--- title: "Your First Agency Sales Hire: What They Need Before Day One" description: "Build the role, lead supply, decision rules, and coaching plan your first agency salesperson needs before you hand them a revenue target." url: https://timkilroy.com/blog/first-agency-sales-hire date: 2026-08-20 updated: 2026-09-25T01:57:29Z category: "Agency Sales" image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/7lzb16lr/production/a6bb7a0ffd242f6b031fe08824baad978a9fb388-1200x630.png?w=1200 author: Tim Kilroy --- # Your First Agency Sales Hire: What They Need Before Day One _Build the role, lead supply, decision rules, and coaching plan your first agency salesperson needs before you hand them a revenue target._ ![](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/7lzb16lr/production/a6bb7a0ffd242f6b031fe08824baad978a9fb388-1200x630.png?w=1200) Your new salesperson starts Monday. Their laptop is ready. Their email works. You put "hit the ground running" in the welcome message. The ground is mostly missing. Before day one, they need a job they can actually perform, opportunities they can work, and someone who will help them improve. A revenue target supplies none of those things. I've covered the structural reasons [agency sales hires fail](https://timkilroy.com/blog/why-agency-sales-hires-fail). This is the practical assignment before the next person arrives. ## Write the job without the word "growth" "Own growth" sounds impressive. It can also mean prospecting, partnerships, discovery, proposals, closing, content, and occasionally updating the website because somebody noticed they know HubSpot. Which work actually needs doing? If you have qualified opportunities and no capacity to manage them, describe the selling role. If you need someone to create conversations, describe that prospecting role. If you expect both, allocate time to each and build targets around the tradeoff. One person can cover multiple activities. They can't give each one a full-time schedule. Write a short role brief that names the buyer, the offer, the work this person owns, the support they receive, and the decisions they can make. Include what remains your responsibility. Read it back as if you were applying. Would you understand how to succeed, or would you need to be a mind reader with a decent headset? ## Show them where the conversations will come from Open your recent pipeline. Identify how opportunities actually arrived, who qualified them, and how many were a reasonable fit. Separate founder introductions from other sources. A rep doesn't inherit your relationships just because you added them to the CRM. Use your own sales history to check whether the target is plausible. Here's an illustrative calculation, not an industry benchmark: - A target of $20,000 in new monthly retainer revenue, at $5,000 per new account, requires four wins. - If one in four comparable qualified opportunities closes, four wins requires about 16 qualified opportunities. - If those opportunities usually take two months to close, the work creating this month's wins started earlier. That is new monthly revenue, not cash collected or annual contract value. Pick the measure you mean and keep it consistent. If you only produce four suitable opportunities a month, you have a planning problem to solve before you give somebody the 16-opportunity workload on paper. ## Give them decisions they can study A folder containing your last 40 proposals is a filing cabinet. Make it useful. Choose a few representative wins, losses, and deals you declined. Add short notes explaining what you noticed, what you asked, what changed your judgment, and why the outcome made sense. Include a call where you got something wrong. Otherwise the lesson is that the founder is always brilliant and the rep's job is to feel inadequate. They also need the working version of your [agency sales process](https://timkilroy.com/agency-sales-playbook): qualification rules, buyer decisions at each stage, pricing boundaries, and the handoff delivery expects. Give each resource a reason to exist. "Use this before a discovery call" is more helpful than "please familiarize yourself with our materials." ## Put coaching on the calendar before prospect meetings fill it Name the person responsible for coaching. If that person is you, reserve the time now. A pipeline meeting asks what's happening. Coaching examines how the salesperson is working and what to improve. You need both, and they don't have to become two enormous meetings. Review one call or deal decision in detail. Have the rep evaluate it first. Compare their interpretation with yours, agree on one adjustment, and check the next example for that adjustment. "Be more consultative" is feedback somebody can nod at forever. "You heard a request for leads and didn't ask what happens after an inquiry arrives" gives them something to change. ## Build a ramp with evidence at each stage The first month should establish whether the rep understands the buyer, the offer, and your decision rules. Let them observe, practice, and lead appropriate parts of real conversations with support. As they demonstrate judgment, give them more ownership of normal opportunities. Review their discovery recaps, next steps, and pricing decisions. Expand responsibility based on the work you see. By the end of the first quarter, assess the opportunities they've had enough time to work. Include pipeline quality, buyer progression, decision quality, and results where the sales cycle permits them. That's a suggested sequence, not a universal 90-day graduation ceremony. A longer sales cycle needs different expectations. An experienced hire still needs to learn your market and agency. Agree in advance on what would trigger extra coaching, a change in the role, or a performance conversation. Don't wait until you are frustrated to invent the standard. ## Give the role enough room to be real Your rep needs permission to own normal deals. Your team needs to know it, and your prospects need to experience it. If you attend a call, agree on your role before it starts. Let the rep open, lead, and close the conversation where appropriate. Don't take over because you thought of a cleverer sentence. There will still be exceptions. Define them. Then keep your hands off the steering wheel when the person driving is doing their job. [SalesOS](https://timkilroy.com/sales-os) helps build the process, roles, and coaching underneath that handoff. Get those in place before another welcome email promises someone a running start into a hole. --- Canonical URL: https://timkilroy.com/blog/first-agency-sales-hire