I don't know - there's a lot missing from this article/post. No offense but you can't have a "sales team" if you have to read this article to determine whether or not it's right for you. I'm not trying to be flippant so I hope my writing isn't making this come off in a negative way. What I'm trying to express is just how difficult it is to build a sales model from the start, and then to execute that model. It's just not easy for a first-timer and, let's be frank: that's who is reading this article.

Can your business support a sales team? It depends. Hell, it depends on so many factors that I don't even know where to begin.

I started writing out examples/questions but it's just too much - there is so much missing info that it's just not time/cost effective to write it out. As rpwilcox says, this is business 101 and, IMO, if you are still at business 101 stage, you don't have the experience to build a sales team.

Hey Scott - don't worry, it didn't come across as too negative and I appreciate your feedback. :-)

There is definitely a lot missing as my main goal was just to help people realize that it's not an either / or thing when it comes to sales vs. inbound marketing. Granted, this is business 101 but in the startup community, because of the speed at which companies move, you have first time entrepreneurs without that business 101 experience trying to move the needle in a meaningful way in a very short time. It's because of this that answering these sorts of fundamental questions is ideally done sooner than later.

Absolutely agreed. The sales team is for outwardly following up and helping get people into that top of the funnel - and educating them to pull them further into that funnel. I wouldn't ever have a business without them.

Inbound is a great harvester of existing interest, but not 100% reliable.

This is something that both myself and a lot of other entrepreneurs have tried to figure out so I thought I'd share. Comments / thoughts appreciated!

Good article, ordered Predictable Revenue immediately. I'd like to read much more about sales in Hacker News. We hackers often forget that many Internet giants, like Google, rely a lot on large sales teams to generate their revenue.

I also ordered it. From what I've read so far, it will go alongside SPIN Selling and Crossing the Chasm as my favorite sales/marketing books.

This is something that is business 101. If you don't know this you need to hire a non-technical cofounder good at this stuff.

Or, at least, should be something that investors ask: what is your inbound and outbound sales and marketing efforts look like.