Don’t Let Your Job Post Exclude the Best Candidates

Steve LudwigHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Sign stating Restricted Area

Here at The Right Five, we are committed to ensuring the first sales hire B2B tech founders make has the right skills and attitudes. We do this using proprietary technology that delivers the Pathfinder sales candidates (those with the requisite skills and mental framework) proven to be successful in this first sales hire role.   However, if the job description … Read More

Flaunt Your Agility

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

man demonstrating physical agility

OK, not that kind of agility. You’ve heard of the great resignation, something we looked at from the standpoint of hiring your Pathfinder salesperson in a recent post. Let’s look in more detail at how you can view this unprecedented moment in time more opportunistically, more offensively. Perhaps in this crazy world any hire and associated hiring process must seem … Read More

Make Applying Hard Not Easy

Neil HartleyHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

man climbing rock face

While The Right Five is dedicated to ensuring B2B tech founders get their first Sales hire right, this post just as easily applies to any hire you may be making. I saw a short description of life as a founder recently that went something along the lines of: Monday – we’re going to conquer the world Wednesday – we’re screwed … 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

Keeping the Talent

Steve LudwigHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

this must be the place

We all know that good talent is in high demand. As the founder of your firm, you’ve launched your product or service, shared a vision of the company painting a picture of what the team can accomplish together, and have attracted the talent needed to build the organization.    Once you have the talent, including your Pathfinder salesperson, now how … Read More

How to Define Your Target Market

Neil HartleyValue Creation JourneyLeave a Comment

image of a dart hitting the bullseye

In a recent post on investment pitfalls, we touched on two areas where B2B tech startups often fail to execute. One is their inability to successfully recruit their first Sales hire, the second is an inability to properly define their target market. This post provides insights on how to avoid execution issues arising from poor (or no) target market definition. … Read More

Panning for Pathfinder Gold

Steve LudwigHiring ChallengesLeave a Comment

Panning for Pathfinder Gold

It has been called the “Great Resignation.”  People are quitting their jobs in record numbers. The lockdowns and forced remote work during COVID-19 gave people a chance to see work differently. Many realized they wanted a combination of something more fulfilling, better paying, with greater flexibility, or all three. That means there is an even greater scramble among established companies … Read More

Seed Surge = Series-A Crunch?

Neil HartleyValue Creation JourneyLeave a Comment

investment

It’s never been easier to raise seed investment. Recent years have seen a four-fold increase in the number of seed investments. Unfortunately, the number of Series-A investments have been pretty flat over the same period and, in some regions, significantly down since 2014. As a tech B2B founder looking to make your first Sales hire, should your glass be half-full … Read More

The Alphabet Soup of Sales

Neil HartleyPathfinder SalesLeave a Comment

alphabet soup of sales

You’ve seen the acronyms, SDRs, BDRs, AEs, MQLs, SQLs etc. but what do these mean and, as a tech B2B founder looking to make your first Sales hire, what do they mean to you and should you care? After all, one salesperson is like any other salesperson, right? Actually, no but we’ll get to that. Let’s start by deciphering the … Read More