Either you're doing all the sales yourself - which means you're not actually running your business - or you're trying to hire salespeople who need months to ramp up and cost you $60k+ before they close their first deal.
Building an outbound sales team sounds good in theory. More people hunting for deals. More revenue. But in reality, it's a nightmare. Training takes forever. Turnover is brutal. And nobody sells like you do anyway.
This is the position most service business owners and agencies find themselves in. You've got a good product or service. You can sell it when you put your mind to it. But you can't scale yourself.
So what actually works? Let's break it down.
Most sales teams fail before they even start because nobody in the company can clearly articulate what they do or who they do it for.
Spend time here. Write down:
Your first sales hires need this foundation. It's the only way they can be effective. Without it, you'll spend all your time correcting their pitch instead of building the system.
Here's the uncomfortable truth - most agencies and service businesses don't need a traditional sales team. Not at first.
A full-time salesperson needs about 30-40 leads per month to work with. If you can't consistently provide that, you're wasting money. They'll get bored, their activity will drop, and you'll end up with a $5k/month salary expense generating nothing.
Before you hire, ask yourself:
If the answer to any of these is no - you're not ready yet. That's not failure. That's honesty.
If you do hire, here's the structure that tends to work best for growing agencies and service businesses:
This person handles outreach and qualification. Their job is to get prospects on a call with you or your closer. They're not expected to close deals - they're expected to find interested people.
This is easier to hire for and turnover matters less because the role is more mechanical. You can find someone solid, train them in 2-3 weeks, and they can start producing.
Once you have consistent opportunities coming in, bring in someone to close them. This person takes warm leads and turns them into clients. This is where you need someone good - someone who understands your business and can actually sell.
This hire is more expensive but the ROI is clear. If they're closing 2-3 deals per month at your average deal size, they pay for themselves immediately.
Once you've got one person working, add another. Not because you need the capacity yet, but because one person is a vulnerability. They get sick, they leave, you're back to square one.
Skip the resume. Skip the sales certifications. Here's what matters:
Someone with those traits will outperform a polished ex-enterprise salesperson every time.
Before your sales team can be effective, you need:
If you wing these, your team will spend more time figuring out what to do than actually doing it. That's a waste of their time and your money.
Pay them enough to live on. Then give them commission or bonus based on what they deliver.
For SDRs: Meetings booked or qualified opportunities
For Closers: Deals closed and revenue generated
The split matters less than it being fair and tied to results. If someone is generating revenue, they should be making good money. If they're not, something else is broken - either the lead quality, the pitch, or the hire.
There's one more option worth considering - and honestly, it works really well for a lot of businesses.
If you can systematize your outbound process - meaning someone else can run your cold email campaigns, handle initial outreach, and pass warm leads to you - you can operate without a traditional sales team at all. You just need to close the leads that come in.
This works especially well if you're selective about who you work with and your deals require some customization in the pitch. The upfront work is higher, but the recurring cost is lower and you maintain better control over your brand and message.
The infrastructure is cleaner too. You need your lead list, your email sequences, someone managing the campaigns, and you handling the closes. No middle layer. No training overhead. Just a process that works.
If you want to explore this route without having to build it from scratch, there are agencies that handle the entire process - the lead research, email sequences, campaign management, and reply handling - so you only deal with people who are actually interested. It cuts out the hiring headache entirely and gets you clients coming in faster.
Either way - build a team or systematize the process - the key is being intentional about it instead of just hoping something works.
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