Most founders in the founder-led sales stage, before they’ve hired any sales representatives, can tell you how many deals they’ve closed. But far fewer can tell you why those deals closed or why those they lost didn’t.
This might not be an issue when the founder is the sales team, but when they make their first sales hire, they pass that knowledge gap on to the person now responsible for driving their company’s sales. This gap leaves the salesperson essentially having to build a process from scratch.
A better strategy is to document your sales process so your new sales hire has a foundation to build from, which helps to keep momentum going. Doing so is simpler than you might think. In this article, we’ll show you how to build that report and set your first sales hire up for success.
Why the number of deals closed is the wrong pre-hire test
Founders often decide when to hire a sales rep based on deal volume, but that isn’t the only signal you should watch for.
According to the Bridge Group’s 2025 SDR Models, Motions & Metrics report, the median tenure for a sales development representative is just under two years. One reason for turnover among new sales hires is that they walk into environments without documented sales processes, so no one knows why deals actually close. The founder may have closed deals through relationships, instinct, and knowledge that only lives in their head, so the new sales hire has nothing to go off of.
Then, when that new hire can’t replicate the founder’s results in their first 30 days, most assume it’s a hiring problem when it’s actually a process problem.
That’s why deal volume isn’t the only indicator that you’re ready to make a sales hire. You also need to know why deals closed so that your sales reps can actually succeed. That requires visibility that many founders don’t have yet.
The one report you need before you hire for sales
So how do you get that visibility as a founder? You need a report that clearly breaks down the sources, stages, and outcomes of your past deals. This isn’t overly difficult to build, but it requires clarity and accurate information.
Here’s what that report should cover.
Where do deals come from?
Most founders have some idea of where their deals come from, but the more accurate the information you have about this, the better. This changes not only how new leads are sourced but how sales reps interact with those leads.
How long do deals sit in each stage?
It’s also important to know how long your typical sales cycle is overall and how long deals spend in each stage.
If your sales cycle is usually six weeks long, a new sales rep knows that the number of deals closed in their first month is not a reliable indicator of success. Instead, that first month is all about building relationships and nurturing leads.
Examining how long deals tend to stay in each stage gives sales reps more granular benchmarks they can use to gauge their success. This allows them to pinpoint lagging deals and identify the steps needed to move leads toward closing.
Where do deals drop off?
If you can tell a new sales hire where past deals have dropped off, they can fix these issues proactively rather than blindly repeating them. Identify the stages where you have lost deals and do your best to establish why.
Sometimes, sales process issues are the potential cause. Sometimes, it’s an external factor like going with a competitor or budget issues. Determining the “why” can be tricky. It often involves asking the lead or analyzing data, but even imperfect information can give your new sales rep a head start.
For example, if legal review is a common drop-off point, sales reps can start preparing legal-friendly materials early to speed up the review process.
Building the report before you hire
How do you build this report? You don’t need a specific tool to create it. Once you start hiring salespeople, you’ll probably want to start using a CRM. But for founder-led sales, a spreadsheet will work fine.
What matters more is consistency. The process should be as simple as possible so that you can do it without losing hours and keep up the habit.
Simply create a new row in your spreadsheet for each deal and add columns for each step in your typical sales process. Here’s what to log in the sheet:
- Deal sources: Choose a few deal source categories such as referral, inbound, and cold outreach. Any time a new deal enters your pipeline, note the source it came from.
- Time per stage: Identify the basic pipeline stages your deals typically move through. For example, it might be discovery call, proposal, negotiation, and close. Choose whatever matches your current process. As deals move through this basic pipeline, note how long they stay in each stage.
- Deal outcomes: When a deal closes, note the outcome. If the deal was lost, write down why to the best of your knowledge.
Fill out this sheet as you work deals, and take some time to fill in any missing information every Friday. It doesn’t need to take more than half an hour.
After doing this for a few months, you’ll start to gather real data. You can examine this data to spot patterns and understand how your sales cycle naturally works.
What to do once your new hire starts
With your founder-led sales process mapped out, you can hand it to your new sales hire so they can quickly understand how your sales process has worked so far. After they’re familiar with the process, they’ll have a solid foundation, benchmarks to aim for, and strategies to get started with.
For example, if your new hire’s deals are sitting in the discovery phase for four weeks, but the typical time for deals in that stage is two weeks, the founder can offer some insight to help get those deals moving faster.
Handing your first sales hire this report means they don’t need to start from scratch. They can build from what the founder’s already done. This doesn’t mean they need to stick with this same early process forever, though. In fact, they should iterate on it, especially as the business grows.
What changes when you start hiring more
A simple spreadsheet based on past sales may work well for a sales team of one, but what about when you start adding more members to your sales team, plus other departments like marketing and customer support? What about when your sales volume starts to grow?
That’s when a CRM really starts to become necessary. With more team members manually adding data to a spreadsheet, there are more opportunities for mistakes. With multiple teams, you want everyone to have access to the same data. As sales volume grows, so does time spent on manual data entry.
A CRM automates much of this manual data entry, and reports are generated automatically.
For instance, if a lead comes through a contact form, the CRM can automatically create a new person and lead based on the information they submit through the form. Then, as tasks like discovery calls and quote generation are completed, the lead automatically moves through the pipeline stages you’ve set up in the CRM platform.
Real-time reports on leads, deals, stages, and sources are available in the CRM. That said, the exact report you previously created in a spreadsheet is not automatically available in your CRM. You’ll need to create a custom report for this one, but it will still be far easier with a CRM.
CRMs are essential for saving time and staying organized as your business grows. It’s also important to choose the right CRM. CRMs like Nutshell are easy to use and designed for small businesses. Your team can learn to use them quickly, won’t get bogged down with unnecessarily complicated tools, and can take advantage of free support.
Build the report before you hire
Before you hire your first sales rep, make sure you can show them how your founder-led sales process works with a simple report.
At this stage, the goal is visibility rather than perfection. You don’t need flawless information about every deal. You just need enough to be able to spot patterns. This gives your new salesperson a foundation to work with and benchmarks to aim for.
Then, as your business grows, you can improve this sales tracking process with CRM software.
No matter what stage your business is in, sharing good data with your sales team matters. It’s the difference between them just guessing and them having a trackable, repeatable process that can be improved over time.