do is choose the one that “fits best” (we’ll come back to that). These candidates have the requisite all round sales and marketing skills … Read More

Founder Seeks Pathfinder for Mutually Beneficial Relationship

Rob BakerPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

picture of two jigsaw pieces

B2B tech founders will find they are best served by considering their all-important first Sales hire, The Pathfinder, as a ‘Comrade-in-Arms’ rather than a pure Sales functionary. According to Merriam-Webster, a business centric definition of a ‘comrade-in-arms’ is “a person one worked together with to achieve something”. Those few words perfectly encapsulate how B2B tech founders should shift their mindset to … Read More

An Assessment Based on Experience

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

a model of albert einstein

Many B2B tech founders struggle to successfully make their first sales hire. The Right Five automatically delivers the right five candidates for interview, thereby, saving time and getting the right person into the market quickly. Certainly for founders with a non-Sales background, making that first Sales hire is likely to be the hardest they’ll ever make and one which can … Read More

Should I Hire a Commission-only Salesperson?

Neil HartleyPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

hand holding dollar bills

You’re a bootstrapped B2B tech founder. You’ve done much of the hard work building a product, getting it to market and closing those first deals. What’s more, you’ve done it and, likely, not drawn a salary. It was tough, wasn’t it? Maybe even a little uncomfortable for founders with a more technical background. It would be natural to now want … Read More

The Right Five, Not Just the Best Five

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

poppy in a field of wheat

You’re a busy person. You’ve founded your B2B tech startup, got your product into the market and led from the front to win those first few key customers. You’ve proved that someone will pay for your product and it looks like you’ve made it onto the right trajectory for success. You may have taken a little seed money already and, … Read More

Why Five?

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Many people making up the number five

Conventional wisdom suggests you should screen all your candidates for a given role and then perform in-depth interviews with 3-5 of them and, hopefully, make your selection from there. However, does that conventional wisdom apply to B2B tech founders looking to make their first Sales hire? In any area of business, you would imagine that most hiring managers have a … Read More