Here’s how bringing on an advisor often goes. A founder meets an impressive exec through a mutual friend, who insists they’ll get along, which they do. There’s real chemistry, the exec clearly knows their stuff, so an advisor title gets handed out, equity gets granted and the founder assumes intros will start appearing.
The problem is that in the advisor’s mind they only signed up to show up once a month, share some wisdom and continue to vest the equity for the next two years. Fast forward six months, nothing has materialized so they quietly stop talking to each other.
It’s a shame when this happens because hiring the right type of advisor can actually be an excellent way to scale your warm intros way beyond your personal network and keep your top of funnel humming.
This post covers:
How to decide what type of advisor you are hiring
How to be upfront about what you need them to do
How to screen out advisors who aren’t up for the job
How to get value out of the one-win advisor
How to structure the relationship
Decide what kind of advisor you are buying
There are 3 types of advisor for GTM. You need to know which one you’re buying
Introductions: someone who knows a lot of people in your ICP and is willing to introduce them to you.
Expertise: someone who has sold to your ICP and can advise you on how to build pipeline and close deals.
Branding: someone you can name drop to others to impress them.
Be upfront about what you are buying
An advisor whose job is making introductions is functionally not that different from an SDR. The difference with an advisor is that you have lower expectations on volume and higher expectations on quality.
Setting these expectations is the part that founders often skip because it feels rude to say to someone you admire, “I’d like to bring you on as an advisor because you know the right people. I need my advisors to make 2 intros a month. Are you up for doing that?”.
But it’s not an insult, it’s a job description for a role that many genuinely excellent people are happy to do. If they hesitate when answering it tells you everything you need to know — just part ways with them on good terms.