BTM Event: Yext VP of Sales Bryan Rutcofsky – how to grow your sales team from 1 to 2 and beyond

Building the Sales Machine (BTM) Event Series: we post clips of the best questions that where answered during our live events, so you can take the best ideas back to your teams and companies for further discussion.

BTM: How do you go from 1 to 2 sales people, and then from 3 to 4 and beyond?

Bryan Rutcofsky:

• Once we understood that this product could be sold, we needed to bring new people on to sell more
• He could bring in 3-4-5 new businesses a day
• Made a conscious decision to be an inside sales team
  • outside sales is typically more expensive
  • it’s hard to track what remote employees are doing
  • looked for confidence, ability, tenacity
• The first 3-4 hires you make are going to be your sales leaders down the road
• If you don’t believe they can be leaders, you made the wrong hires
• These initial hires should be looking for opportunity to grow and become managers
• Mistake: don’t try to hire to quickly or two quickly
  • Never hire a sales class that is more than 50% of the sales floor
  • Hiring too quickly will ruin your culture
  • When you bring in a class larger than the existing base, you can over power your existing culture.

Bryan Rutcofsky serves as Yext’s Vice President of Sales. He is responsible for managing the sales team as well as the grassroots growth of our industry sites. Bryan joined Yext from FDN Communications, a Florida based telecom company, where he was a top sales performer and served as a Sales Trainer and Sales Manager. His expertise in sales and mentoring new sales professionals has been a key part of the success of Yext.  You can find him on Linkedin here, or on Twitter here.