When a new sales hire changes the team dynamic
Hiring a strong salesperson from a competitor can be useful. It can also unsettle a small team fast.
In a two or three person sales function, one new hire is not just another seat. They change the pace, the comparisons, the training load, and sometimes the confidence of the person who arrived first. If the original rep suddenly feels replaced instead of supported, the manager has a different problem from the one they thought they were solving.
The clean way to handle it is to make the operating model explicit. Who owns which accounts? Who trains whom? What does good activity look like? Where does the founder step in, and where should the reps solve it themselves?
A few things I would put in writing early:
Top performers can raise the ceiling, but they can also expose weak management habits. If the team only works when everyone is guessing politely, it is not really a sales process yet.