Why Hire Recruiters Early

Why Read: Tactical advice on the critical importance of hiring a dedicated recruiter early for startups to efficiently build your team and drive growth.

Featuring: Aurora (Harshner) Petracca, Startup Advisor

Link to Article: “Why startups should hire recruiters much sooner than they think”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Hire a Recruiter Early:

  • Point: Startups should consider hiring a recruiter as one of their first 10 hires.

  • "In fact, a recruiter should be among your first 10 hires. This may seem counterintuitive — if founders are pressed for time and need the right technical talent right away, shouldn't other hires take precedence? Far from it."

• Invest in Recruiting to Save Time:

  • Point: A dedicated recruiter can save founders significant time and improve candidate experience.

  • "Sourcing (cold outreach) and managing the process for multiple candidates through multiple interview rounds can take a lot of time. In crypto especially, saving time is crucial because there is a limited pool of candidates with specialized expertise, or candidates talking to the same few companies all at once. Founders could easily be liaising with 100 candidates, and with all the other priorities they are juggling, some ball is going to drop."

• Leverage Founder's Time Strategically:

  • Point: Founders should focus on creating content and acting as a talent magnet rather than handling all recruiting tasks.

  • "Great engineers want to work with other great engineers building cool stuff. While this may seem like a reason for technical founders to do the outreach themselves, think about how to scale that outreach. Technical founders need time to write about what novel technical projects they're working on and why they matter to other engineers — which results in nicely packaged, scalable recruiting content."

• Invest in Recruiting to Save Money Long-Term:

  • Point: Early investment in recruiting can prevent costly delays and missed opportunities.

  • "Having your product delayed 6 to 8 months because you can't hire engineers quickly enough could allow competitors to swoop in and eat your lunch. That will cost your company even more money in the long term."

• Identify the Right Recruiter:

  • Point: Look for recruiters who demonstrate hustle, organizational skills, and passion for your company's mission.

  • "The ideal recruiter demonstrates they can hustle and be scrappy, for instance: They proactively meet with hiring managers to brainstorm creative candidate sourcing strategies. They implement those strategies the same day."

• Leverage Recruiter Beyond Hiring:

  • Point: Utilize your recruiter's skills for HR-related tasks during slower hiring periods.

  • "A typical recruiter can help out with general onboarding, or managing an HRIS system and benefits administration. But if you need someone to help with performance management, career development conversations, terminations, employee relations issues, and developing offsites, you will want to select someone who has experience doing this work as well."

Stealing Customers from Competitors

Why Read: Valuable strategies for startups to persistently nurture lost sales opportunities, capitalize on customer and competitor changes, and efficiently re-engage prospects over the long-term.

Featuring: Jason M. Lemkin (@jasonlk), Founder at SaaStr

Link:“The Three P’s: How To Steal Customers From Your Biggest Competitor”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Practice Patience in Customer Acquisition:

  • Point: Treat lost deals as long-term sales opportunities and implement specialized lead nurturing programs.

  • "View all 'lost' deals as just leads with a long sales cycle, and slowly but carefully do a specialized lead nurturing program for them. It may take years to get another shot at a deal you lost to a competition. Not always, but often."

• Maintain Persistence in Adding Value:

  • Point: Continue to provide value to lost customers through high-quality content and engagement opportunities.

  • "You have to keep adding value to the customers you lose. Yes. Persistence. You have to be persistent even after you lose the deal. 99% of sales reps will be on to the next thing, so it often has to be driven by marketing via win-back campaigns."

  • "Develop a series of very high quality content in the industry you push out to lose deals once a month. Not constantly, like an SDR on cadence overdrive, But just enough to truly add value."

• Be Ready to Pounce on Opportunities:

  • Point: Stay alert for changes in customer circumstances that may present opportunities to re-engage.

  • "And third you have to be ready to pounce — politely — when a customer stumbles. When the CEO leaves. When problems come up. When the champion of your competitor leaves. When your competitor gets acquired. This is a good time to have a conversation."

• Implement Specialized Lead Nurturing:

  • Point: Develop a targeted approach for maintaining contact with lost deals over an extended period.

  • "When you are bigger, it can also even make sense to assign a rep or two here, with specialized comp plans."

• Leverage Customer Events for Engagement:

  • Point: Invite lost deals to customer conferences to build relationships and showcase your product's value.

  • "Invite lost deals to your customer conference. It can be magical if they come. Your existing customers will try to talk them into switching. And you'll build bonds for when they are ready."

• Track Customer and Competitor Changes:

  • Point: Monitor key changes in customer organizations and competitor activities to identify potential opportunities.

  • "If you aren't tracking this, you won't be ready. So many SaaS vendors have no idea when champion change occurs, or even properly handle changes at key competitors."