The Ramp Phase, Jack Welch and a Coin Flip

The "ramp phase" is a period that my partners and I define as a hyper-growth phase somewhere between $10mm and $100mm in sales. It is perhaps the most exciting period in a young company's development. After years of hard work and tinkering, getting the product, packaging, pricing and positioning right (or at least good enough), you think that your company is finally ready to scale. By the time you reach this phase, you have a business model that is starting to work and lots of raving customers. Most companies don't even make it this far, so you are feeling great about things...

At this phase, most VCs are ready to invest big dollars and encourage entrepreneurs to be aggressive. They say, it's time to break through or get left in the dust. VCs don't invest in lifestyle businesses, you have to go for it!  Don't sand bag. Shoot for the moon! Those projections are not exciting enough...it's not BIG enough...the stakes are getting bigger...yada, yada, yada.

Let's get real.

Something that we see all the time when we drill down into sales projections of start-ups is a failure to take into account hiring mistakes that inevitably occur as companies ramp a sales-force.

Sales is typically the department which has the highest turnover in companies going through the ramp phase. Over the years, we've seen hundreds of sales reps get hired (last year alone, our companies hired 200+ sales reps) only to see most of them struggle, get fired or quit at some point along the way.

Based on our experience, less than one out of two new sales reps end up working out. Whether you have voluntary or involuntary turnover, the end result is the same - you end up with fewer sales reps than planned.

Given the time spent on each hire (plus recruiting fees) a lot of precious start-up resources are wasted. Some of this waste is unavoidable. It's just the cost of doing business. However, we believe that most of the waste can be avoided if companies apply some realism.

For example, when it comes to making sales rep or any other types of hires, the sobering reality is that many mistakes will be made. In fact, it's a virtual coin flip according to Jack Welch (who recently discussed this issue with one of our CEOs).

What exactly did he mean by this?

Basically, Welch thought that he was no better than 50/50 early in his career. Half of the hires he made were good and half were mistakes (which he tried to correct as quickly as possible).

Think about it. If Jack Welch (one of the most respected and talented businessmen of his generation) thought that his hiring decisions were no better than a coin flip, what are your odds?

Over the course of his career, Jack, of course, did get better (he was a learning machine and tried to mold GE into a learning organization). How much better?  Well...after 40+ years of hiring and firing people, Jack thought that he got to 70/30 for really important hiring decisions - such as a CEO hire.

In other words, even at the end of his career, he was very aware of the fact that he can (and would) make hiring mistakes a large percentage (at least 30%) of the time - no matter how hard he tried to avoid them.

The bottom line is this - making good hiring decisions is extraordinarily difficult to do. It's a super high risk activity. The risk level is higher, of course, when you're looking to fill critical positions (like CEOs) but even for lower rank, more "cookie cutter" hires (like sales reps) the risk is high (at least much higher than most people perceive).

So, as a CEO or VP Sales of a start-up projecting that "shoot for the moon" sales ramp, you have to ask yourself this question....are you going to be much better than Jack Welch at sizing people up?

If not, you had better plan for at least one in three new hires NOT working out. If you want to be realistic, plan on every other sales rep not producing for you (and try to correct your mistakes ASAP). If you actually planned for this, how would you modify spending in the rest of the company? How would you change your plans on ramping marketing, customer support, R&D, etc?

If you are indeed a superstar (or just super lucky) and you end up making better hiring decisions than Jack Welch...good for you. Use the extra cash-flow generated by your sales-force to reinvest for even faster growth.

But for planning purposes...I would not count on being much better (or luckier) than Jack.