Diagnostic Pattern
"We have never had to go find customers before"
The symptom is real. The cause is usually somewhere else.
The business grew on reputation, relationships and inbound, and now it needs to go and find customers. It looks like a hiring problem. It may actually be that no demand motion has ever existed here, so there is nothing for a new hire to run.
What you think it is
We've never really had to go out and find customers - it always came to us.
So you hire a salesperson, buy a list, buy a CRM, and wait for pipeline.
What it usually is
A hypothesis to test, not an indictment on you or the team.
Demand is a job to be done, not a person. When a business has grown on inbound and relationships, the pathway was real but nobody designed it, so nothing is written down and nothing is repeatable. Hiring a salesperson into that vacuum makes the new hire responsible for inventing the motion, judging it, and executing it at the same time, which is why the first hire so often fails and gets read as a bad hire. Solve for the job to be done first, then name the role responsible for it. The job comes first, the name second.
How to tell
If you hired a rep on Monday, what exactly would they do on Tuesday morning - and who here has ever done that, successfully, at this company?
The move
Before hiring, run the motion yourself for a few weeks - badly is fine - so you know what the work actually is and what good looks like. Write down who you are going after and why they would care. Then hire into a motion that exists, and hold the work accountable to working.
You might think you need a salesperson. It may actually be that you need a demand pathway first, and then a salesperson.
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