- Reason for hire: Why are we hiring a salesperson for our PLG company?
- Our strategy: product-led growth (PLG)
- The decision-free sales process
- Our market
- Our differentiation
- You + Visor: A Perfect Fit?
- Call with our Community & Talent Associate
- Visor Customer-Facing Sales & Success Screener
- Round 1 Interview
- Round 2 Interview
- Take Home Project
- Team Interview
- How you should prepare
- How you’ll be evaluated
- What success looks like
We’re very excited you’re considering a role at Visor. This guide will provide information to make your candidate experience seamless.
Reason for hire: Why are we hiring a salesperson for our PLG company?
We’re a product-led growth company. But we’re hiring our first salesperson. However, this is not a traditional sales role.
To learn more about the role, check out the blog post below from our founder and CEO:
Our strategy: product-led growth (PLG)
We’re all-in on PLG. We believe it provides a superior experience for customers. To guide our strategy, we have developed a unique set of principles, outlined below:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
We should think holistically about every self-service touchpoint a user has with Visor as part of the product. That means our product includes our knowledge base, our social posts, our automated emails, our blog posts, and, of course, the core Visor application. We need to balance our efforts to expand the power of the entire product, not just the software application. | |
Users should not be required to make any major decisions, commitments, or changes to get value from Visor. Everything about the experience should be broken into small, rewarding chunks of progress. Like a long, sloping incline vs. a sudden cliff. There should be a magical, magnetic draw that pulls users in with gradual bits of reward and satisfaction. We should seek to get those gradual commitments at every opportunity to pull the user in deeper. | |
Trials suggest the user has to make a decision at the end, but there doesn't need to be the pressure of a decision. Rather than a decision, the users have varying levels of commitment. The more time and money they invest, the more committed they are. We want the excitement of solving their problems to quickly draw them in until they are so invested that they are hooked. Even paying should not be treated as a final decision. It's just another investment in using Visor to continue achieving their goals. | |
Encourage free exploration. The whole experience of using Visor should be low-commitment, low-risk to start. Even billing should avoid pushing too hard for commitment with annual plans. We are okay with gradual commitments that expand over time. As users get more invested, the upgrade to an annual plan or expansion to additional users should be a part of the natural experience. | |
We don't want users to just kick the tires because they're afraid of a paywall or losing access to their work. We want users to start with real data and real use cases. Users should not be made to fear the limits of the free plan or some future expiration of free benefits. While we don't want to make it hard for them to discover the paid plans or understand their usage if they have questions, we don't want to bring their attention to them unnecessarily before they've paid. We want them to run right through their limit like a marathoner through the finish line. | |
We want to charge users for using the product, not discovering it. Since the free plan is our main way of “selling”, we want it to be as strong as possible. That means that we shouldn't hide valuable features behind paid tiers. The free plan should be as fully-featured as reasonable. | |
People pay to avoid pain. It's harder to get people to pay for some future benefit. The payment decision should not come at an arbitrary point in time — it should come right in the middle of receiving value, when Visor has become sticky enough to warrant payment. That's why we believe that usage-based triggers, not time-based triggers, are right for our business. | |
People overvalue their money and undervalue their time. Replace upfront commitment of money with a "less costly" commitment of time. Instead of asking users to upgrade, ask users to spend more time with Visor. Ask them to take in-product actions that deepen their investment in Visor and help them get value. Ask them to provide reviews for us online. Ask them to follow us on social media. But don't outright ask for money unless they have something to lose by not paying. The more time they spend with Visor, the more likely they are to want to leverage that investment. | |
Nobody on the team should ask users to upgrade or make a decision. The goal of our team is to guide users to deeper investment so that they will get prompted to upgrade automatically by the product. In sales-led companies, the product is there to help the people make the sale. In product-led growth companies, the people are just there to help the product make the sale. | |
We can learn from every interaction with users. No question or request is too small to be valuable for our learning. Our goal is to take the friction points that require human intervention and find ways to automate them so future users don't have similar frictions. We can reduce future friction through knowledge base articles, revised product design, guidance prompts, and automated emails. We want to build a money-making machine that requires very little human intervention. |
The decision-free sales process
We believe that the most user-friendly products are the ones that don’t require a huge decision. Instead, they’re the products that are easy to adopt and investment is gradual according to your value. To learn more about our philosophy, check out this blog post:
Our market
Visor operates in a highly-competitive, very crowded market. Here are some of the other companies in our market.
- Google Sheets
- Microsoft Excel
- Airtable
- Rows
- Team Gantt
- Asana
- Smartsheet
- ClickUp
- Product Board
- Actiondesk
Our differentiation
While many of the products in our class offer similar-looking products, we built Visor with a unique formula to match the unmet demand we saw in the market: people looking to collaborate more easily with data locked in their SaaS apps.
Here are the three main reasons Visor’s better:
It's more flexible
Our users are frustrated that the tools they use are rigid and limited, forcing them to do their work elsewhere. Visor can grow with its users as their use cases change and expand. Visor adapts to how they want to work; it doesn't force them to adapt to Visor.
It's more trustworthy
Many products that promise integrations don't deliver reliably on that promise. Visor offers a refreshingly seamless and trustworthy integration experience. It makes it easier to work with integrated data, it improves the likelihood things will sync, and it provides helpful guidance when things are done.
It's more shareable
Nobody operates in a vacuum — everything done in Visor is likely meant to be shared. Visor helps users share their information and create rich collaboration experiences around it so that they can keep people informed and draw upon the feedback of their entire brain trust.
You + Visor: A Perfect Fit?
Our interview process seeks to provide us an opportunity to see how you approach day-to-day interactions with our users in a collaborative environment. The interviews are designed to closely mirror actual work and provide opportunities for us to collaborate together on the exercise.
The following outlines Visor’s process for candidates.
Call with our Community & Talent Associate
The phone screening portion of the interviews usually begins with a brief conversation with our community & talent associate. You can expect to chat about your interest in this role, motivation for looking for a new role, and your search timeline. The goal is to confirm a high-level fit.
Please be ready to:
- Confirm that you are legally authorized to work in the United States (without requiring Visa sponsorship)
- Discuss your timing and where you are in the process of finding your next opportunity
- Share any salary expectations you have and confirm that you understand the salary range posted for your role
- Discuss the specific skills and talents you have related to this role
- What qualities are you looking for in the person you hire for this job?
- What are the location expectations for this role?
- How would you describe the company culture?
Visor Customer-Facing Sales & Success Screener
After the phone screen, you can expect to take the Visor Customer-Facing Sales & Success Screener. It is a multiple choice assessment used to assess fit to this role. While the assessment should take about 15-20 minutes to complete, there is a time limit for 30 minutes.
Round 1 Interview
The first round interview will be on a zoom for 60 minutes with our Head of Marketing. During this interview, be prepared to run through and write replies for scenarios of customer chats, while also triaging these scenarios. You should also be prepared to answer questions related to sales strategy as it relates to Visor.
Please be ready to:
- Share your computer screen with our Head of Marketing
- Triage and identify the urgency of customer chat scenarios
- Write replies to customer chat scenarios
Round 2 Interview
The second interview will be on a zoom for 60 minutes with our founder and CEO. You should be ready to demonstrate your customer empathy and product intuition. Similar to the first interview, be prepared to run through some Visor specific scenarios regarding sales strategy and what the best plan of action would be in your opinion. Then, you will role play a 15 minute customer call.
We’ll conduct the interview over Zoom. To facilitate a free and flowing conversation, we’ll ask that you be situated somewhere in a quiet room, by yourself, with a strong internet connection so that we can both take the meeting with our cameras on and remain unmuted. For parts of our interview process where skills are being assessed, it’s important that we maintain the integrity of this being an individual assessment. We will record the call for review by additional Visor team members.
Take Home Project
See more information about the take home project portion of the interview process below.
Overview
We believe the most effective way to determine how well we’d work together is to actually try it. That’s why we’ve included a collaborative take-home project as part of our interview process for all positions.
Compensation
We value your time and have built in a compensation component to all our projects to show you that we mean it. All take-home projects are structured as consulting projects with a $175 flat-rate compensation attached to them. In order to be eligible for this compensation, you’ll be asked to sign Visor’s standard consulting agreement before you begin work. The general time estimate for Visor take-home projects ranges from 5 to 10 hours.
The general schedule
The take-home project consists of two meetings: a 30-minute kickoff and a 30-minute presentation (followed by a Q&A). You’ll do your work on the project between these two meetings. Typically we like to give all candidates about one calendar week to work on the project, but we can be flexible based on your schedule — planning on less or more time.
Kickoff meeting
During the kickoff meeting, you will receive a set of instructions about a project that is specific to your role. You’ll review these instructions live on a video call with your interviewer. In the most productive of these kickoff calls, the candidates begin some planning work together with the interviewer. Please use this as an opportunity to ask questions you need to help you complete the project (you are also encouraged to follow up with additional questions during the course of your project work). At the end of this kickoff, we’ll schedule the presentation meeting.
Completing the project
The principle behind the take-home project is to see how well we work together. As such, you are expected to check in about your progress during the time between the kickoff and the presentation. Candidates who succeed during these projects are typically the ones that engage in the most conversation with the Visor team during their work.
Presenting your work
During the presentation, be prepared to walk through your work and how you met the expectations of the assignment. Your interviewer will ask you follow-up questions to explain your work. Please deliver your project in a way that can be shared after this meeting with other members of the Visor team.
What success looks like
The take-home project is helpful in determining your ability to execute in a real-world scenario akin to those we experience at Visor. We will gauge how well you understand the core requirements of the problem statement, assumptions you make in the process, and your ability to explain how the deliverable may fit into the larger product strategy.
Team Interview
The last portion of the interview process will be a chance to meet the greater Visor team.
Overview
Our team will conduct a 90-minute interview with you. Our goal is to get to know how you interact with various team members that you’ll work with cross-functionally. We’ll chat about all facets of the Visor product, ecosystem, organization, and culture.
What success looks like
At the end of the day, we’re a team comprised of very real people who come from different backgrounds with a shared purpose of collaborating together in the hopes of building something of value for lots of people. We all approach each other with honesty, openness, curiosity, and support. We ask that you approach this conversation from a place of honesty and vulnerability. We’re aiming to build a rapport, and to find out how you can become a culture add to our team. We’re looking for signs of your passion, drive, and commitment to our cultural values. You’ll earn bonus points if you demonstrate you’ve read this by mentioning “EPIC Drive,” our cultural values, during the part of the team meeting when everyone is together.
How you should prepare
How you’ll be evaluated
- How well you can use written communication to quickly and clearly answer user chats
- How well you use relationship building skills with users
- How developed your skills are in the areas necessary to carry out your responsibilities (see the “What you’ll be doing” section of the job description for your role)
- How aligned we are on the best sales & support strategy for Visor
What success looks like
These calls are helpful for information gathering. We’re looking for your honesty and want to ensure that you’ll happy with the role, and that we’ll feel that you may be a good fit for it based on your interest and experience.