The evolution of your sales department
Part 3 of the 3-part "Renaissance Rep" series
In Part 3, our last part of the Renaissance Rep 3-part series, we’ll cover your business’s evolution along with a final note about your first sales hires.
The sales learning curve has three phases and requires varying types of reps as you move from stage to stage. There are reps who can transition from one phase to another, but change is hard and the people that enjoy and thrive in the early stages don’t always enjoy and thrive in the later stages.
Three Phases of Rep Evolution
To stick with the island analogy from Part 1, the renaissance rep is dropped on the island with only a knife in your initiation phase. The enlightened reps in the transition phase join the renaissance rep on the island but also have to pitch their own tents and collect firewood. When you move to the execution phase, the coin-operated reps storm the island in droves.
Initiation Phase
Once your renaissance reps begin to pay for themselves through their own sales (break-even point), you should start hiring your next batch of reps. The focus in the initiation phase is on learning, so as you move into this next stage of growth, you want to make sure you don’t lose that. You’ll also work to replicate the success of at least breaking even with reps you bring onboard.
For a more detailed overview of the initiation phase, see Part One and Part Two of this 3-part series.
Transition phase
The transition phase keeps going until you feel comfortable you have a clearly outlined and repeatable process with revenue you believe can be forecasted. In other words, the reps you onboard are making 2-3X what you're paying them on a yearly basis.
At this stage, your renaissance reps are still operating and you’ve brought on enlightened reps. These new reps should be able to pick up sales scripts and existing emails campaigns and run with what they have. The playbook isn’t built out yet during the transition phase, so these reps still need to be able to adapt fast and own their book of business to get the job done. These reps rely more on sales skills and not needing to be true generalists like the renaissance reps.
You will know when you have achieved this “traction point” in your transition phase because your playbook is usable, your reps are producing and you have confidence that you can close more business simply if you had more sales people.
Execution phase
Once you move into the execution phase, your entire leadership team should be aware of the “blitzscale” that is about to happen. A host of different issues will present themselves as more customers and existing clients will be interacted with and that acceleration leads to system failures. Nonetheless, these are good problems to have.
The reps in the execution phase are more coin-operated. They are given the playbook, learning and development resources for ramp, a territory, and a clearly defined compensation plan. The levers for increasing sales productivity are also more well defined in this stage. As a rule of thumb, if 70% of your sales reps are hitting their quota then you should hire more reps.
Don’t limit your Renaissance Reps
Looping back to your original renaissance reps that helped you get here, these early individuals tend to be explorers and prefer to be thinking outside the box. The structure of the execution phase doesn’t necessarily appeal to them.
Your renaissance reps are invaluable to your organization. They know where the bodies are buried, have cross functional relationships, and deeply understand the product’s history and evolution.
My recommendation is to move them to a new project. Make them your Lewis & Clark. Think about a part of your business, or a new division of your business you would like to explore and give them room to discover again.