Did your last sales hire know what good looked like by the end of their first month? Or were they still working it out in month three, while you wondered whether you had hired the wrong person?
Most of the time, a slow start is not a hiring problem. It is an onboarding problem that gets mistaken for one. The seller was good enough to hire, then dropped into a company where nobody had written down how things work.
Here is what we think a sensible first 90 days looks like at a tech company, and what you can do before the start date to make it work.
Let's Dive In!
Before day one: decide what "ramped" means
If you cannot say what a ramped seller looks like, you cannot tell whether the new hire is on track. So agree it before they start, and tell them.
Pick three or four things you will look at. How many meetings they are running, how many deals they are managing in the pipeline, how well they run a discovery call, how much of their own pipeline they are building. The right ones depend on the role. What matters is that the new hire hears them in week one, not in a review in month four.
Be honest about the sales cycle too. If a typical deal takes several months, nobody should be judged on closed revenue in their first quarter. Judge them on the things that lead to it.
Days 1 to 30: learn the product, the buyer and the process
The first month is for learning, and it works best when it is structured rather than left to the new hire to piece together.
Get them into customer calls early, as a listener. Give them the recordings of two or three good deals and one that was lost. Let them sit with someone in customer success, because the way customers talk about the product after they have bought it is very different from the way prospects talk before.
Make them explain the product back to you, out loud, in their own words. It is the fastest way to find the gaps.
By the end of the month they should be able to describe the ideal customer, the stages of a deal and the three objections they will hear most. They should not yet be carrying a full pipeline.
Days 31 to 60: run the process with a safety net
In the second month the new hire starts doing the job, with someone close enough to catch mistakes.
For an AE, that means running calls with a more experienced colleague listening, then getting feedback the same day. For an SDR, it means working a defined list with a defined message, and reviewing the first batch of replies together before changing anything.
This is where a lot of companies step back too early. The new hire has had a month of learning, so surely they are ready to fly. They usually are not, and the early mistakes become habits because nobody saw them.
A short, regular review does more than a long one that happens once. Ask what they tried, what happened, and what they would change. Then listen.
Days 61 to 90: build their own pipeline
By the third month the new hire should be doing the harder part of the job, which is building pipeline that did not exist before they arrived.
This is the point where you find out whether they have the instincts you hired for. Do they know who to approach? Do they ask for help early enough? Do they follow up on the awkward deals, or let them go quiet?
It is also the point where an honest conversation is easiest. If the signs are weak, it is far better to say so now, with specific examples, than to wait until the fourth quarter and wonder what changed.
What the company needs to provide
The new hire carries half of this. The company carries the other half, and it is the half that tends to be missed.
A named person who is responsible for their onboarding, not "the team". Access to the tools and the data on day one, not day ten. A written first-month plan, even a rough one. A manager or founder who has blocked out time for the reviews, and keeps it when the quarter gets busy.
None of it is expensive. All of it is the first thing to go when the company is busy, which is exactly when a new hire needs it.
What this means for the hiring process
Onboarding starts before the offer. The more clearly you describe the first year in the interview, the more likely it is that the person you hire is the person who can do it.
We write a short scorecard with every search: the outcomes the person needs to achieve, and the traits that predict them. It is the same document you use to judge the first 90 days. If the interview and the onboarding are measuring different things, something has gone wrong.
So, how will you know?
Look back at your last sales hire. Could you have said, on day one, what you would be looking for on day 90? If not, that is the thing to fix before the next one starts.
If you are planning a hire and want to talk through what the first quarter should look like, book a call and we will go through it with you.
