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Why Does Scaling Sales Need a Playbook?
Jeff Lawson says a company cannot scale sales until it has a playbook, and that playbook comes only after product market fit.
Go to market ends up as two sets of people. Before product market fit, the company is still exploring. The first salespeople look a lot more like business development: creative sales with no playbook, where someone has to figure something out with each customer. The goal is to close some sales and get revenue coming in, but really to figure out what the playbook is. Five deals that all look completely different do not teach much. Finding the pattern lets the team write the playbook, train people, and scale, because scaling requires giving people a playbook. Before the playbook exists, the company cannot scale. After product market fit, the playbook is in hand, and hiring becomes sales after sales after sales to scale the function.
People who joined before product market fit and people who joined after it are doing different jobs. People who spent a whole career after product market fit always assume there is a playbook.