如何找对销售人员？

转变时机的到来

    等到销售发展到了中年，你作为CEO需要帮助销售从开拓型向流程型转变。我听说有少数开拓型销售人员可以基于早期拳打脚踢的销售经验，转换到可规模化的清单式销售流程。但我没有亲眼见过。很可能的状况是，你作为CEO，将不得不选择开拓型销售人员，用他们的经验制定出更可重复、可规模化的流程销售法。而且，你可能必须雇佣一名新的销售主管。【或许有人想知道尤金后来怎么样了。就在我们准备转向流程型销售方式之前，谷歌（Google）收购了JotSpot。】

流程型销售人员

    等到了这个阶段，你可能已经拥有一款非常契合市场的产品。但你的销售成本太高了，你的流程太乱，缺乏可预见性，而且销售周期太长。总之，你需要一个不那么热衷于思考新事物，但喜欢优化眼前流程的人。你需要一个真正喜欢打造销售机器的人。

    流程型销售人员喜欢重复性、可规模化的方法。他们热爱效率。他们用详细的衡量标准来追踪团队表现。他们建立软件系统。他们追求可预见的增长。他们考虑建立团队，通过管理大量团队来实现目标。他们来自甲骨文（Oracle）、IBM或SAP这样拥有高度流程型销售文化的公司。

    那么，哪里会出问题？主要有两种情况：

    1. 你在公司早期引入了一名流程型销售人员。结果会很糟糕，常见不适症有：这个人指望有现成的销售“脚本”，指望你知道什么样的人是目标销售对象。工程师们总是很郁闷，因为销售人员总是在说，如果产品能增加些什么功能，就能卖出去了（开拓型销售人员是销售现有、即便不完美产品的大师，不是销售期望。）这种情况的结局往往都以销售人员离职告终。

    2. 你在应该转向流程型方式时，继续长时间依赖开拓型销售主管。典型的一个特征就是，CEO会感觉缺乏对公司前景的足够把握和预见。当CEO提出典型客户模式以及从销售线索-销售意向-销售结果的时间表之类问题时，总是不能得到清晰的解答。CEO希望获得销售流程更全面的报告和预见性。要改变这种情况，应当引入一名新的销售负责人，将原先的开拓型主管转到（一个或两个）特殊项目团队，专门负责流程型人员不知如何销售的新产品和新服务。

    因此，考虑销售环节时，不妨想想这两类销售人员，确保在对的时间用对人。万物有时节。每个阶段有每个阶段的销售人员。

    乔•克劳斯是 Google Ventures的合伙人。1993年，他联合创办了早期的互联网搜索引擎公司Excite.com。他还在2004年联合创立了JotSpot，这家wiki 公司在2006年被谷歌收购。他的博客地址为JoeKraus.com，Twitter账号为 @jkraus。

A time for change

    There comes a time in the mid-life of your sales development, where you, the CEO, need to help make a transition from expeditionary sales to process-oriented sales. I've heard of the rare expeditionary sales person who can also take what they've learned in the rough-and-tumble early days of selling and turn it into a more checklist-oriented, scalable sales process. But I have not seen it. Most likely, you, the CEO, will have to pick the brain of the expeditionary sales person, and take what they've learned to craft a more repeatable, scalable, process-driven sales method. And you'll likely have to hire a new head of sales. (For those of you wondering what happened to Eugene, Google (GOOG) bought JotSpot before we were ready to move to a process-oriented approach.)

Process-oriented sales person

    At this stage in your company's life, you probably have a product that fits the market reasonably well. But your sales costs are too high, your process feels sloppy and unpredictable, and the sales cycle is too long. In short, you need someone who thrives not on figuring out new things, but on optimizing the process in front of them. You want someone that truly enjoys building a sales machine.

    Process-oriented sales folks love repeatable, scalable methods. They love efficiency. They track their teams with detailed metrics. They implement software systems. They crave predictable growth. They think about building teams and managing groups of people to achieve a target. And they come from highly process-oriented sales cultures like Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), or SAP (SAP).

    So, where do things go wrong? Things get bad in two primary scenarios:

    1. You bring in a process-oriented salesperson early in your company's life. This goes very badly and there are several symptoms. The person expects the sales "script" to be figured out. They expect you to know the position/profile of the person you're selling to. Engineering is constantly upset because sales keeps saying that they would be selling if only the product had some set of features that it doesn't currently have (expeditionary guys are masters of selling what you've got, even if it's not a perfect fit, instead of selling futures). This usually ends with the salesperson leaving.

    2. You hang on too long to an expeditionary head of sales when it's time to move to a process-oriented approach. This is typically characterized by the CEO feeling like there's not enough predictability in the business. There's resistance to the CEO's questions about finding patterns for the repeatable profile of the people you're selling to, and the timeline of leads to prospects to sales. The CEO wants greater reporting and visibility within the pipeline. This scenario should end in bringing in a new head of sales and moving the expeditionary person onto a special projects team (of one or two) that tackles the new products and initiatives that the process-oriented folks don't know how to sell.

    So, when you think about sales, think about these two types of salespeople and make sure you hire the right one at the right time. For every thing, there is a season. For every stage, there is a salesperson.

    Joe Kraus is a partner at Google Ventures. In 1993, he co-founded Excite.com, an early Internet search engine. He also co-founded JotSpot in 2004, a wiki company acquired by Google in 2006. Follow him on his blog, JoeKraus.com, and on Twitter: @jkraus.