I was the person asked to invent the playbook. Founding sales hire at a daily deals startup: two developers, me, and a phone. No process, no script, no ICP. I built the funnel, closed 100+ SMB accounts in a year, then handed the process to three new reps. They were closing at my rate within weeks. Acquired by Rogers in under 18 months.
First rep. First process. First million without you.
Your first sales hire shouldn't have to invent the playbook while carrying quota.
I build the process with your hire during their first 90 days, from your own deals, not someone else's playbook.
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The job you actually posted.
Somewhere in your posting, there's a line like
"build our sales process from the ground up."
Here's what it expands to:
- Figure out the messaging.
- Discover what the sales process even is.
- Decide who the ICP really is.
- Document what works.
- All while carrying quota.
That's not one job.
It's three: strategist, operator, closer.
The hire isn't the gamble. The setup is.
What the gamble costs.
Across 900+ of these postings, not one says what the hire is supposed to learn from on day one.
The setup takes months to prove wrong.
- $60-80kin salary before you know it failed. “The pipeline is building” can go unchallenged for six months.
- 6-9 monthsof time and runway, at the stage both matter most.
- Your best prospectsget a bad first impression. You don't get a second one.
- The most expensive partyou conclude "sales doesn't work for us" and go back to closing everything yourself for another two years.
Call it $150-250k all in.
That's the bet when your hire has to invent the playbook while carrying quota.
I've made this transition four times.
- Once as the hire.
- Once proving it with fifteen reps.
- Twice as the founder handing it off.
The process transferred beyond one exceptional rep. Inside Rogers, I launched an SMB SaaS with no sales motion. Built the process, hired and trained fifteen reps on it. Each was productive inside one sales cycle, closing 3 to 5 accounts per week.
The system kept working after I left the room. At my outbound agency, I designed the sales systems for 50+ B2B companies and trained the team that ran them daily. Made my own first sales hire there: handed him the process, and he was closing within one cycle. One client has run the system since 2018.
The transition First M. exists for. My own bootstrapped SaaS, profitable for seven years against 100+ funded competitors, all of it founder led sales. Then documented the process, hired two closers and a setter, and handed it off in under six months. Revenue went up after I stopped closing. The best numbers came after the handoff.
I started in your hire's chair and ended in yours.
How the process gets built.
Three jobs: strategist, operator, closer.
Two of them move to me. Your hire keeps the one you hired them for.
Then every week, we run the same loop:
- Review this week's calls and deals.
- Separate the patterns from the noise.
- Change one thing: the messaging, the qualification, the ask.
- Document what works.
"The pipeline is building" doesn't survive this. You know what's real every week, not in month six.
By day 90, your hire is selling from a documented process they helped build. Tuned to your deals. Owned by your company. You read a weekly summary: informed, not involved.
And when I leave, it stays.
Inside the loop, I'm the person asking:
- "What did we learn from those five calls?"
- "Is this a pattern or a one off?"
- "Do we change the messaging, or the qualification?"
- "Let's document this so we don't relearn it next month."
In your hire's corner. Not over their shoulder.
The guarantee.
- By day 90, your hire is selling from a documented process producing qualified pipeline.
- If they're not, I keep working at no charge until they are.
- I can make that promise because I run five builds at a time, not fifty.
The gamble was yours. Now it's mine.
Send the post.
Get a personalized diagnosis of the job: where your hire is likely to struggle, plus the 90 day plan I'd hand them on day one.
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You get the whole diagnosis and the whole plan. Not a preview.
This works when deals are closing and the bottleneck is you.
Got the post. Your 48 hours start now.
The teardown will come from anton@firstm.work. Whole diagnosis, whole plan, in one email.
If it hasn't landed in two days, check spam, then email me at that same address.
Fair questions.
We haven't hired yet. Isn't it too early?
Earliest is cheapest. The posting decides which job you're hiring for, and comp, quota, and candidate profile all get set before day one. Today the setup is still a draft. By month four it's the gamble.
Shouldn't my hire be able to do this?
They'll be able to sell, and that's a full job on its own. Asking them to also invent the playbook while carrying quota is how good hires end up looking like bad ones. I take the strategist and operator jobs so they can be great at the one you hired them for.
We're hiring someone senior who's done this before.
Keep the seniority. Experience shortens the ramp and raises the level of every conversation. What it doesn't do is merge three jobs into one: it raises the stakes on the same gamble. And the senior closer is the candidate most likely to expect a process that doesn't exist yet. Give them one to run.
Can't we just use AI?
We do, every week, inside the loop. What AI can't decide is which patterns are real and which change to make next on your live deals. Separating the patterns from the noise is the job.
Does this include getting us more leads?
It assumes you don't need them. If deals close when you get at bats, the constraint is your calendar, and that's what this fixes.