The Sales Team Hiring Checklist: 4 Simple Steps to Choose The Right Person
Avoiding Having to Search Again in 3 Months' Time After Losing Important Customers
Avoiding Having to Search Again in 3 Months, After Losing Important Customers
The MAFFEO DRINKS Guides is a bi-weekly email newsletter. With a systematized approach, it helps drink builders grow their brand from 10 to 10k cases. Each edition solves one clear challenge for subscribers. Some editions are free, and others are paid.
Dear Bottom-up Drinks Builder,
People often ask me for the “secret sauce” to hiring the right team. I always disappoint them a little when I say there’s no silver bullet. But there is a way to get far closer to the right fit than most brands do.
The first thing I tell them: it all starts with your goal in that market.
Are you launching something brand new? Rejuvenating a tired brand? Moving from bars to bottle shops? Scaling up to modern retail? Each of those goals demands a very different person and yet, 99% of the time when I hear a hiring request, it’s just a job title.
“Sales Director.” “Brand Ambassador.” “Junior Business Development Manager.”
The problem? Titles are meaningless without the details. And here’s the issue a lot of those titles aren’t even created with the market in mind.
They’re the product of corporate politics: an internal hierarchy to justify salaries, reporting lines, or someone’s promotion. The title might make sense on an org chart, but it often has little to do with what’s actually needed on the ground to grow your brand.
That’s how you end up with a “Sales Director” who manages exactly zero people the king without a kingdom.
