How do you make sure you get the good type of sales culture that is customer-centric, rather than the bad type of "trick customers into buying things they don't need"? Are there specific policies/incentives/etc that should be used? Or is it really just 'hire the right people'?

Hiring good people is the main key, and a good VP of sales is crucial.

Depending on your product you can control it with comp as well. For example, for an enterprise product, especially one that renews annually and/or has milestone payments, comp the sales person as the cash comes in (and pay out for the renewals same as you would for the initial deal). Unhappy customers don’t pay. I have also paid out commission on time (when customer should have paid, when the delay was due to engineering, and not manageable by salesperson. Sometimes engineering delays are due to sales people though :-(.

Have engineering work out the milestones and deliverables with the customer. Have the CEO sign contracts, nobody else. Count as sales only deals that have both customer P.O. and signed contract (so common to have only one and have the sales person argue that the deal should be booked anyway. Amazing how they could get both in on the last day of the quarter though).

Etc. When I was about 20 my dad told me he’d fired half the sales people he’d ever hired. I shook my head and thought, “what an idiot”. A couple of decades later I looked back and it was about the same for me. I mean table stakes for a sales person is selling themselves. And getting canned isn’t always a bad mark against a sales person. So it’s hard to judge up front, but if they don’t sell “right away”* shove them out the door. It’s not like an engineer for whom you want to invest extra time to help them get into the groove; that’s part of the sales person’s way of life and the good ones are proud of it.

Pay the good sales people well. At your annual sales shindig have the CEO show up for a day, or half a day, to give a pep talk, enthuse about the VP of sales and the top sellers (who made it by following the rules) and then bow out. Maybe have the CFO talk about how many commission checks they had to cut. And have them mention that the top sellers make more than the CEO.

Another tip: have every member of the exec team, yes even CFO, VP of Manufacturing or whomever, go on a customer sales call every quarter. Sometimes a first visit, sometimes a sales person “check in” call or or whatever. It will make the execs understand how the customer views your product, not what marketing and the sales folk think the product is.

* right away depends on your sales cycle. Could be the end of the second month (but you’re already breathing down their next after two weeks), or first quarter, or six months (ugh). And if you sell semiconductor manufacturing gear with a sales cycle of 48 months, good luck.

The founder should always lead the sales at the initial stage, even if they are a techie. The founder creates the culture, so it's important to have that influence on that org. Then you hire the right people to replace yourself, and fire them quickly if they deviate from what you want.

Welcome to being a founder. If you don't want to do it, you need a co-founder who will, but they must have the same values you do.

It is easier as a tech person to do the sales yourself than to find a good sales co-founder that mimics your customer-centric values. Both are of course very hard, but relatively speaking doing it yourself initially is easier between the two.

And those who don't want to do that should work for a company where those functions are handled by other people, but if you start a company, expect to do sales.

First is the right people - don't hire "Frank" from Paul Kenny's talk.

Second is to join sales calls or watch the recordings (Chorus.ai is great for this). Put yourself in the buyer's shoes and coach based on those recordings - I always listen from the point of view of "If I was the customer, do I think they really care about my problem, and is it credible that they will help me solve it?". Right now I watch 1-2 recordings a week and then chat with the team about what they think went well and where we might improve, and we are figuring it out together. That continuous process is what reinforces the culture. When the CEO is focussed on helping customers, and revenue as a secondary concern, it becomes the culture.

Third is probably for the sales team not to be an island. So get the engineering and product leaders to join the calls or watch the recordings too, so that the tiny features or friction points make their way onto the roadmap eventually.

Hey, thank you for this. Can I pick your brain about it sometime? I couldn't find contact info in your profile - my email is ege at pricetable dot io

edit: why am I getting downvotes...

Thanks! My DM's are open, or paul at [my HN handle].com, happy to talk to anyone making this transition.

Does HN have DM's?? The client I use at least doesn't show them anywhere.

AFAIK HN does not have DMs. However, Twitter does and Steve has a Twitter post linked above.