Finding Elite Sales Talent

A few years into my sales leadership career, I learned a hard lesson about good sales talent.

Out of the blue, one of my best reps, Jamie, tells me, "I'm leaving to work at a startup competitor. I'll be taking a pay cut, but I want more responsibility and exposure to different aspects of the business, and they're giving me equity.”

Everyone was stunned, including me. Objectively, Jamie had no reason (that I was aware of) to leave. He was earning more money than he'd ever made, he was at the top of the sales rankings, and everyone on the team admired his success and looked up to him. It never occurred to me that one of the best reps in our industry, representing the best product in the category (ours), would leave for an unproven company and launch a competitive offering. Inside, I was crushed. I instinctively wanted to take it personally, but I played it cool because despite feeling crushed, I knew that good salespeople eventually leave, and it’s usually at a highly-inconvenient time.

I said, 'Fine.’

I made a phone call to a candidate named Brad, an elite salesperson I'd taken through our interview process a few months back, and said, 'Hey, I know we've been talking for a few months, and we both agreed that when the time was right, you should join our sales team. I can send you an offer letter today. When can you start?' He said, 'I'll give a two-week notice. They'll probably tell me today's my last day, so I can start on Monday.' I said, 'Great, let's do it.’

I then went to my CEO and told him, "Jamie is leaving." I explained where Jamie was going and why. "I know this seems like a shock, and you might be concerned about the gap this creates on our team, but I've already talked to Brad, and he starts Monday.”

He looked at me, smiled like a proud father would, and said, "That a boy."

You might be wondering how the CEO knew about Brad, a candidate for a position we didn't have available until a few minutes ago. Good question.

And by the way, Brad, this elite-level salesperson, was found by me and didn't come with an expensive recruitment fee. He'd already gone through our entire screening and interview process, met his would-be sales manager, and I'd already checked his references and vetted him. My CEO and others on the executive team had already met and got to know him.

You see this in sports all the time.

The Green Bay Packers knew their superstar quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, would eventually leave—retire on top of his game or take a big payday from another team.

Did they wait for that day to happen, then figure out how to replace him?

No. They drafted his replacement, Jordan Love, before Rodgers left. Before Rodgers had even thought to leave. Jordan Love comes into apprentice under Rodgers so that when the time comes, they've got an elite replacement ready to go.

I'm writing this book so that when you are eventually (not if, but when) faced with the departure of a star performer, you aren't left with a big hole to fill and no one to step in and sell.

Good sales leaders know that good reps always leave at a highly inconvenient time, and that no matter who leaves and when, they must have an elite-level salesperson ready to start immediately.

Let me be clear, though. I didn't used to work like this…

I've got another story that will sound familiar.

A great salesperson working on my team, Julie, tells me, "I'm pregnant, but I'm going to come back to work. My career is important to me.”

She goes on maternity leave, so we put together some contingency plans to cover her while she's on maternity leave, with the expectation that she's coming back.

Well, she has the baby, I check in with her, "Yeah still coming back."

Two weeks before she's supposed to return to work, she tells me, "Actually, I love being a mom and I'm not coming back to work."

And I went, “F*ck!”

I don't have anybody to replace Julie, the reps who are covering her territory during her leave are over-extended, and in two weeks, she's not coming back, and this territory is open.

And that's just one scenario that might lead to an unexpected and abrupt exit

Later in my sales leadership career, I had another situation very close to this where I had to put a salesperson into treatment for a mental health condition that I didn't see coming.

Just experiencing that discomfort was enough pain, coupled with the self-awareness, for me to say, "Man, Julie didn't expect this. The other salesperson didn't expect to have to go to treatment. No one, including the departing salespeople, could have seen this coming."

I never wanted to feel that way again.

That's about the time when I told myself I always have to have a pipeline for every territory on this team.

What does that look like? It starts by pinning this statement to the wall:

"No more vacant territories.”

A vacant sales position is career-threatening to a sales leader.

Someone unexpectedly leaves, and most leaders fall into a reactive mindset.

They post the job and wait for a suitable candidate among a wasteland of losers and wanna-be’s.

"Joe turned in his two-week notice. I'll post this job on Indeed, sit here everyday, and wade through the 100 loser applicants that come through my inbox.”

You wait, it's been a few weeks, and you tell the boss, "I haven't found anyone suitable yet. Still looking.”

All the while, your sales plan is going up in flames.

The company is missing out on potential pipeline and closed deals because it has less selling capacity than it was budgeted to have.

Every month that goes by, even if you're on plan with a reduced force, you run the risk of something else happening, some other uncontrollable factor, losing a big customer, a change in the competitive landscape, etc. And you didn't anticipate it. It's not your fault, but you're accountable for not considering that it could have happened. And it'll ultimately be on you because you got further and further behind plan.

And there's a paradox here

You have to balance that with this immutable truth that your responsibility to fill the job with the right candidate supersedes your responsibility to fill it quickly.

I think a lot of leaders conflate patience with reactivity, confuse the two, and will tell you, "Well, I'm just waiting on the right candidate." I hear that, but what you're doing (creating to applicants) is unlikely to get you the right candidate.

So it's a compounding problem.

And the reason none of this works is because elite salespeople don't look for jobs.

Tryout vs Scouting

Most companies use a tryout approach to filling open roles. It's open to the public, and anyone can apply. This approach works for most roles in the organization, but it doesn’t work for sales positions because good salespeople don’t tryout (apply to jobs). If you're lucky, it might help you hire a competent salesperson.

But it won't get you elite.

Pro and college sports use a scouting approach because they know that the talent pool showing up for a tryout is not the same as an invitation-only workout. They know that the talent level is just fundamentally different.

Scouting is an invitation to interview versus an open tryout and the distinction matters.

With open tryouts, you're going into it blind. You don't know who's going to apply. You can’t predict if talented applicants will apply, and you’re left choosing from a small, less-talented applicant pool.

But scouting is proactively observing players in their sport 'being' elite, creating distinction amongst their peers on a different team, at a different level. It’s a practice of interrupting good talent and inviting them to showcase their talents on your team.

Scouting is cherry-picking. Tryout is hope.

You'll notice that it's the prevailing way of thinking in sports. Tryouts are a rare thing. It happens situationally when teams find themselves in a bind.

In sports, scouting is common, and tryouts are rare. In business, tryouts are common, but scouting is rare.

Why?

The sports industry has realized the reality of scarcity at the elite talent levels.

There are more players with delusions and aspirations of being elite than there are actual elite performers. Businesses don't believe that or haven't yet seen the data. The Harvard Business Review suggests that top-performing salespeople can outperform average salespeople by 2-3x. However, they represent a small percentage of the overall sales workforce—fewer than 20% of sales reps consistently meet or exceed quota, indicating a gap in the supply of elite sales talent. Most companies hiring sales talent have convinced themselves that there is an abundance of qualified salespeople.

They operate with the mindset of “if we post it they will come.”

Why are most businesses unaware of the scarcity of good sales talent?

Scouting is unconventional in business. Most companies haven't adopted a scouting practice because tryouts work for every other role in the company.

Outside of a few key executive roles, every other role in a business can successfully filled with the typical tryout.

So why is it required in sales?

Because elite salespeople aren't going to come to your tryout. They're already on the roster somewhere else, busy making money and earning awards.

For every other non-sales role, the easiest way to make more money is to get another job. On average, leaving your current employer for a new employer will yield a 15-25% salary increase.

Unfortuntely when it comes to middle-of-the-pack salespeople, the best way to get a raise is to apply to another sales job, because these individuals know that the work of getting a new job is less than climbing out of the performance hole they currenlty find themselves in.

However elite salespeople will make more money at their current company by earning bonuses and commissions from the sales they are creating—because the are 2-3X better than the rest of the sellers on the team. They don't need a new job. Elite salespeople are creating the business. They are creating the customers. They are driving revenue and being paid handsomely for their success.

Peter Drucker says that the sole purpose of any business is to create a customer. The rest is just an expense.

Everything else in the company exists to support you, the sales team. So you've got to go interrupt elite salespeople being successful, creating customers someplace else.

Where do you find them?

Option 1 - Partner with a recruiting firm that specializes in sales and already has elite candidates in their database. You can tell them you only want people who are currently employed, and you share with them the desired non-obvious traits, and a current job description or scorecard that clearly defines what’s expected in the role.

That's the fastest option.

It’s also the most expensive option.

Option 2 - Go find them yourself. Be the sales leader that recruits and screens thier own candidates.

This option can be slower than hiring a recruiter and requires that the sales leader dedicates time to the activity—time they may not currently have.

Option 2 doesn’t seem as expensive because you don’t pay recruiting fees, but it comes at a cost. The cost is less time to coach and train the existing team, and the cost associated with building up a talent pipeline that may not exist in the sales leader’s network.

There's a third option here where you do both. You don't have to chose one.

Let's start by assuming you're doing it yourself.

Here are some sources that consistently produce elite salespeople:

• Proactively search for and reach out on LinkedIn to have quick discovery 'Pick Your Brain' sessions with reps that look elite on LinkedIn.

• Ask other elite reps on your and other sales teams, “who's good?”

• Ask your customers, "Hey, which of the reps who call on you are just the best? I wanna meet them, regardless of what they sell.”

All of these will yield warm introductions to elite salespeople that aren’t looking for a job, but might be considering a new role if the circumstances are right.

When it comes to LinkedIn searches, what should you look for that signifies an elite salesperson?

I fundamentally believe that if you are good at selling in today's world, you understand that using LinkedIn to communicate value to the marketplace is something you must do.

So elite salespeople have thousands of connections and have mastered the balance of using their LinkedIn for personal gain and also promoting the problems they solve. Not necessarily the company they work for, but the category of problems they’re capable of solving.

Essentially, they’re good content marketers.

They're not hard to find on LinkedIn because they will fill your feed with useful information.

Then what?

What you don't do is try to interview them for a job

You either stroke their ego by complimenting their track record of success or play into their need to want to teach, which is another form of ego. Some of them want to teach and that strokes their ego. Some of them want to be flattered and that strokes their ego. either way, play the game. Stroke away.

"I read your recent post, I thought it was brilliant, I'd love to share notes."

You will appeal to their ego and their sense of insatiable curiosity. And it’ll be hard for them to ignore your flattery, your eagerness to workshop, discuss, and go deeper on a shared interest subject. Maybe not on the first message, maybe it takes two or three. Eventually some cave and respond to you.

If that doesn’t work, reference a shared connection. We both know “John”, let’s chat and get to know one another better.

You're objective is to get on a call with them and on that call to get a better feel for whether this is an elite-level salesperson.

You're going through the interview process without them knowing

The quality of your questions will unlock how good they are. You're asking questions that are a mix of, 'Do they have the non-obvious?' while simultaneously splattering in questions that validate whether they possess the obvious.

But it's still not obvious whether they're elite after one call. It might be obvious that they're not elite, but it's rarely obvious they are elite.

After the first call, If I think they could be elite but I'm not sure, I generally ask them if they have any interest in talking to me about a problem I'm currently facing.

The first time I talk with them, I'm trying to figure out what makes them good. Like, what do they do that other reps don’t? Why do they love what they’re doing? If that goes well, I'm trying to subconsciously communicate to them that I can make them better at their job. I can make their life better. I’m a leader worth following.

So if we have a good conversation, and I'm not yet convinced, I might say, “Hey salesperson, I’m building the best sales team in our industry, and I’m convinced that once we assemble this category-defining sales team, it will change the way business is conducted in our industry. This is a provocative “mission.”

If they’re elite, they'll start asking questions about the mission because they're insatiably curious. They will want to know how you define this best-in-class sales team. You then sell them the vision of what could be possible with the right people on the sales team.

They want to be valuable

Elite salespeople have self-awareness. So at some point during the exchange they're going to say, “OK, I love what your trying to acomplish with your sales team, are you open to me or someone I know joining this mission of building a best-in-class sales team? What kind of help are you looking for?” I’ve got them. Set the hook.

And that's when we shift the conversation into, "Would you want to be a part of this team?" Right now, I need to gain permission to interview them because I haven't yet identified if they're willing to explore this opportunity.

I'm also trying to demonstrate to them during these early conversations that I'm a different kind of leader, and that I have something useful to offer. I'm trying to get them excited enough about me and the opportunity to submit to my interview process.

Then, after interviewing them in my process, I'll know if they're elite.

Part of discovering whether someone is elite is seeing their work in action, not just having them tell you about it and the interview process, which we will cover later, when properly designed will easily let you see how they work, think, and sell.

I need to see them selling before inviting them to join the team.

But what if you don't have any vacant positions?

It goes back to this productive paranoia mindset that tells you, even if you don't have vacant positions today, you must proactively expect that you will at some unpredictable, highly inconvenient time in the future.

I'm always asking 'what if.'

I don't get comfortable. I have learned the hard way that all good reps leave—eventually.

I'm talking as if a position is available because, in reality, it always is. No matter what, if I find someone elite I'm going hire them and make a position for them.

At some point, you’ll arrive at a place where you’ve filled all open or budgeted sales positions, but that doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to continue to find elite salespeople. Keep interviewing and give yourself the choice of elevating the performance of the team by making proactive roster changes.

A lot of my reaching out is when I don't have a position, and it disarms these candidates because they don't feel like I'm trying to convince them to take another job.

And if they're not interested right now?

The word that comes to mind would be nurturing, keeping them close.

I make sure I read what they consistently post on LinkedIn.

No doesn't mean no forever. It just means 'not right now'. I go right back to the drawing board.

But, assuming they are interested…

Eventually some of the salespeople you speak with will want to be a part of what you’re building. You’ve piqued their curiosity, and getting them to commit to going through the interview process is the next step.

I'm going to say, look, I know you're not looking for a job. I knew that to begin with. I also know two things to be true:

• No good sales rep is ever looking for a job. And I believe that you're good. So of course I know you're not looking for a job.

• The second thing I know to be true is that every good career opportunity has found me when I wasn't looking for it. And I might just be that for you.

They're flattered, and it's hard to ignore that truth.

The last thing I say is something I discuss in my book Revenue Harvest: that I require every rep to interview somewhere else once a year. I challenge them with the idea that maybe theya re missing something that could be available for them and their career.

I ask them, "When was the last time you interviewed for a job?" Regardless of the answer, I say, "What do you stand to lose? What if you go through this process and all it does for you is affirm that you're in the right place at the right time. Isn't that valuable to you?”

What's also happening, simultaneously, by my set of questions and the way I ask them is that I'm demonstrating to them that I'm a leader they should come work for. That I think differently than their current sales manager, who's probably just only in it for their production. That I'm just a better leader.

Then I explain that the dynamic is about to change

The dynamic goes from two friendly people that met on the internet to a more formal interview process. I'm going to control this process. It's going to be more structured from here on.

I already know that you're a good salesperson. I'm trying to evaluate whether you'll be good right now on this team for this offering?

And no hard feelings either way, if you back out or I back out, but this is the process. So I lay it all out.

Then I lay out step by step. What the interview process will look like and then commence the interview process.

👉 That's what we'll cover in the next chapter.