As an entrepreneur, when you first launch your company, you often start out doing most of the work yourself. However, at a certain point, it’s time to hire a team so you can focus on the higher-level work required of a CEO and grow your business. But who should you hire first? When should you bring on a sales team? What hiring strategies can help you find the best talent? How should you organize your team for top performance and growth? All these questions (and more!) are answered in my latest Sales Talk for CEOs podcast.
This episode features Jacco van der Kooij, Founder of Winning by Design, a global B2B revenue consulting and training company founded in 2012. In this interview, Jacco takes us back to those early days when he was running the company by himself, through his years as CEO, and up until today when he has passed the CEO baton on to someone else and stepped back into the role of Founder of the multi-million-dollar international company.
In this interview, you will learn why Jacco suggests not to hire your sales team first (and who you should hire instead!). He also shares two hiring strategies his company uses to make it easier to find the best candidate for your position (and quickly eliminate those who won’t make the cut!). Finally, you will find out about the intriguing way he groups his team members into customer-focused pods to enable them to become powerhouses for customer service. At the heart of it, this episode is all about growth and how your hiring and team organization can set your business up for success. Listen in, and you are sure to get amazing insight to grow your company too.
Watch the podcast below or on our YouTube channel.
Highlights:
[3:22] Growth via recurring revenue
[8:10] Why you shouldn’t hire for sales early
[15:37] Two unique elements to include in your hiring process
[17:14] Taking a multi-dimensional approach to growth
[21:50] Organizing your team: units instead of individuals
[27:25] The evolving role of CEO in sales
[31:05] When it’s time to step back
[35:35] Marketing: entering the realm of science
About Our Guest
Jacco is the founder of Winning By Design and author of Blueprints of a Sales SaaS Organization and seven other books. He is a Sales Mentor across several VC firms such as Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella, and Storm Ventures, where he helps accelerate the development of sales teams across their portfolios. Prior to founding Winning By Design, Jacco held roles of VP of Worldwide Sales and VP Strategy at Qumu (acquired by Rimage), Kontiki, and Technicolor. He is proud to have helped marquee customers over the years, including Amazon, AT&T, Dish, and Disney.
Jacco holds a BScEE in Electrical Engineering and an Executive MBA from the University of Leicester. Jacco’s insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, and he is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world including Dreamforce, SaaStock (Dublin), SaaS Growth (London), SalesHacker (virtual), and RD Summit (Brazil).
Nice to know: Jacco is the youngest of eight, raised in a small farming village in the Netherlands. He competed in chess, boxing, sailing, and represented the Netherlands at two world championships in the triathlon.
Show Links
Connect with Jacco van der Kooij in the links below:
Website: https://winningbydesign.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaccovanderkooij
You can learn more about and connect with Alice Heiman in the links below:
Website: https://aliceheiman.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliceheiman/
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