Welcome to Revenews number ‘wow I struggled to find the time this week’.

⏰ Today, we’re looking at hiring for ad sales. Plus, a monetisation opportunity for finance newsletters.

Jam-packed with value, let’s dive in! 🚀

1. Newsletter News & Jobs

2. Scale Humans

3. Monetisation opportunity

4. Inbox Banter

^{How do I hire for ad sales?}

So you’re looking to hire someone for ad sales? Or looking to build on your existing team?

Congrats.

Where do you start?

What should you be looking for?

What common pitfalls should you be avoiding?

How much base and commission do I need to pay?

After that further ado, let’s hear it.

🧐 One size fits all?

Every company is different. A salesperson who works amazingly for your mate with a similar newsletter, might not necessarily be a perfect fit for you.

If you’re hiring earlier or have a lot of inventory that needs filling. You’ll probably want someone, young, hungry, with a high-frequency mindset and not afraid to be scrappy.

If you’re a more established company or have less inventory urgently needing to be filled, traits such as attention to detail and relevant experience should be prioritised.

Of course, you need to be very specific on what part of the sales cycle they are responsible for. Yes, you can have expectations of people to wear many hats, but having a clearly defined primary hat will attract the right candidates.

When’s a good time to start hiring for sales?

If you’re doing under $100k/year you’re probably too early. Between $200k and $500k coud a good time to start hiring. If you’re doing $1m+ a year in founder-led sales, congrats, but it’s definitely time to hire and optimise.

Or if you have a high-risk tolerance, you can hire with little-to-no revenue, based on your monthly revenue potential. Here’s what that is and how to calculate it.

Don’t be afraid to hire for more commercial roles than you think you’ll need, studies typically show that anywhere from 45% to 75% of sales hires don’t work out. Plus, even if you’re booked out for months, you can always launch new products!

👀 What to look for

On the My First Million podcast, they describe the wildly successful hiring of Wouter at Milk Road. This transpired on Twitter whilst getting creative feedback, they then spontaneously gave Wouter responsibility for ads on Slack

Another great hire at a newsletter that I had the pleasure of observing, was an introduction through a friend whilst the employee was still at university.

Me personally, I’ve been poached on LinkedIn once and went via a recruitment agency another time. What’s the lesson here?

Read my interview with Jack Pilcher, he was hired and ran all things ad sales at Chartr until they were acquired by Robinhood.

Other things to consider when hiring that slick salesperson:

🎯 Your brand/messaging

😎 Ego, will it get in the way of changing strategies if something isn’t working

🤖 Both party’s perspectives and usage of technology and AI

🤝 Existing relationships

🌎 Location and subsequent expectations

🕵️ Their current role, and how they’d fit into a small media startup (assuming that’s you!)

🥹 Do they make you FEEL like you want to hire them, that all-important intangible gut feeling is much more important in sales than technical roles

🫣 What to avoid

Avoid people who don’t have that hustle ethos and a great work ethic. It’s cheesy, but a timeless truth in sales.

It can be a good idea to snap up someone with experience at a more traditional media company (e.g. the Economist or FT), they’d have good insight and potential relationships with blue chip brands. BUT, watch out, most employees here will be part of a large enterprise sales team, advertising relationships are often long-standing, mostly maintenance-focused with lots of lunches, and leads are often generated for them by marketing and agencies. This is just very different from someone smashing loads of cold outreach to sell out next month while wearing 2 other hats. I’m not saying don’t hire experienced traditional media salespeople, but this is the most common hiring pitfall I’ve seen personally.

On a related note, don’t get blinded by the promise of existing relationships. This is a great bonus, but ultimately very few may transfer, there may be contractual blockers, and the salesperson’s oh-so-special relationship might not be as deep as they think. Building effective systems is more impactful in the long term.

🤑 How much should I pay them

I’ve been asked this quite a lot. It massively depends on where you are and how much experience they have.

For example, based out of London, my previous relevant pay has been:

• £40k base and approx £90k OTE (plus lots of benefits).

• £52 base and approx £100k OTE.

🧐 What is OTE?

On target earnings. Most sales salaries are made up of two parts: base pay (e.g. the £40k above) and expected commissions if the rep is hitting targets. OTE is simply both of them added together. Say I offer a $50k base and $100k OTE, that means if the salesperson is hitting their targets, they’re taking home in $50 in pre-tax commissions. The typical base/commission split seems to be around 50/50 in the US.

The average pay for Media Sales in New York City is $128k OTE (source).

The average pay for Media Sales in London seems to be around £70k (multiple sources).

Hiring someone with a SaaS sales background can be a great idea, but tech sales salaries can be lofty, especially in large enterprises or high-ticket/niche products. Small tech startups would be a great (cheaper) place to go poaching.

Salary expectations will wildly depend on levels of experience.