An early-stage company does not need a full marketing function; it needs the founder selling well, a position that survives contact with buyers, and evidence accumulating in public. The expensive mistake is hiring for a motion that does not exist yet: a salesperson without a playbook inherits a mystery, and a marketer without positioning amplifies noise.
of SaaS account executives hit quota in 2024, down from 66 percent in 2022. A hire cannot fix a sale that is not yet defined.
Bridge Group SaaS AE report, March 2024.average ramp time for a new SaaS salesperson, at a median $190K on-target earnings, before the first productive quarter.
Bridge Group, March 2024.of positioning, ICP and sales playbook is what the first hire should inherit. Writing it after the hire is the expensive order.
Silvengate market analysis, 2026.The plan is deliberately small: position, playbook, one or two channels run properly, and honest measurement. We will say plainly when the answer is not more marketing but a clearer offer, and the scan is built to show that before any retainer is discussed.
Who the business is for, what it can say that competitors cannot, and the one-sentence customer definition every channel is aimed at.
SalesFor founder-led sales: discovery questions, qualification, call structure, proposal and follow-up, written from your real deals and trained until the founder runs it without us.
AcquisitionA named-list outbound system for considered purchases: the list built to the ICP, messages written to the buyer’s actual problem, volume that protects the domain, and every reply handled the same day.