How to Hire a Head of Sales for Your Climate-Tech Startup: Tips from a Climate-Tech Recruiter
- MAGDA CHEANG
- Mar 27
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 7
In today’s blog post on climate-tech hiring, Magda Cheang, climate-tech recruiter, explains some basic principals on how to hire a sales leader or Head of Sales for your climate-tech start-up. As experts in sales hiring, we have some key tips you should keep in mind before you begin recruiting in order to ensure you hire the best people for your climate-tech start-up.
Determine your current status quo
Understand the the sales data of your climate-tech start-up
Take a look at the types of sales that you’re already doing as a climate-tech founder, and identify how this relates to the day to day of your new hire. For example, what are the sales cycles, main stakeholders you sell your product or services to, size of the deals. Are there any regulatory challenges or geo-political risk and challenges in the sale? Are you selling the product or service directly or through channels/partnerships?
If you have enough data, check in on the types of sales people in your start-up that have been successful and why. Perhaps it’s because of their experience, connection, deep understanding of a specific market or ICP or technical abilities. If you have been doing Founder led sales, determine what has been working and what hasn't been working. If this will be your first Head of Sales position at your climate-tech start-up you should spend adequate time defining the requirements to ensure you new hire is set up for success.
Define Your Needs and Goals for Your Head of Sales
Ensure that you define specific targets, whether it’s pipeline generation, meetings booked, revenue generated, growth targets or expansion of current accounts. Ensure that you also define other key tasks or goals the person would be responsible for, for example, creating a go-to- market strategy, hiring and managing a team, coaching others or implementing sales playbooks and strategies. Even if you’re an early stage start-up, having a number of metrics and goals will help guide.
Determine the Ideal Candidate Profile
Depending on the type of sales that the new hire has to do you should determine the ideal candidate profile. Keep in mind that you may have some required experience or skills.
Another way to look at it might be prerequisites vs “nice to have/bonus points”.
Requirements for your Head of Sales
Define what these might be e.g. relevant experience with a specific ideal customer or specific sales experience. For example, if you’re selling to the renewable energy sector, you may need someone with a rolodex of clients in that sector. If you’re looking to sell an ESG or Carbon Accounting Solution, you may need sector-agnostic knowledge. If you’re looking for someone with carbon removal expertise, ensure you define what is a “non negotiable prerequisite” at the start of your recruitment process. Ideally, as a climate-tech founder you and your other co-founders are aligned on the type of profile needed.
Another key experience could be start-up experience or ability to sell to a specific sector. You could also list your requirements as specific skills or traits rather than experience - for example, extreme ambition to close deals, excellent relationship building skills etc. You could also require someone who is a data-driven sales leader or exceptional coach and manager. Make sure to test these “non negotiable” prerequisites in the interview process for your Head of Sales. Alternatively, you could be looking for someone directly from a competitor or start-up that does something similar.
You could also determine leadership experience as a non-negotiable, either years of experience in managing teams or the types of teams they person has managed. Equally important to your climate-tech start-up could be someone that has created sales playbooks and implemented software tools to improve sales metrics. Having experience leading, coaching, mentoring and ensuring a sales team overachieves their quota could also be non-negotiable. Alternatively, depending on what your needs are as a start-up, you could prefer to hire an individual contributor sales person who would step into a leadership role after some time in your business.
Determine your “Negotiable Characteristics” for your Head of Sales
The next step is to spend some time understanding what your are flexible on. These are factors that are negotiable and are not deal breakers.
For example, the ideal profile they may not need to have sold a competitor’s product (especially as climate-tech is quite innovative and there may not be a direct competitor), but instead, have the learning mindset to learn more about your technology. Or instead, have experience introducing an innovative technology in a different industry and have proven success in generating revenue quickly.
Location might also be a negotiable aspect. Being remote-friendly or able to hire in several countries will widen your talent pool. On the other hand, if you have an office-based culture, you may want this to be non-negotiable that you list in your requirements.
Other factors that you can be flexible on could be specific language needs, you may need only English or your local language and individual sales people in the sales department could have specific language requirements.
Understand the available talent pool with your allocated budget
Understanding the available talent pool within your allocated budget is crucial for making strategic hiring decisions. Begin by researching market salary benchmarks for the roles you need, considering factors like industry standards, location, and experience levels. Identify whether your budget aligns with hiring full-time employees, contractors, or freelancers. If constraints exist, explore alternative solutions such as up-skilling internal staff or adjusting job requirements. By aligning your expectations with budget limitations, you can optimise recruitment efforts while attracting the best talent to your climate-tech start-up.
Structure the Recruiting Process for your Head of Sales
Next make sure you have a plan for your interview process. Who will speak to the candidate and in what order.
Determine what you will cover in each interview, for example, ensure you have specific topics or theme for example you could have a process as defined below:
Chief of Staff/HR Interview/Introductory call
Founder Interview - 45mins to chat with one of the founders
Case study or presentation
Stakeholder interview - industry or technical understanding
Final interview: Team fit and passion for your climate-tech product
In order to ensure that your interviews are being used effectively as a way to determine the best fit, ensure that each step of the interview process has questions that are specific to the interviewer and determine the traits or skills that you require from the person. After you have defined your recruitment process, run the recruitment process. You could include references or other steps if needed. Ensure you have an inclusive hiring process.
Offer a Competitive Compensation Package
Once you have identified the ideal candidates, ensure you run a smooth offer process. Offer a competitive compensation package. As a start-up, you may have less runway than a large corporation but you can balance this with a better commission plan, equity options, or other benefits.
Onboard your new Head of Sales
Depending on the size of your climate tech start-up, you may or may not have a structured onboarding process. As a minimum, ensure that the Head of Sales has sessions that set them up for success.
For example you could include the following in your onboarding plan:
IT and technology set-up
Company Vision, Team Values
Product Deep Dive and Demo on your product(s) or services
Key accounts information
Introduction to key stakeholders or cross functional leaders such as marketing engineering or product
Customer Pain Points and Value Proposition
Competitive Landscape and market trends
Share any sales playbook or metrics you have about your sales so far
Sales pipeline, performance metrics
Share key KPIS and expectations for your Head of Sales
Sales Strategy/GTM strategy
Goal setting ( key deals, pipeline growth, conversion, revenue targets per quarter or year, key partnerships,)
At Jobs for Planet we focus on helping climate-tech start-ups with their GTM hiring. Do you need additional help with sales hiring for your climate-tech start-up? Reach out to the experts at Jobs for Planet for an introductory call or contact us here. Need help with structuring your interview process and interview training? Check our advisory services
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