How Alex Heiden Went From Sales Rep to Building Closify
Alex Heiden is the founder of Closify, a hiring platform where online business owners hire experienced, commission-only sales reps. In about 13 months he went from closer, to sales agency, to freelance recruiter, to software founder. He talks with Michael about validating the idea with a single thread on X, how the platform runs with very little human work, why he believes in commission-only sales, and the LinkedIn, cold email and SEO channels bringing in customers.
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Topics covered
- From closer to sales agency to recruiter to Closify
- Validating a product with one post on X
- Why Alex is investing in a personal brand
- How Closify vets and onboards sales reps
- The gap in hiring sales reps online
- Why Closify focuses on commission-only reps for online businesses
- LinkedIn, cold email and SEO for customer acquisition
Key takeaways
- Each step of Alex's path was about making hiring faster and more affordable, which led to a self-serve platform.
- A good post can validate an idea. Alex launched Closify with a thread on X and woke up to 50+ DMs.
- Hiring reps who've already sold for businesses like your clients' made placements faster and more predictable.
- At Closify, the only fulfillment work is getting new vetted reps into the platform. The software does the rest.
- Release new reps gradually so clients don't get choice overload.
- Sending connection requests and reposting good content on LinkedIn can bring in more inbound calls than outbound messages.
- If you might exit someday, get legal structure and contracts in order early.
Show notes
🎯 From closer to founder
Alex was working as a closer while in college, taking calls whenever he wasn't in class or playing tennis, sometimes as late as 10 p.m. Once he had four clients and no more time, he trained a friend to take calls and split the commission. That became a sales agency working with B2C clients.
When he tried to break into B2B, prospects said they didn't want an agency. They wanted in-house reps. So he became a freelance recruiter, training and placing reps. That worked but was slow and expensive, so he started recruiting only reps who'd already sold for his clients' niche, starting with digital marketing agencies. Placements got faster and more predictable. To make hiring even faster and cheaper, he turned it into a self-serve platform.
“how do I make it even faster even more affordable and the answer was to turn it into a self-serve hiring platform”
Alex Heiden, 2:27
🚀 Validated with one post
Alex's first clients all came from his personal brand on X. He launched Closify with a thread that ended with a call to action to DM him if you wanted sales reps. He went to bed and woke up to 50+ DMs. That early revenue paid for a developer to build the real platform. After relaunching in July, they started running cold email campaigns.
📱 Personal brand as an inevitability
Alex likes X because he can type out his thoughts, but he isn't a fan of recording videos or short clips. Still, he sees content as unavoidable for growing a business, and he points to people like Hormozi and Grant Cardone doubling down on their personal brands. He's hired a YouTube editor and someone to cut short clips, and he wants to be known in B2B for building end-to-end sales teams.
⚙️ How the platform runs
Closify gets a couple hundred applications a month. A recruitment or HR person reaches out to qualified applicants, schedules an interview, verifies their experience and checks their availability before the rep is added to the platform. That's the only manual part of fulfillment, which frees Alex for bigger-picture work.
At the time of recording there were about 200 vetted reps, mostly closers plus some SDRs, and about 80 of them hadn't been hired yet. Approved applicants are added 10 to 15 at a time each week so clients don't face choice overload. Closify was also rolling out a feature that lets clients post a job with specific criteria.
“the only human labor required for fulfillment is continuing to get new sales reps into the platform”
Alex Heiden, 5:49
🔍 A gap in the market
Michael says he once posted a sales job on Upwork and got nothing good. He doesn't know anyone who's hired a sales rep there. Alex says the only other sales-only platform he knows of doesn't verify reps, and many reps there are hourly at about $3 an hour.
💰 Why commission-only
Alex prefers online businesses over enterprise for now. Sourcing reps who have experience selling for those businesses is more predictable, and those reps are fine being commission-only. Enterprise sales tends to bring base pay plus commission. He also likes that agencies, SaaS and other online businesses are growing quickly, and he mentions a solar client.
“I really believe sales should be commission only”
Alex Heiden, 9:36
📈 Getting customers: LinkedIn, cold email and SEO
LinkedIn was working best at the time. Alex's SDRs send about 750 connection requests a week and repost his threads from X as LinkedIn content three times a day, and each post ends with a call to action for Closify. An automation tool also messages each new connection with two or three follow-ups, but he thinks more calls come from people reaching out inbound.
Cold email worked well too. At one point they were sending about 500 emails a day with a very simple script and booking around 50 calls a week, though they had shifted some effort to LinkedIn. SEO brings about 1,500 visitors a month to the homepage.
“my SDRs probably get more inbound calls booked than outbound”
Alex Heiden, 10:58
🏁 Exit or keep it?
For now Alex wants to sell Closify, but he isn't sure. A business that makes good money and is mostly hands-off might be worth keeping. He recently hired a lawyer and learned how much legal and contract work, including agreements with employees, needs to be in order long before an exit. So they're doing some structure work now to keep that option open.
About Alex Heiden
Alex Heiden is the founder and owner of Closify, a hiring platform for online business owners, mainly agencies, SaaS, info product and coaching businesses, who want to hire experienced, commission-only sales reps. Clients browse vetted reps and do the interviewing and hiring themselves.
Alex started as a closer in January 2020 while he was in college and playing tennis. He went on to run a small sales agency and then worked as a freelance recruiter placing sales reps. He came up with the idea for Closify in January 2021 and had an MVP out by February 2021. He's most active on X, where he posts at @alexh459.
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