Build a High-Performance Sales Team
What is critically important to executing a business strategy for a software startup? Selling our product is. Sales roles are critical positions, yet do we have a success formula for the job? How is that working for us?
What role does management have in defining the job descriptions for sales roles? Do we really know what is required to perform the role at an expert level? Have we done it? Aren’t we responsible for the performance of the team; the outcomes?
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Build a High-Performance Sales Team
“The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage since very few organizations are very good at it.”
Sales professionals are the face of a company to most of the business world and possess one of the mission-critical roles for an enterprise software startup. Historically, hiring decisions were frequently made using insufficient criteria and a lackluster approach, especially given the importance.
The modern-day interview process is attributed to Big Tech and has become famous or infamous (to those chosen for interviews). The new norm is to use automation to screen resumes for disqualification, producing a small subset of candidates to put through the interview process.
HR chooses employees from other departments in the business to interview the candidate. A different role, defined by the theme of the interview questions, is assigned to each interviewer. Examples of themes used include collaboration (works well with others), ethics, suitability for the role, inclusiveness, problem-solving ability, and challenger versus follower behavior. In general, it eliminates or, at the very least, minimizes the part played by the hiring manager in the process, presumably mitigating bias.
The following process varies, by the company and within a company, depending on the role. There are four to ten interviews of 45-60 minutes each. The interviews are one-sided: the company interviewer asks the questions, the candidate delivers their answer and does most of the talking while the interviewer is recording the answer, usually by typing into a software system as the candidate speaks. Some of the interviews are back-to-back, while others are months apart. The entire process can take two to six months before selecting a candidate and extending an offer.
The companies advertise their interview process as a source of pride and accomplishment. Some go as far as producing statistics of the percentage of those “making it” to an accepted offer from the total number of applicants. The lower the rate, the more pride the company has in its process. “It takes six months to get through our hiring process, and we only accept 2.5% of all applicants.”
While there are many advantages to this modern approach, there are significant flaws when hiring the best sales talent. For one, startups don’t have six months to fill sales openings. Time is money and running out of cash is the number risk to startups. Another is the disproportionate amount of effort invested in disqualifying a candidate in areas not related to the role when compared with finding the best at performing the requirements of the sales role.
Minimizing the hiring manager in the process, and in general, the elimination of sales leadership in defining the success formulas and attendant job descriptions is a fatal flaw. Sales management is responsible for the sales team’s performance and should be required to know what is essential to perform the sales role at an expert level. To be the best at our positions, we need to be doing elements of that role ourselves.
The modern process lacks the elements of identifying what the candidate enjoys, what they don’t enjoy doing, what is required of them, and how well they do the necessary things they do not enjoy. Interview questions written by sales managers might take into account topics such as:
Talent goes where talent wants, Listen twice as much as you speak, the art of asking questions, Attitude toward the activities required of the role, the game inside the game of a particular sale on their resume, their life story – what events had a lasting impact and why, Influence, Repetitions (Malcolm Gladwell), Halo effect, Adversity, and Lessons learned.
Hiring is the first step in building a high-performance sales team. Enablement, continuous coaching, motivation, execution, retention, learning, culture, process, and enjoyment are all critical components.
“Strategy is a commodity. Execution is an art.”
Increase your access to sales talent. Take advantage of the halo effect. Benefit from the most current best practices for hiring. Improve sales performance and accelerate your growth while reducing customer acquisition costs.
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