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Free tool · Hiring
Should you make your first sales hire yet?
A straight answer, from your own numbers. Most founders hire a salesperson a year early and lose both the cash and the objections. Answer eight questions and Mazo returns a verdict — not yet, hire two, hire an SDR, or hire in N months — with the gate you are missing and the arithmetic behind it.
First Sales Hire Calculator
Free · No account needed · About 20 seconds
Working out your verdict — about 20 seconds…
How it works
- Answer eight questions. Revenue, price, the deals you closed yourself, and whether the process is written down.
- Get a verdict, not a maybe. Not yet, hire two AEs, hire an SDR rather than an AE, or hire in N months — with the gate that decides it.
- Unlock the maths. What a rep costs before their first close, the trigger to watch, the profile to hire for and the 30/60/90 ramp.
Mazo's rule of thumb: reps execute playbooks, they do not write them. If you have not personally closed around 10 customers of the same profile using a pitch you could hand to someone else, a sales hire is an expensive way to find out that your positioning is not finished.
Before you write the job ad
Hiring is the end of founder-led sales, not the start of sales. Read what founder-led sales is and when to stop, and check the pipeline you would be handing over against the pipeline coverage rule. If the verdict is "not yet", the 90-day GTM plan sequences what to fix first.
FAQ
When should a B2B SaaS founder hire their first salesperson?
The gate is repeatability, not revenue. The usual prerequisite is that the founder has personally closed around 10 customers of the same profile using a pitch that is written down and can be handed over. Founders typically step back from every deal somewhere around $1–1.5M ARR at the earliest. Hiring a rep to work out how to sell is the classic expensive mistake.
Should I hire one salesperson or two?
Two at the same time, if the cash allows it. One rep proves nothing — when they miss, you cannot tell whether the problem is the person, the pitch or the market. Two give you a controlled comparison, and they push each other.
Should I hire an SDR or an AE first?
At founder stage the first specialisation is usually an SDR who feeds the founder, not an AE who replaces them. That keeps the founder in the conversations where objections and positioning intelligence live, while removing the list-building hours that do not need a founder.
What does this calculator actually work out?
It annualises the deals you closed yourself, checks them against the repeatability gate, works out whether your price and sales cycle can carry a rep’s cost through ramp before their first close, and gives you a countable trigger that flips the answer.
Fix the motion before you hire for it
Mazo diagnoses why your sales motion is not repeatable yet, builds the 90-day plan to fix it, and follows up every week — for less than a day of a recruiter’s fee.
Start 14-day free trial Compare Mazo with a fractional CMO →Mazo's tools apply published frameworks credited to their authors; Mazo is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Results are generated by AI from your answers — use them as a starting point, not a guarantee.