Building the Team

Hiring, firing, and training in a new era.

In August 2012, Fred Wilson, the venture capitalist, wrote a blog post called No Battle Plan Survives the First Enemy Fire. In it, he wrote:

“I have been using this line a lot lately. It is a bastardized version of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke’s ‘No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.’

I always encourage entrepreneurs to get on with the business of putting their product in the market. All the planning and designing and strategizing and grand plans of taking over the world are no match for reality.

The real world is messy. Stuff happens that you could never imagine. And then you are reacting to all of that and your grand plans are in tatters. That’s reality. It happens to everyone.

So no point in waiting in the hopes that you will nail it. You won’t. The enemy will take fire, you will hit the deck and then the good stuff starts.”

The post refers specifically to a new product introduction and interaction with the competition, but I think it applies to anything that happens in a start-up: avoid analysis-paralysis, gather data, assume it is imperfect information, have the courage to make a decision, but also the humility to make a change when new data or circumstances require it. Or, as Mark Suster, a venture capitalist in Los Angeles, put it succinctly (and in language more colorful than we can use here): “Just Do it.”

In my last two posts, I talked about the analysis that we had done of our sales funnel, and the decision we made as a result to start a dedicated lead-generation center. We chose a city, Pittsburgh, to build the new organization. We advertised the role and conducted job interviews. But, I don’t think we are going to open an office in Pittsburgh.

We executed our normal recruiting process. Our head of talent, Rebekah, set up 21 interviews for Tom, our head of sales, and me to conduct in person in Pittsburgh. And we met some great folks, but there was one interview in particular that made me change my mind.

I sat down with a smart woman who is currently doing sales for an event-planning company in Pittsburgh. She graduated from college just a couple of years ago and is well on her way to a stellar sales career. When we began the interview, it was clear she had done her homework to prepare. She knew about H.Bloom, the markets we are in, the products we offer and the customers we serve. When I asked her why she was interested in H.Bloom, she offered the following response: “I want the chance to grow. I’ve read about your SEED Program for market managers, and H.Bloom University. I’m hopeful to start out in lead generation and eventually grow into a larger role. In fact, I’d love to move to a new H.Bloom market at some point.”

This was an epiphany for me. I spend a great deal of time on talent development at H.Bloom: interviewing, hiring and training our folks. And yet, here I was in Pittsburgh, interviewing people for a position that didn’t have a growth path. Our data analysis had uncovered an extraordinary close rate by our sales people when they have an in-person meeting, and it highlighted the fact that the activities employed to generate those in-person meetings were performed remotely. But the data did not take into consideration one of our three founding principles (drawn from John Quincy Adams’ quote): “Create an environment in which team members can dream more, learn more, do more and become more.”

How could we combine these two important goals: create more activities with a dedicated lead-generation force while also continuing to provide an environment in which people can learn and take on more responsibility?

It would be difficult in Pittsburgh. While the remote location would provide a dedicated work force and a lower cost of operations, it would not have the additional resources that exist in our headquarters, including access to the management team and current account executives. And it would not have the ability to see our operations in-person on a daily basis. The absence of these things would be fine if the new office were exclusively a lead-generation center. However, if it were to reflect the H.Bloom ethos of talent development, its remote location would be a real impediment.

So, we are now evaluating the idea of creating a SEED Program for sales people. Our current thinking is to run the program out of our headquarters in New York. Participants would engage in a three-to-six month program, where they would focus on lead generation Monday through Friday, dramatically increasing the in-person meetings for our account executives across the country. In addition, they would do weekly sales training with our head of sales and learn about the rest of our organization and operations with “field trips” around our New York market.

I’m sure this plan will go through more changes as we balance the need for an increase in lead generation with the desire to maintain a fundamental trait of our culture, which is talent development. I am also certain that we will continue to be data driven, with the courage to make decisions based on the data but the humility to change direction when more information, or a different priority, comes to light.

In the meantime, I hope we can find a way to work with the ambitious sales person in Pittsburgh. She would make a great addition to our team.

Bryan Burkhart is a founder of H.Bloom. You can follow him on Twitter.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/why-we-have-changed-our-minds-about-pittsburgh/?partner=rss&emc=rss