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People · 8 July 2026 · 5 min
When to hire your first sales person.
Most owners hire a salesperson too early and then blame the person. Here are the conditions under which hiring actually makes sense.
Hiring a salesperson tests the business, not the candidate. If the process doesn't exist, you're hiring someone to improvise in your place - and then paying for their guesswork.
The three conditions
- You have a repeatable process: you know where inquiries come from and what percentage you close.
- You have enough flow: at least 20-30 real conversations a month that you can't keep up with.
- You have economics that hold: the margin on an average deal covers salary plus bonus for at least 6 months without new revenue.
If one of the three is missing, your problem isn't capacity - it's system. Hiring will only accelerate the losses.
What to give the new hire in week one
- Ten recorded real conversations - yours, not idealised ones.
- A clear profile of a good client and a bad one.
- A pricing framework with discount limits.
- One number they report against weekly.
A good salesperson inside a bad system looks like a weak salesperson after two months.
About the author
Nikolay Kirilov
Nikolay Kirilov is an entrepreneur, business mentor and founder of NK Academy. He works across strategy, sales, operations and technology.
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