Podcast episode
How to Avoid Hiring the Wrong Sales Reps and Build a Winning Team (John Sherer, Growth Assistant)
30 Minutes to President's Club8 Aug 202431 min
Description
FOUR ACTIONABLE LEADERSHIP TAKEAWAYS Ask why the candidate is leaving their current job and why they want to join yours. This assesses their storytelling ability, crucial for sales. Once you want to hire someone, sell them on your company but also highlight potential downsides. This builds trust and sets realistic expectations. If unsure about a hire, don't proceed. Second-guessing can lead to issues and regret. Offer positions without negotiating compensation. Emphasize performance-based pay; top earners prove it on the leaderboard. PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB COO @ Growth Assistant VP of Sales @ Lattice Sales Director @ Lattice VP of Sales @ Appcues RESOURCES DISCUSSED Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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There's a bunch of them out there where it's like when you have a monopoly over something and you're coming into a hyper-competitive space, I don't know if that's a background that's going to lead to a really high volume of success. Success at these businesses, the most important thing is product-market fit. If there's a ton of product-market fit and there are a ton of inbound leads, these jobs aren't that hard. “Then eventually the leads slow down based on your growth, and you have to outbound,” and the space heats up, and it gets competitive, and then it gets tough. But if you're hiring somebody from one of those environments, they might not have actually had to hone their sales skills, but the logo looks great. You get to go to your boss and say, hey, look, I hired this person from this super-sexy company. I think there's a lot of risk there, and I tend to avoid it.
It's the same exact thing. Can you tell me a tight story where I go? Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. I think it could be a fit. Like if you get through that point, I'm probably already selling you, right? I'm like switching gears right there. I might do a little deal stage, like, or deal size. I think that's relevant and important sales cycle length, but I prefer the recruiter “goes and gets that information before me.” Cause this fits there. I tend not to play with, I want to hear you give me a tight ass narrative on why you're leaving your current job and why you want to come here. And I trust my intuition on evaluating that. What would be an example, bad answer?
discovery about their situation so that your sale is stronger? How do you transition the conversation from there? Yeah, I'm doing discovery. I got this from my buddy, Mike Peachy, who's at Day AI, which is a sales reporting software. And basically, like, when you identify that you want somebody, you sell them aggressively until the finish line. Tell them all the great “things about the company. Obviously, that starts with qualification and understanding what they” care about, and being authentic and not selling them on something that doesn't exist, right? Then at the end, I'm going to switch gears, and I'm going to tell them why they shouldn't join. And I'm going to make them sell me on why they want to join. It's just like going negative in
In Hiring SDRs
They're not enrolling this interview process. If you just start ripping them with interview questions, they're going to be like, Whoa, I was just taking an introductory call. How do you run those types of situations? I show up on the phone. I try to control the energy minute one. I want it to be a zoom call, not a phone call. I'm going to like lean in and like, I'm going to shift the energy of the room. “And I'm just gonna say, so why'd you take the call?” And to me, like, that's it. It's like, that's it. And if they're going to be stubborn with that question and be like, you emailed me. I'm like, I don't want to talk to you. Like I'm over it. I'm over it. You know, like, cool. Maybe, maybe I'm not fighting hard enough. I don't know. But that's my feeling.
it. The way that I'll oftentimes start an interview is I'll start with a brief one minute pitch because if I've outbounded them, they probably have very little idea of what we actually do and the problem we're trying to solve, the sales team we're trying to build. And I'll tell them a little bit about the org we're trying to build, what we're all about, what the stage is, what it's not. “And then I'll ask why you took the call.” And then from there, it's just more and more questions trying to understand the type of career that they'd like to build for themselves. If you get the right bits of information out of that person, that allows you to sell the person.
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