What to document before hiring your first salesperson
As a founder, you can often explain your offer, recognise a promising enquiry and handle an objection without stopping to think about how you do it. A new salesperson has to learn those judgements.
Before hiring, capture enough of that knowledge to give them a reliable starting point. A short, working sales guide is usually more useful than a large document nobody maintains. Start with the following seven areas.
Capture your customers and sales process
1. Who you sell to, and what makes them a good fit
Describe the customers you are best equipped to help. Include the type of business, the person who feels the problem, what makes it urgent, the resources required from the customer and the reasons you would decline an opportunity.
Use evidence from real customer conversations where available. Label assumptions clearly, particularly if you are still testing your market. “Growing businesses” gives a new hire little direction. Explain which businesses, what has changed for them and why your help becomes relevant.
2. The problem customers are buying help with
Write down how customers describe their situation before they buy. What is difficult? What have they tried? What happens if they leave it unresolved? Why act now?
Connect these problems to outcomes your offer can reasonably support. Distinguish what you deliver directly from results that depend on the customer’s actions or other factors. Include approved proof you have permission to use, and claims a salesperson must avoid.
3. How you qualify an opportunity
Help your salesperson establish whether the customer has a problem you can address, how important solving it is, who approves a solution, how funding will be agreed, whether timing is realistic and what must happen before a decision.
Capture useful questions rather than a rigid script. Explain what a strong answer sounds like, what remains uncertain and when to involve you. An unanswered question should stay visible, not quietly become an assumption in the forecast.
4. What each sales stage means
Define stages using evidence of buyer progress. “Proposal sent” records something your business has done. A stronger definition might require agreement on the problem, proposed scope and how the proposal will be evaluated.
For each stage, document the evidence needed to enter it, information to record, the next step required and when to pause, close or revisit the opportunity. Keep stages simple enough to use consistently.
Define the handover and keep learning
5. Your offer, pricing and decision boundaries
Document what can be sold and what requires approval. Include standard scope, exclusions, pricing, payment terms and delivery conditions. State who can approve discounts, unusual terms or custom work. If pricing is tailored, explain the inputs used to build a quote and who signs it off.
This helps prevent commitments your delivery team cannot support and saves your new hire from seeking approval for every routine decision.
6. How conversations become a clear next step
Capture the structure of a useful discovery conversation, common objections and the follow-up you expect. Where you have permission to use recordings or notes, select examples and explain what makes them useful. Remove customer information the new hire does not need.
A hypothetical example: a prospect says, “Send me something.” Your guide might prompt the salesperson to clarify what the prospect needs to assess and agree when they will discuss it. This creates a more useful follow-up than sending a brochure without a next conversation.
Document principles and examples. Leave room for natural delivery.
7. What you will own during the handover
Be clear about where your involvement continues. Who leads early discovery calls? When do you join a commercial discussion? Who handles existing relationships? What can the salesperson decide independently?
Agree how you will review conversation quality, qualification and follow-through. Set targets using your actual sales cycle and available pipeline rather than assuming a new hire will immediately reproduce founder-led results.
Keep the guide alive
Put the material somewhere easy to find, with one person responsible for maintaining it. Review it with the salesperson as they learn. Their questions will show where the process still depends on unwritten knowledge.
You do not need every answer before hiring. You do need to distinguish what is established, what is being tested and who makes the next decision.
Planning your first sales hire? Book a 45-minute discovery call below to discuss your sales process and where a clearer handover could help.