A Slow Start Is Not Always a Bad Sales Hire

The easiest decision would have been to fire him.

That is what almost everyone around the president wanted him to do.

The sales rep had been hired to win new business. He was smart, hardworking, and well-liked. He showed up. He stayed engaged. He kept doing the work.

But he had not closed any business. In any sales organization, that creates pressure fast.

Years ago, I worked with a small private technology company headquartered in Norway. The president, Rick, had asked me to help him find a West Coast sales rep to bring in new business. Before we started the search, he told me a story about a rep he had hired several years earlier.

His name was Jason.

Jason would eventually become one of the most successful sales hires in the company’s history. Rick told me about his attitude, his persistence, his work ethic, and the impact he went on to make.

Then Rick casually mentioned the part of the story that I won’t forget. Jason did not close a single deal in his first year. Not one.

At the time, new sales hires were expected to close business within the first four or five months. The market was impatient. Companies were hiring salespeople quickly, trying them out, and moving on fast if the results did not show up right away.

I often thought of it as the “salespeople are Kleenex” business model. Use them. Toss them. Replace them. Repeat.

Turnover in the Bay Area was intense. Salespeople were getting burned out. Some startups developed reputations as places where reps went to churn, not grow.

Inside Rick’s company, the pressure was building too.

Everyone, including the VP of Sales, told Rick they needed to let Jason go. The argument was simple. Jason was a good person. He worked hard. People liked him.

But he did not have the one thing salespeople are ultimately measured by: results. Rick had doubts, too. He admitted there were moments when he wondered if he was making the wrong call. He was uncertain. He questioned whether he was being too patient.

But he did not make a panic decision.

Rick was not ignoring the numbers. He was looking beyond them.

When he looked at Jason, he saw a rep who was not only smart but committed. He saw that he was learning the market. Jason was doing the work, staying in the process, and continuing to move opportunities forward.

He did not see excuses. He saw effort, progress, persistence, and real sales activity in a market where deals took time to develop. That distinction matters. Patience in sales hiring does not mean lowering the bar. It means knowing which bar you are actually measuring.

There is a difference between a rep who is not working and a rep whose work has not paid off yet. A bad hire is not the same as a slow ramp, and Rick chose to trust what he was seeing.

Almost exactly one year after Jason joined the company, he closed a multi-million-dollar deal with the largest manufacturing company in the country.

It was the largest deal in the company’s 25-plus-year history. The rep everyone thought should be fired became the rep who delivered the biggest deal the company had ever closed.

The lesson is not that every slow-starting sales rep deserves a year. They do not. Sales is a performance-based role, and results are easy to track and measure. 

But in complex sales environments, the first visible result is often not the first meaningful sign of progress. A strong sales leader has to know how to evaluate what is happening before the scoreboard changes.

• Is the rep building real pipeline?
• Are they getting to the right buyers?
• Are they improving their message?
• Are they coachable?
• Are they creating momentum?
• Are they telling the truth about where things stand?
• Are they doing the hard work that eventually produces revenue?

Those are the signals that matter before the first big deal closes.

Rick and I went on to find his Bay Area sales rep. That candidate is now celebrating his 15-year anniversary with the company.

He did not take a year to close his first deal. He did it in 36 days.

Since then, he has closed many significant deals, won sales awards, and become a frequent President’s Club performer.

He has gone head-to-head with Jason for years. That is what can happen when the right salesperson joins the right company with the right leadership behind them.

Great sales hiring is not just about finding people who look good on paper. It is about having the judgment to know what you hired, what you are measuring, and whether the person in the seat is moving in the right direction.

That is where experienced software sales recruiters can help companies evaluate fit, ramp time, deal complexity, and the signals that show whether a sales hire is truly progressing.

Sometimes a slow start is a warning sign. Sometimes it is the beginning of a very good sales story. The hard part is knowing the difference.