How to Build a Sales Team for a Product the Market Doesn't Understand Yet

Executive Summary: Larry Salazar is building NestSTEPS, the first plug-and-play way to offer homeownership as an employee benefit. There was no market to sell into. So he threw out the standard sales hire, made PR his top growth lever, and built a partner channel by promoting his partners first. Here's the playbook for selling something the market has never seen.

Most founders scale sales the same way. Land a few deals, then hire a rep with a strong resume and hand them the pipeline. Larry Salazar tried that. It didn't work. NestSTEPS was selling into empty space, and no resume fixes that. Homeownership as an employee benefit is a category most buyers have never heard of.

On The Revenue Vault, Larry walked through how he rebuilt the sales motion from scratch. If you're a founder selling something new, these are the plays.

Why does hiring an experienced seller fail in a new category?

Larry hired a seller with real experience selling benefits. The results fell short of the plan. The real issue sat one level down, in the assumption behind the hire.

In a new category, the buyer is not ready to buy. The HR benefits director who takes the meeting is rarely the one who signs. They have to carry the idea up to a CFO, sometimes to a full committee. So the job on the ground becomes education and advocacy. Closing comes later. Larry needed someone who could arm an internal champion to sell up the chain. A traditional closer is built for a different game.

Who should you actually hire to sell something new?

Larry's screen changed. Experience selling the product moved down the list. Passion for the mission moved to the top.

"The only difference between myself and maybe a professional seller is that I have a passion for what we're actually doing," he said. "If you can find someone who can emulate that, you've just completed the formula." He now looks for relationship builders, trust builders, people who think strategically and carry real belief in the mission. That belief is what closes deals in a category nobody understands yet.

How did NestSTEPS grow without a big sales team?

Two moves drove the growth, and neither was a bigger sales headcount.

First, PR. Larry has spent 25 years in marketing, and most marketers treat PR as a secondary channel. He flipped that. In a new category you have to shape the narrative and educate the market before anyone can buy. PR was the lever. It put NestSTEPS on podcasts and in trade publications, and it started the conversation about homeownership as a benefit. He never pitched the product. He talked about the idea.

Second, channels. Selling direct to employers is slow and heavy. So Larry bifurcated the go-to-market and started building channel partners: benefit brokers and PEOs who already own the audience he wants. In about a year that gave NestSTEPS multiple partner companies and access to thousands of employees.

What's the right way to build channel partnerships?

Most partner strategies are transactional. Trade client lists, refer each other, move on. Larry thinks 80% of partnerships go nowhere for exactly that reason.

His approach flips it. Instead of marketing himself to his partners, he markets his partners. He pitches his benefit brokers to media for interviews, helps them land conference stages, and builds webinars around them. The logic is simple. If your partner wins because of you, they bring you in without being asked. "You have to be able to give before you can get," he said. The partnerships that last are the ones where both sides gain.

How do you keep deals alive over a long sales cycle?

New categories mean long cycles. Buyers need time for education and time to build trust. Larry stopped calling it a sales cycle at all. He calls it a relationship-building cycle.

The systems he's building reflect that. The system is about follow-up, the kind that keeps a relationship warm over months. The close is downstream of that. He has a name for the pattern he hates: the seller who goes quiet, then resurfaces six months later only when they want to sell something. In a new category, the buyer is your advocate and your ally long before they're your customer. Treat the relationship that way and the deal follows.

The bottom line

Larry's not waiting for the perfect sales hire before he goes to market. He's building the system first: hire for belief, educate the market through PR, grow through partners you make successful, and nurture relationships instead of chasing closes. That's how you sell a category the market hasn't caught up to yet. He believes homeownership as a benefit will be the next 401k. The way he's building the sales engine, he might be right.

FAQ

What is NestSTEPS? NestSTEPS is a Provo, Utah company that turns homeownership into an employee benefit through automated savings, employer contributions, and live financial education. Fewer than 1 in 100 employers offer anything like it today.

Why did Larry Salazar stop hiring experienced sellers? Because his buyer is not the decision maker. He needs people who educate and build advocacy so an internal champion can sell the idea up to finance. Closers built for the first call don't fit.

What was Larry's most effective growth lever? PR. He used it to shape the narrative and educate a brand-new category, which opened doors to podcasts, press, and partner conversations.

How should founders build channel partnerships? Promote your partner first. Help them win, and they bring you deals without being asked.

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