Don’t hire until your system is ready
Or minute of confusing new people with new progress
At a certain point, we hit a ceiling.
Our delivery was solid. The team was experienced. We had clients in multiple markets and a growing reputation.
But margins were tightening.
The rates for developers were climbing fast in our region, and we were inching closer to a breaking point, where the “offshore” arbitrage no longer made economic sense for clients.
Time zone friction. Communication overhead. Cultural nuance.
All the hidden costs were starting to outweigh the price advantage.
And a $5/hr difference doesn’t carry much weight when the real pain is project risk.
So we made what seemed like a smart move:
Let’s go local.
Let’s get someone on the ground.
A sales rep who can meet clients face-to-face.
Who speaks their language — literally and professionally.
It was logical. Strategic, even.
But it broke us.
The fantasy of "just add sales"
I thought it would be easy. We were already working with clients in those markets.We had references, case studies, experience.
Surely it was just a matter of plugging in the right person.
The reality was far messier.
We ran dozens of interviews. And over and over, we ran into the same pattern:
- Candidates who wanted a fixed salary, not upside.
- People more interested in representation than revenue.
- Friendly faces with no skin in the game.
- Smooth talkers who didn’t understand our business model, or care to.
Eventually, we found them.
Two strong candidates. Smart. Motivated. Hungry.
But just as things started to move… we became the bottleneck.
System failure in disguise
The deals were there. The reps were moving.The market was interested.
But we, the company, weren’t ready.
We had no standard pitch deck.
No case studies tailored to those verticals.
No pricing framework.
No lead intake or qualification protocol.
No support on pre-sales engineering or delivery estimation.
Worse, approvals and decisions were slow.
Schedules slipped. Materials were always “almost ready.” And every delay, every awkward silence, every non-answer… killed trust.
Our best sales reps, the ones we prayed for, were left hanging. They burned their own social capital bringing us into deals.
And we didn’t show up. So eventually, they stopped trying.
And then they left.
The deeper cost of being unprepared
We didn’t just lose two great sales reps. We lost time. We lost pipeline. We lost reputation in the market.
And we lost belief, in ourselves, and in our capacity to scale.
Some of those opportunities will never come back.
And I can’t even begin to estimate how much money was lost in delays, inefficiencies, and missed chances.
But the real cost?
We mistook hiring for solving.
We thought “who” could replace “how.”
It doesn’t work that way.
A great hire can amplify your system.
But they cannot compensate for the absence of one.
Especially in sales. Especially when your deals are six figures and your cycles run 3–6 months.
What we missed, and what I’d never skip again
We should have started not with recruiting, but with infrastructure.
- Buyer personas
- Pricing models
- Decks and sales narratives
- Proposal templates
- Internal SOPs for approvals
- Resource availability checks
- Clear support structure for every stage of the sales process
Even a performance-based sales rep doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
They need a runway.A launchpad. A back office that doesn’t fall apart under pressure.
We didn’t build that. We rushed ahead, high on possibility, blind to reality.
And we paid for it.
A sobering lesson on timing
There’s this myth in startup culture that says: Hire before you’re ready.
I get the logic, stretch yourself, commit to growth, move fast.
But here’s what no one tells you:
If your system isn’t ready, your hires won’t stretch you.
They’ll drown in the chaos you hand them.
Hiring doesn’t make you scalable.
Process does. Structure does. Clarity does.
Only then does talent accelerate the machine.
Otherwise, every new person is just another layer of friction.
Another dependency. Another weak point in an already fragile setup.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t say “no” to hiring.
But I’d delay it by three months. I’d use that time to build the system around the sales function, not just the team.
Because people don’t fix systems.
Systems support people.
And without that support, even A-players burn out — or walk away.
We hired too soon. But the real mistake wasn’t timing.
It was thinking we could skip the foundation and survive the weight.
Disclaimer.
Every business has its nuances, and every founder has their unique context and resources. Whether or not my advice applies depends on your situation, experience, and needs. But one thing is universal—use your brain.
Think about how to apply the advice in your context before acting.
Your way.
And one more thing.
- Eugene
Join the “most offbeat” Businessletter on entrepreneurship.
Hi, I’m Eugene.
Over the past 20+ years, I’ve grown an international agency from one-person freelance to a multimillion-dollar business. I’ve led teams, scaled systems, burned out, rebuilt, and learned (the hard way) what it really takes to run a business that doesn’t consume your life.
I help them make sense of complexity, design simple systems, and create the kind of business they actually want to run.
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