Who to Hire First for Marketing and Sales (and What to Call the Job)
If you run a one-person business built around your expertise, you already know the feeling. You're the speaker, the coach, the consultant, the whole show. You write the proposals. You follow up on the leads. You post the content. You also deliver the actual work people paid you for.
Some months are full. Some months are quiet. Most weeks you're doing five jobs and only one of them is the job people are paying you for.
At some point a question shows up. Who do I hire first on the marketing and sales side? What do I even call that job?
The short answer
For most solo experts who've gotten some traction but not consistency, the first hire isn't a strategist and it isn't a generalist virtual assistant. It's someone who takes what's already bringing you work and makes it happen more often, on purpose, instead of by accident.
A good title for that role is something like Growth and Bookings Coordinator. The job is to own outreach, follow-up and the basic marketing upkeep that keeps opportunities moving toward yes. Not to invent your whole marketing strategy from scratch.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Hiring someone full- or part-time to build your strategy from zero is really hiring a co-founder. Hiring someone to run the engine you already have, more reliably, is hiring your first employee.
Check this before you hire anyone
Before you bring someone on, it helps to know which stage of business you're actually in.
Some people are still figuring things out. The offer shifts depending on who they're talking to. Paid work feels random. There's no real channel or activity bringing clients in, just whatever happens to land.
Other people are past that point. They've had several paying clients who chose them on purpose. They have a rough sense of who hires them and why. Something is already working, even if it's messy. Maybe it's referrals. Maybe it's a bureau relationship if you're a speaker. Maybe it's LinkedIn posts that occasionally turn into a call.
This article is for the second group. If that's not you yet, a hire isn't your next move. A few honest conversations with past clients about why they picked you will do more for you right now than a new employee will.
A simple way to check yourself: can you describe what you do and who you do it for in plain language? Have you had paying clients more than once? Can you point to at least one way new work has shown up for you, even if it's inconsistent? If you can answer yes to those, you're ready to think about hiring.
What the role actually does
A Growth and Bookings Coordinator isn't glamorous work. And that's kind of the point. The job is steady, not flashy.
Day to day, this person handles outreach. They research the right people, organizations or events to contact. And they keep a simple list of who to reach and when.
They handle follow-up, which is where many solo businesses quietly lose money. Leads go cold because nobody followed up. Proposals sit unanswered because everyone got busy. This role exists partly to make sure that stops happening.
They keep your materials current. Your one-sheet, your service page, your case studies. Nothing fancy, just accurate and ready to send.
They track what's happening. How many people you reached out to, how many replied, how many turned into calls or proposals. Enough visibility to notice patterns without turning your business into a spreadsheet exercise.
Why this title beats the obvious alternatives
A lot of solo experts default to one of two hires, and both tend to disappoint.
The first is a "Head of Marketing" type. That role is built for strategy work, brand decks, channel planning. It's a real job, just not the one you need yet. You don't have a strategy gap big enough or enough moving pieces to justify it. And you'll end up paying for thinking instead of doing.
The second is a general virtual assistant. VAs are great at scheduling and inbox management. Outreach and follow-up take a different comfort level. The willingness to send emails. Make asks. Ad chase replies without getting awkward about it. Not every VA wants that part of the job. If they don’t, it shows up fast once they're in the role.
A narrow specialist, like someone who only runs paid ads, can also be the wrong first move. That kind of hire makes sense once ads are clearly how you get most of your work. Most solo experts in the builder stage get work through relationships and referrals first, not ad spend. A specialist ends up optimizing a channel that isn't your main one yet.
A marketing agency or a freelance "marketing person" on retainer is another common first move. And it can quietly become an expensive one. Agencies are built to run campaigns and manage channels. They're not built to make calls on your behalf, follow up after a networking event, or keep a referral partner warm. You end up with content and reports, and still doing the actual outreach and follow-up yourself. The work that was eating your time before stays exactly where it was. Be clear on where your bottleneck is before hiring an agency or freelancer for this role.
The Growth and Bookings Coordinator sits in the middle on purpose. Hands-on enough to actually move work forward. Broad enough to cover outreach, follow-up, and basic marketing upkeep without needing five different specialists.
How this looks depending on your business
The shape of the role shifts a little depending on how you get work, even though the core job stays the same.
If you're a speaker who books mostly through direct outreach, your coordinator spends their time researching events and associations, sending outreach and tracking conversations through to a decision.
If you work mostly through speaker bureaus, the job looks different. They keep your bureau materials current and stay in regular touch with bureau contacts. Then make sure any lead a bureau sends gets a fast, professional follow-up.
If you're a coach or consultant, the coordinator organizes your past clients, current leads, and referral sources. Schedules discovery calls. And runs simple follow-up sequences so people don't fall through the cracks between a conversation and a decision.
If you're a specialist provider, like a designer or copywriter, they stay in touch with past clients, track inquiries and proposal requests. And help keep your portfolio current.
Different details, same underlying job. Keep the opportunities that already exist moving forward instead of stalling out.
A word on strategy
Strategy still matters. Knowing your core offer, your main audience, and the one or two ways you reach them is worth getting right. Sometimes with outside help for a short stretch.
But strategy and execution are different jobs. If you want someone to help design your entire business model with you, you're looking for a strategic partner or consultant. And that's a different relationship and a different budget than most people mean when they say "first marketing hire."
Get your strategy clear enough to act on. Then hire someone to act on it consistently. That order matters more than people expect.
Where to start
Pick out the outreach and follow-up tasks that keep slipping for you right now. The emails you mean to send and don't. The leads you lose track of. The proposals nobody followed up on.
That list is basically the job description for your first marketing and sales hire. Once you can name it, the hiring decision stops being a guess and starts being a specific, fillable job.
If you're still working out what's actually working for you before you get there, that's exactly what a Now What? Clarity Session is built to help untangle.