Hiring a First Sales in Tech

💖 The purpose of The Allyance is to help both companies and candidates: companies wanting to reach excellence in hiring and candidates wanting to find the perfect companies. 

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Hiring your first sales is one of those moments that looks easy on paper… until you’re in the room, trying to figure out if someone who crushed it at Salesforce or LinkedIn will even know how to sell your GitHub repo. I’ve been on both sides of that table: being the first sales hire, and hiring one. And, every time, I’m reminded how little traditional software companies wisdom applies to deep tech companies.

So if you’re a founder thinking, “who’s the right first sales for us?”, or a seller wondering if you’re a fit for an early-stage tech startup, this post is for you. And btw, if you’re wondering who/when to hire, and the difference between a sales and a GTM hire, I wrote some stuff about it before. TL;DR: most of the time, on LinkedIn, “GTM” is just the next magic word for Account Executive — even if there’s a real philosophical difference.)

For context: this post is about early-stage companies (regardless of how much they’ve raised), tech/deep-tech startups (not SaaS), and that very first sales hire that can make or break your go-to-market motion.

Assessing Sales Candidates in Tech

I won’t spend time on job descriptions or hiring processes; ChatGPT can draft one that’s perfectly fine, and you can always benchmark against existing ones on LinkedIn. What’s more interesting is how to assess candidates once they start applying.

When reviewing applications:

• the first thing I look for is whether the person has experience selling to the right kind of audience. Don’t waste time with candidates coming from SaaS if you’re selling to developers. That’s why, at Pruna AI, I don’t interview salespeople from LinkedIn, DocuSign, or HubSpot. They might be great sellers, but they’re not the right sellers for this context.

• overachievement is always a good sign, especially in enterprise environments, but don’t get fooled by it. At a junior level, most reps overachieve. What’s much more interesting is the professional trajectory: how they evolved, whether they moved to more complex accounts, and whether they grew into senior positions because they learned how to sell better, not just faster.

During the first interview:

• I tend to be cautious with candidates who have already managed a sales team. As an early-stage founder, you don’t want to create a middle layer too soon. It’s usually better to hire someone who simply loves selling, and whose main motivation isn’t building or managing a team.

• Another small but revealing test: ask whether they’ve visited your pricing page. A good seller always starts there. It’s one of the simplest and most reliable filters for genuine curiosity and efficiency.

Designing a Good Case Study

I’ll make an exception here because it’s one of the few parts of the hiring process that still deserves some thought. When I applied for sales roles myself, I was often asked to comment on long strategy documents or account plans. With ChatGPT and other tools around, that kind of exercise has lost most of its value. Anyone can now produce a nice-looking strategy doc in five minutes. What remains valuable, though, is the role-play.

Take a real sales situation you’ve personally lived through and replay it for thirty minutes, followed by an open discussion. Provide minimal context and be transparent about what you’re evaluating: sales style, understanding of your market, the way they manage a meeting or handle objections.

This setup helps you see who can understand quickly, who can adapt, and who can move forward despite incomplete information. These are exactly the qualities you need when your onboarding process is still half improvised, as it often is in early-stage companies.

One little trick I like to use is leaving a small easter egg in the assignment. For instance, I once wrote:

“No Pruna package demo is expected. But, let’s be honest: whoever made the difference with a basic sales deck…? ;)”

The goal isn’t to trick them but to see who gets genuinely curious and goes the extra mile. Some will build a small interactive demo or a lightweight prototype just to stand out — and that tells you a lot about how they’ll behave once hired.

Determining the Right (Variable) Compensation

When it comes to compensation, most public benchmarks are heavily biased toward SaaS companies and don’t reflect the reality of technical sales. Figures, for example, consistently underestimates by 15–45% compared to what I’ve seen in the real market. One of the few reliable sources I recommend is Rocket4Sales, which offers a better view of the real expectations.

Here are a few real data points for mid- to senior-level Account Executives in well-known tech companies:

• MongoDB: €140–240k OTE

• Mistral: ~€190k OTE

• Google Cloud: €150–180k OTE

• AWS: €100–150k OTE

The gap can be wide depending on the country (France vs Germany), segment (Enterprise vs Corporate), and scope (Account Executive vs Account Manager).

If you want to attract talent from these companies, plan for roughly 15–20% less than their current package, plus BSPCE. For example, if you think you really need someone from MongoDB, be prepared for a €130–190k budget plus equity. Otherwise, adjust your expectations and look for candidates from a slightly different background instead of wasting months chasing a profile you can’t afford.

During interviews, the number I focus on isn’t the OTE itself, but the actual quota attainment over the last year. Someone at €150k OTE who reached 80% of quota effectively earned €120k. That doesn’t necessarily mean they performed poorly. The truth is, 67% of sales reps don’t expect to meet their quota in 2024 (source). And, sometimes, the problem isn’t the seller it’s the system (see the Salesforce drama in 2022).

If you’re completely new to sales hiring, use the concept of Sales Efficiency as your baseline. It’s the ratio between revenue generated and OTE.

• x3 is a good starting point,

• x4 means strong performance,

• x5 is extremely rare.

In practice, this means that if you hire someone at €150k OTE, you should expect a target of around €450k in revenue. Simple and realistic.

Lastly, a few rules that make you sound like you actually know what you’re doing: include an overachievement accelerator, guarantee a ramp-up period, keep the plan uncapped, pay monthly, ensure the quota split reflects your selling motion, and include an exceptional review clause in case your company pivots. These details matter more than you think.

A Word About Women in Sales Tech (and Why You Should Care)

The first thing you need to acknowledge is that women are statistically less inclined to self-promote than men, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Being aware of this bias helps. That’s why, personally, whenever I have a doubt about a woman’s application, I prefer to still invite them for a first interview. It’s a small correction, but it matters.

If you still need convincing, the numbers are clear:

• Xactly Corp found that female salespeople were 1.5% better at selling than men, with the rate doubling when they were in managerial roles. 86% of women achieved quota compared to 78% of men.

• Gong found that women’s closed-won rates were on average 11% higher than men’s.

If you’re hiring, consider working with networks or agencies specialized in promoting women in sales. I once reached out to the Women Sales Club for help, and even though they didn’t respond to my request, I would still recommend their initiative. No hard feelings, and it’s still worth trying. And of course, diversity and inclusion do not stop at gender. They apply to all underrepresented minorities. Acting on this doesn’t mean you care less about others, it just means you care about everyone.

Some Numbers from Pruna AI

We recently filled a Senior Account Executive position at Pruna AI, and here are a few stats from that process:

• 33 applications received

• 12 intro interviews

• 5 core-skill interviews

• 3 mock-interviews

• 2 culture-fit interviews

• 1 hire

The entire process took 63 days from start to finish. The fastest process, from first contact to offer, took 11 days.

Out of 32 total applicants, 1/3 were women, and female representation reached 60% percent in the later stages of the pipeline.

The main lesson? When you think you’ll need someone, start five months in advance. It always takes longer than expected, especially for your first hire.

Hiring your first sales isn’t just about scaling revenue. It’s about learning how your product is actually sold in the real world. It’s the moment when your technology meets the market for the first time, and you finally understand what resonates, what doesn’t, and why. That first sales hire becomes your translation layer between what you’ve built and how people perceive its value.

That’s all I can share for today. I hope this was useful, or at least made you smile a bit :. Ping me on LinkedIn if you want to chat more about hiring, quotas, or the endless mystery of first sales hires. Always happy to compare notes!

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AUTHOR

✒️ Quentin Sinig, Go-To-Market Lead at Pruna AI. Pruna AI is on a mission to make AI more efficient. You can subscribe to Quentin’s newsletter here.