We are ready to scale our operations, but we currently have two major empty leadership seats on our Accountability Chart: Head of Sales and Head of Operations. We only have the budget to hire one right now. How do we decide which seat to fill first?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

To make this decision, you must analyze where your current bottleneck lives. This is a classic diagnostic challenge. If you hire a Head of Sales first, you will drive more revenue, but if your operations are already strained, you will break customer delivery, destroy your reputation, and burn out your team. If you hire a Head of Operations first, you will build a solid infrastructure, but if you do not have enough leads coming in, you will have an expensive, idle engine. Start by examining your weekly metrics. Are your current operational systems failing to deliver quality results on time? If yes, your delivery bottleneck is the immediate threat to your business. Fill the Head of Operations seat first to stabilize the ship. If your operations are running smoothly but your sales pipeline is empty and you are personally spending eighty percent of your time doing sales calls, you have a sales bottleneck. In this case, fill the Head of Sales seat first. Also, consider your own conative strengths using the Kolbe system. If you are naturally a high Quick Start who excels at selling but hates managing details, you should hire the Head of Operations to build systems while you continue to drive sales. Conversely, if you are a high Follow Thru who prefers systems over selling, hire the Head of Sales first. Make the hire that removes your primary constraint and frees up your time to focus on your core strengths.