Dharmesh Shah has yet another great post on his blog about building a sales team. He mentions the need to set compensation structures correctly, making sure you are tracking sales metrics thoughtfully and talks about the culture shock of experiencing a sales team from an engineer’s perspective.
When I was a VC I noticed that portfolio company boards spent a long time talking about the sales team. Assessing progress vs. the company’s goals, talking about lifetime value of customers vs. acquisition cost, and putting together compensation plans. Now that I’m playing the entrepreneur game, I myself am trying to understand exactly where the the fine line lies in setting a company’s sales projections. I’m really getting the feeling that it is much more of an art than the illusion of “science” given by spreadsheets! It is much harder on the inside, and now I wish I had provided more support to my portfolio companies when I was a VC and when they were working through these issues. I guess the numbers have to “come from the management” so that they are totally bought in, but the amount of effort required to do this thoroughly is pretty amazing.
