Problem · Owners
We hired a salesperson. They did not produce, and now they are gone.
The severance is paid and the pipeline is exactly where it was a year ago, minus the $100,000 you spent finding that out. Before hiring again, understand what the rep walked into. In most companies at this stage, the rep failed on the demand environment, not on effort, and the next rep will fail the same way.
How people search thisfirst sales hire failed · salesperson not producing results · sales rep quit after six months · why do first sales hires fail · rebuild sales pipeline after rep left
Amplification at $10,000 a month replaces the prospecting half of the hire and builds the demand environment the next hire will need: the site, the content, the ads, and a dedicated person calling and emailing your prospects with meetings verified against the meeting quality standard. Pricing is published.
What the rep walked into
No list, so they built one from LinkedIn searches. No sequences, so they wrote cold emails from scratch that got reply rates under 1 percent. A website that did not confirm anything the email claimed, so the few prospects who looked you up went quiet. No content to send after the call. No pricing on the site, so every conversation started with a price negotiation. The rep spent three months building marketing and one month selling, then left.
The math of hiring again
An SDR loads to $70,000 to $90,000, an account executive to $120,000 to $180,000 with on target earnings. Ramp is three to four months. Average tenure across the industry is under two years. B2B sales hiring carries miss rates near a coin flip, so the honest budget is two hires to get one that works, roughly $150,000 to $300,000 before the first predictable quarter. And the second hire inherits the same empty room unless something changes first.
Build the room before you fill it
Sequence it. First, the site carries pricing, proof, and the technical answer, so a prospect who looks you up finds what the email promised. Second, content that answers the questions your sales calls repeat, so the call starts halfway done. Third, a list built from real data and sequences written against your actual positioning. Fourth, a dedicated person calling and emailing your prospects working it with meetings verified against the meeting quality standard. That is Amplification, and it costs about what the failed hire cost, with a notice period instead of a severance.
When the system books more meetings than you can take, hire again. This time hire a closer, hand them the runbooks, and let them start on day one with a full calendar.
Questions on this problem
If the pipeline that fed the last rep has not changed, yes. Build the demand environment first, then hire a closer into it.
Yes. Our seat prospects and books; your rep takes and closes. Most reps prefer that split, and it shows in their tenure.
Qualified held meetings: a person who matches criteria you agreed up front, with a written brief. We check that each one was held and report what it cost. We do not promise how many. No shows and meetings that fail the criteria do not count.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Full-stack engineer with more than 30 years building the systems companies sell through. He built the method Isovertic runs on and stays on every account as the standards owner and the escalation path. When search algorithms shift or a compliance question comes up, you get his engineering judgment. Day-to-day execution runs on the team he trained.
LinkedInKristen Coughlin, Chief Operating Officer
Trained molecular biologist. Ten years selling translational research products, then institutional operations at the Yale School of Medicine. She documented George's method, trained the team on it, and built the operation so the same system runs the same way on every account.
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