Paradigm: 5 key tips for recruiting BD leaders for crypto projects

Original title: "A Crypto Founder's Guide to Hiring BD"

Author:Nick Martitsch (Head of Paradigm GTM)

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

In the cryptocurrency space, job competition among early growth leaders is becoming increasingly fierce, and project parties are increasingly inclined to hire their own influential KOLs as members of their early core growth teams. The core reason behind this is that for Web 3 projects, distribution capabilities are often the key factor in determining their success or failure. Finding the right business development (BD) leader and hiring at the right time can have a huge impact on the growth trajectory of the project.

This article summarizes some of the advice given by the Paradigm team for entrepreneurs on the first recruitment of BD leaders, covering everything from timing to capability requirements.

The BD (Business Development) leader plays a crucial role in promoting the growth of project TVL (Total Locked Value). BD’s responsibilities are not only to open up the market and acquire users, but also to establish partnerships, optimize product distribution strategies, and drive the expansion of the ecosystem. An excellent BD must have strong communication skills, keen market insight, extremely high execution and a strong sense of responsibility. From the founder's perspective, the timing of recruiting BDs, ability tests, and execution ability assessments need to be considered.

Don't give up the founder-led sales model too early

Founders are usually the best salesperson for their own products. In the process of seizing first customers and building MVPs (minimum viable products), it is crucial to maintain a founder-led sales model for the following reasons:

• Easier to reach first deals : For startups that have not yet launched a product, customers are more betting on the founders to achieve an exciting product blueprint than the existing product itself. Compared to the recruiting BD, the founders themselves are more able to convince potential customers with technical details, product vision and enthusiasm, making them the first users to take risks.

• Helping build better products : In the early stages of the company, sales and product development should be the same process. Founders need to establish a close feedback loop with potential customers and improve the development roadmap of v1 products through their opinions. If new employees are introduced in the process, unnecessary friction and communication barriers may be added.

Generally speaking, when the project has verified the needs of the initial user and needs to promote the product to a wider market, you can start considering hiring the first BD leader. If it is a protocol-based project that requires building a wide external ecosystem before going online, this process may begin early. But usually, it is best to wait until the project already has a small number of loyal customers before recruiting.

The ability to transform "flexible trial" into "scalable mode"

The BD head should transform the founder’s method of finding the first batch of customers “in a way that does not have scale” into a scalable and repeatable sales model, which will help the company acquire the next hundred or even thousand customers. The following are the key tasks that the BD leader should be responsible for in the early stage of the project:

• Build a CRM system suitable for the company's development (such as Excel, Salesforce, Copper, etc.) and fill in the relevant data of the target market.

• Qualification screening for inbound enquiries, initiating outreach to new prospects, and introducing founders to assist in key transactions.

• Hold weekly product line meetings to help leadership teams understand market penetration and bottlenecks in sales processes.

• Create sales promotion materials (such as customer case studies, product updates, get-to-be guides, etc.) and test which selling points can drive potential customers’ decisions.

• As someone who understands customer needs best, provide direction for product development teams to ensure that the team focuses on the development of key functions and capabilities.

In short, a good BD leader needs to be able to build sales infrastructure at the same time and dominate the end-to-end sales process. It is not enough to have one of these abilities.

High autonomy and crypto resilience

The survey found that some of the best performing BD leaders were often former entrepreneurs, or early employees who had created a former company from zero to one. They are well aware of their responsibilities and are extremely responsible for the progress of their work and company goals.

In addition to strong communication and organizational capabilities, "crypto-nativity" should also be used as the recruitment focus. Here are some soft skills to help determine whether a candidate can stick to a multi-industry cycle, including:

• Adaptability : Early sales work in the crypto industry is very different from sales roles in large and mature enterprises. In the latter, most of the processes, infrastructure and narratives have taken shape. And crypto growth leaders need to improvise the sales strategy in the case of market conditions and narrative changes, because effective strategies in bull markets may be completely invalid in bear markets (and vice versa).

• Resilience : Due to the cyclical nature of the industry, candidates need to have a high enthusiasm for the mission of the crypto industry and cannot be easily hit by delayed results. In the crypto world, successful BD strategies are often found after multiple failures, learning, and iterations. Candidates who are merely driven by short-term financial returns are often eliminated in the inevitable market downturn.

Although it is difficult to find candidates that fully meet all requirements, BD leaders with high autonomy and resilience in the field of encryption will lay the foundation for the success of the project.

Tactical execution ability cannot be ignored

Many crypto startups tend to focus too much on strategy during their growth process, but ignore the key role of tactical execution. Surprisingly, the deciding factor is often simply response speed—such as the ability to respond promptly to inbound inquiries, quickly follow up on phone calls, or efficiently solve complex technical problems, according to surveys of decision-making on multiple application technology stacks.

The compound interest effect of good tactics can create long-term winners. Tactical execution is not only the ability to complete tasks, but also a direct manifestation of sensitivity and action to customer needs. Excellent execution can quickly build customer trust, optimize sales conversion rates, and gain an advantage in a highly competitive market. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize candidates who can organize efficient sales processes and prevent potential customers from churn. Here are some interview questions that can be used to evaluate candidate sales abilities:

- What criteria would you use to classify inbound enquiries into low, medium, and high priority? How will the sales process be different for different priorities?

- What questions do you ask during an exploratory business call to determine if a prospect is right for us?

- Do you think it's appropriate to present the presentation directly on a phone call with a prospect? Or, how do you prefer to guide sales calls?

- How quickly will you follow up with potential customers after your first sales call? What information is usually sent?

- What strategies do you try to re-attract their prospects if they become cold?

- If the prospect enters the implementation phase, how will you adjust the communication platform, style and frequency?

The value of execution lies in its ability to transform strategies into practical results. No matter how exquisite the strategy is, if you lack solid execution as support, it will be just a piece of paper in the end. For BD leaders, helping to develop a company's distribution strategy is important, but the real results are often reflected in daily details. Efficient tactical execution not only responds to market demand quickly, but also establishes differentiated advantages in customer experience, thereby winning long-term trust and reputation for the company.

Therefore, when choosing a BD leader, we should not only pay attention to his strategic capabilities, but also examine his execution ability to promote the implementation of things in actual work. Only by having both can we truly provide a continuous driving force for the growth of our company.

Use auxiliary indicators to measure performance

In an emerging industry like crypto, many external factors affect the realization of traditional growth goals, such as revenue, TVL, number of customers or transaction volume. Although it is important to use these growth targets that demonstrate the results of the BD process as the main assessment indicators, attention is also needed to be paid to the auxiliary indicators that drive these results.

Founders should set a clear North Star target for the BD function based on the market signals obtained in early sales. At the same time, a series of auxiliary indicators should be formulated to cope with the impact of market changes, regulatory changes or other macro events.

Here is an example of how the founder can set goals for the BD leader:

• Polaris Target : Achieve $5 million ARR (Annual Recurring Income) by the end of the year

• Main indicators :

  • Number of new paid customers

  • Average Contract Value (ACV) per Customer

• Auxiliary indicators :

  • Number of transactions entering the evaluation stage

  • Number of new potential customers

  • Number of exploratory calls completed with potential customers

  • Number of outreach messages sent to potential customers

Why are auxiliary indicators crucial?

The value of auxiliary metrics is that they can help teams identify bottlenecks in the BD process. For example, if the number of new prospects is low, it may mean that the customer acquisition channel needs to be optimized; if the number of transactions entering the evaluation stage is insufficient, it may require improvement in the mid- and back-end process of the sales funnel. With these metrics, teams can identify problems and act faster, rather than wait until the main metrics perform poorly before starting to reflect.

Dynamically adjust indicators to adapt to changes

The crypto industry is changing extremely quickly, and external environments (such as market volatility, regulatory policy adjustments or technological breakthroughs) may have a significant impact on the business. Therefore, the founder needs to regularly review these auxiliary indicators and adjust them according to actual conditions. For example, if the market environment cools, you may need to pay more attention to the quantity and quality of outreach messages; if competition intensifies, you may need to pay more attention to the success rate of exploratory calls and customer conversion efficiency.

Through this framework, founders can not only better balance the external impact of the crypto industry, but also ensure that the BD process always operates efficiently. At the same time, auxiliary indicators can also motivate teams to focus on controllable and specific actions, thereby creating more growth opportunities for companies amid uncertainty.

Conclusion

Interestingly, many excellent BDs eventually grew into project founders. This is not surprising, after all, they deal with markets, products and users every day, and are well aware of the "from 0 to 1" entrepreneurial approach. Maybe the BD you recruited today will be the founder of the next Web3 unicorn tomorrow.

Finally, I hope that all project parties can find that "God BD" and take off!