Hey guys. This is Steli Efti with Close.io. Let’s talk about hiring and firing salespeople.
So I was talking to a founder the other day and he said you know what Steli, I read your
blog post about the four stages of hiring salespeople for start up. First, you do sales
yourself as a founder. Second, you hire some junior talent and you still manage it as a
founder and kind of explore different sales models and figure out what works and what
doesn’t work. Then as a third step you actually hire Junior sales leader into the organization
to take what you have built in the team that you have created and build up on it and improve
it and only at the fourth stage you actually go and hire senior sales leader, the VP of
sales and take what you have to really scale it. He was describing that he is currently
in stage number two. He has done some sales himself. He had some success with it and now
he is looking for junior salespeople to hire and he was like you know how do I find these
people and how do I know that they have what it takes? How do I interview them in a way
that tells me that they actually have the entrepreneurial sales spirit if they have
the core hustling DNA? The connection you do this or not. So my answer is you don’t.
Right the simple truth is that there is no question, no hack, no interviewing thing you
can do to really know if somebody has what it takes to be really successful in sales.
More specifically start up sales. So what do you do.
Well number one is you have to put them into a high pressure situation as quickly as possible
because the simple truth is that some people are amazing at interviewing and others aren’t
and just because somebody is not really good at interviewing doesn’t mean that they are
not going to good at selling and vice versa. Some people that are awesome master the craft
of impressing you an interview setting just suck at sales. So how do you know? Well once
they have impressed you in the interview you put them to the test as quickly as possible.
What that means is have them do some sales calls. Have them do a sales pitch in front
of you or your entire sales team. Put the pressure on and see how they react. You know
what we are doing with the elastic sales when we were running an out sourced sales team
on demand. When somebody interview with us and went through all the stages and finally
talked to me, right after talking to me if we give them and if I gave them the green
light they would actually have to do sales calls. They would actually have to call people
and pitch them and usually we will have the entire sales, we would have to do that in
the middle of our sales team. So other people would actually observe them. You know what
happened? That single like ten minutes, twenty minutes of sales calls told us so much more
about them than any interview in question would ever would come up with before. With
this one specific guy and I always tell the story with this one guy that came in through
warm introduction like for one of our employees, our senior employee said this guy is awesome.
The guy came in, he interviewed with all of us and we loved him. I interviewed him and
I, I think I have a pretty good you know judgment of people. I thought the guy was awesome like
awesome. We would put him to the test, we will put him in the middle of the sales team
to do some sales calls and the guy melted down like seriously the guy just tanked, he
couldn’t like, he was staring, he was sweating. He couldn’t make a single sales call. He
totally had a break down to the point where I had to step in, take him out of the sales
room go on a walk with him, get some fresh air build him up because he was totally defeated
and tell him dude it’s totally fine. We all fail. It’s a high pressure situation,
no problem. I kind of build him up, built his confidence up.
We were back into the sales room same thing again, he just couldn’t do it. And then
when we set down to analyze what has just transpired. We looked at each other in the
eye and we both agreed he said it, he was like you know what this isn’t working. I
thought I could do this but I can’t this is just not for me. Wow right everybody of
us, every one of us that interviewed him was totally, we were totally flabbergasted like
wow this guy seemed so awesome in the interview. He was so good, so charismatic. Wow you never
know until you know. Now I want to tell you something else. Just because somebody is awesome
and a single moment in time in performing and doing the bunch of sales calls really
well. That doesn’t mean that this person is going to be a champ every single day. They
might be good at this one moment in time but they might not have consistency. They might
not be able to perform when they have a bad day. They might have a bad attitude. Just
sales are a performance sport. You can’t just perform once in a year or once in a while
and then like just you know build on those accomplishments and that performance. It’s
like any other sport, you is to bring it every single time every single game, the score starts
at zero. The same thing with sales. Every single day your score reads zero and you have
to go on to field and perform again. So some people are awesome once in a while
but they are not consistent. How would you ever know that until you actually have them
do some sales for you. So one thing that I recommend a lot of companies and one thing
we did for sure was that we never give somebody a full employment just right after a bunch
of interviews. We would always do a test phase, a contract where they would just work with
us for two weeks, three weeks, or maybe even a month to see and to explore both ends if
this actual really worked. You know sometimes you, it’s not just you it’s sometimes
people interview for a job, they get all excited and after a week they are like wow this company
and this job is not quite the way I interpreted when I first interviewed here. Although the
way they presented it to me. So it’s good and safe and smart thing for both parties
to have a test phase to wait for a little before you propose right. So and here is the
other secret like just because like somebody is a consistent performer and is awesome in
sales doesn’t really mean you should actually keep them on the team. There are many, many
other factors to take into consideration. Are their culture fit, are they an asshole?
Right some people are amazing at what they do but they are assholes.
There is a lot of ways to think about this and one simple model that I have always used
is actually coming from you know old economy, Jack Welch from General Electric one of
the best managers quote, unquote. One thing that he said that I really loved and read
about a long time ago is that he looks at every hire in a quadrant and every hire fits
into one of these four bucket space actually. Either you are skilled, you know talented
and capable and those are easy. Everyone of us loves these people, these are the A+ people
the rock stars, the champs. Everyone who sees this people, it’s quite easy to actually
identify them. You are capable and willing. The next ones are the capable but unwilling.
Those are where a lot of companies strip up and I a lot of sales teams strip up. If somebody
is a total killer, so amazing at what they do but they are just an asshole. Right egotistical
asshole. What do you do, they are really performing, they bring all these revenue, they kill for
your team. But they have you know all these, they are creating all these issues all these
cultural clashes and making your life a little worse because you constantly have to deal
with them being an asshole to everybody and bring down the culture and the spirit. What
do you do? A lot of people or companies, a lot of sales managers have a hard time to
have a clear stands on this and this is actual a bucket that is either really easy time with.
Fuck those guys. I will never work with somebody no matter how amazing they are if they are
an asshole. And I, we said no to, we didn’t hired people, we fire people that were amazing
at what they did, just because they weren’t willing, they weren’t a culture fit and
we have no remorse. I have no, I never you know lost any sleep over that type of person
of but maybe companies do. You need know where your weaknesses and strengths
are in the way that you are hiring and evaluating people. Then there is the third quadrant which
is the willing but incapable. And this is my week spot. This is my soft spot. These
are people that are hungry, that are willing they want to. But are not quite there yet.
And I have been that person for most of my life. So I have a weak spot you know for this
people and I want to give people a chance if they are really willing. Here is the problem
with these people. You need to give them a chance. I think it’s smart to do and I think
it’s smart to try to develop them into being capable and willing and turn them into rock
stars because then you know you actual create a tremendous value in the world for your company
as well as for their lives and the world in general. You took somebody and you pushed
their game into becoming a rock star, a champ and an amazing person.
The problem with these people is sometimes the delta x, the missing knowledge and skill
set from them becoming going from incapable to capable is so big that you can’t overcome
it in any reasonable amount of time during their employment with your company, might
take two or three years for them to get there. They just don’t have that kind of time especially
when you are running a small business or a start up. So in those cases you have to let
go after a very specific time that you have set if they are not able to perform and this
is my biggest weak spot. I always give and have given these people two months time, too
many chances and it actually destroys value on both ends. It actually makes them kind
of chase this pipe dream and it makes you constantly in the entire rest of your team
feeling bad because these people are getting chances over chances over chances and just
not performing. It just brings down the entire team. It brings down them, it means that this
is not the perfect environment for them to make the next step. They need to go somewhere
where they can take that next step and become willing and capable and then go to the next
base that is a little bit more challenging and grow and kind of stretch step by step
until they are able to perform at the level you need them to. Right and this is something
that I have made a lot of mistakes about but this is something that you need to be aware
of. Some companies are pretty black and white. If you are incapable doesn’t matter how
willing you are you will never get a chance. Some companies like ours are more willing
to give those people chances and try to develop them into A+ talent. If you do, you need to
have real hard deadlines, time lines. You need to be transparent and communicating that
with them. And then if they get there with your help in time awesome. If they don’t
you need to split ways and give those gals and guys a chance to shine somewhere else
and move forward with your team. And then the fourth quadrant which are the
unwilling and incapable. These are the easiest, these are the easiest group of people to identify.
Right it’s easy for you to tell that somebody doesn’t know what they are doing and they
don’t care, they have a stinky attitude. No thank you. So think of all the sales hires
that you are interviewing as fitting one of these four quadrants and depending upon which
one they are make a decision to move forward even really aggressively in hiring them or
really aggressively in firing them or having a plan on how to develop them and have a clear
deadline until when they have to hit certain milestones whether you have to keep them or
let them go and one last thing about hire be and firing salespeople. The hiring part
is not even that important, the firing is much more important. You are going to make
hiring mistakes. There is no way around it. You are going to make mistakes. That’s okay
and there is always going to be part of the way you hire which you have to focus on the
these making becoming really good at firing and letting go of people when it’s not working
and really not sucking at that because that’s something that you can actually perfect.
Once you have realized that somebody doesn’t fit into your team or doesn’t fit into your
culture or doesn’t perform at the rate that you want and need them to, you need to let
them go, you need to let them go fast and you need to help them find another environment
where they can shine. So that you can actually take care of them. If you learn to let go
of people fast and not meander on this point forever and give them an unlimited amount
of chances and bring down the entire team moral and team performance and create all
kinds of stress and anxiety everywhere. Like that’s going to be the reason why your team
really sucks and your team performance will suck. If you make hiring mistakes once in
a while and you correct them really fast, nothing is going to suffer and it’s actually
going to bring up the moral because the team is going to respect you more as a sales leader
but they are also going to know that this is a team about performance. This is not just
a, it’s not a family, it’s a team and yes we love each other and we are going to
stand for each other and support each other but we have to all perform and carry own weight
and when somebody doesn’t you know we will take care of that and help that person to
go somewhere else where they can. But we are not going to just like you know carry people
with us forever if they are not performing and we also on the other side if somebody
is a really bad person or a huge asshole we are not going to stand for that either. In
this team is not going to stand for this. We are going to look for A+ that are amazing
people and great cultural fits. And if you go with that philosophy you are going to be
able to hire people, you don’t have to worry that much about having the perfect interviewing
process just put them in doing as quickly as possible. Give both parties some time so
see can they consistently bring the results and if they do, you want to hold on to them
forever if they don’t you want to let go of them really, really quickly and help them
get somewhere else where they can.