Dharmesh Shah had a really good post a couple of days ago about building sales teams in startups, which is frankly applicable in growth companies too.
Of his 14 points, the ones I would highlight for more mature businesses are 9,10, and 12 (understand your sales economics) and 5 and 7 (keep incentives simple and aligned with customer satisfaction).
An extension of his 2nd point (don't hire a VP Sales first) is that you probably need fewer sales managers than you think. It is particularly true in Europe -- where technology sales management is a less developed skill than in the US -- that one good sales manager can make a huge difference, while 3 mediocre ones can be very expensive bureaucracy.
Top performing salespeople MUST be the kings of a startup (regardless of actual title). As such, if you don't have "royalty", a startup you will remain.
Posted by: D Bowen | September 02, 2009 at 05:37