Josh Long

Solid stuff here. The logo trap is the biggest failure I see happen in hiring. I prefer reps who crushed it in tough businesses because it means they can actually close. Reps riding on a rocketship take all the credit but I've never seen one deliver in another environment.

I find it so fascinating how common it is for business owners to want to hire a manager when there's nothing to manage yet. I don't think a VP of sales is needed until you're past $10M in most businesses. Especially if you build a talented sales team. Sales managers are needed with low level sales to keep the inmates from running the asylum.

There’s more sales talent sitting outside “traditional” roles than most owners think. I put a senior candidate in front of a client today despite the current having a strong bias about who “fits.” The candidate spent the conversation teaching them quite a bit about their own ICP and the client left impressed. When you only hunt for the LinkedIn title that matches your last hire, you miss people who’ve already sold into your world from a different seat. Before you post the next listing, check 3 things: 1. Have they sold to your buyer type, even from another industry? 2. Can they teach you something about your ICP in the interview? 3. Are you screening for the title, or for the insight? The market’s full of people who can contribute. The filter is usually the job post, not the talent pool. And I've found that writing job posts that work like dog whistles for top performers makes all the difference.

The first sales hire usually doesn’t fail because of skill. It fails because the owner has no idea how to manage what they've been doing on autopilot for years. The owner hands over a CRM login, says “go get ’em,” and goes back to running the business. Before your next rep starts, write down 3 things: 1. Who they call, and where those names come from. 2. What a good day looks like (calls, meetings, follow-ups). 3. Who they go to when a deal stalls. If it only lives in your head, you're setting every rep you hire up to fail and lighting money on fire unnecessarily.

I tell business owners daily that providing even the slightest marketing support will do wonders to their sales teams' performance. The key is to view it all as complimentary, not combative like this guy did.

I deal with bottlenecks and the reality is most owners don’t have a sales rep problem. 
Their root issue is they actually have a sales hiring problem. Of the hundreds of companies I’ve been on the inside, the same 3 mistakes show up: 1. Hiring the person they like, not the person who can sell. 2. No written plan for the rep’s first 30 days. 3. Zero support with lead gen. Fix those before you post the next job listing and your odds will improve dramatically on finding talented reps.

There truly is nothing in this world that can match how amazing a great spouse is!

Most owners know what their reps are producing each month. Very few know what each seat should be producing. That gap matters. The money sitting between actual production and Seat Value is your Unrealized Alpha. Closing that gap is easier than you think.

The cost of waiting is almost always larger than the cost of acting. Every extra month with the wrong person in a productive sales seat compounds three things: Revenue Drag. Unrealized Alpha. Frustration from the reps who are actually carrying the number.

Somewhere on your sales team, there may be a seat producing $400k that should be producing $1.2M. Same leads. Same offer. Same market. Same comp plan. A different person in that seat will 3x results. That gap is Revenue Drag. Closing it is 100% possible.

Quick self-assessment: Do you have a rep who is friendly, well liked by clients, and consistently unable to close without your involvement? That is probably not a motivation problem. It may be a Golden Retriever in a Closer's seat.

You hired a salesperson, and shocker, they didn't work out. So you hired another one, and surprise, surprise, same result. Now you hate hiring because you think you're bad at hiring salespeople. You're not necessarily bad at hiring. You just don't know what you're hiring for. Most small business owners couldn't tell you the difference between a rep who maintains relationships and one who hunts new business. They post a job, pick whoever interviews best, and hope it works. That's a recipe for disaster because it relies on getting lucky vs. having a proven process that works every time. Before you write another job post, answer one question: what type of salesperson does your business actually need right now? I classify them as Support+, Farmers, Hunters, and Closers. If you can't answer that clearly, the next hire won't work either.

My recruiting process has a weird problem. It surfaces so much top sales talent that my clients can’t hire them all. This month: 3 star candidates wanted the job. Client hired 1. I need to find homes for the other 2. Fix: I’m starting a newsletter featuring elite sales reps my clients couldn’t absorb. If you’re a small business owner hiring for sales, the sign-up drops soon.

Recruiting top performers repeatedly is the biggest cheat code. The more I do it, the faster I'm able to separate the "really good" from the "great." And as my systems get more efficient, the more candidates I can put through to generate higher and higher levels of excellence. For companies crossing the 7 figure desert, being able to land an "aspirational hire" in sales is like skipping 3 levels and adding more horsepower than you thought possible. There's no other unlock that delivers this much leverage for growing businesses that I've found in my 17 year consulting career.

After watching @AGPamBondi evade accountability in her hearing like a toddler avoiding eating their veggies, it feels like this is one of the final boss stages in the video game to defeat the moloch worshipping, jerky eating, pedophiles that are controlled by whoever is actually running things. The lack of transparency by only having four computers to review still-redacted files for 435 politicians is another intentional hurdle to drag this out with the hope that it loses steam. It's like giving rescuers teaspoons to dig victims out of a collapsed mine. @RepThomasMassie is 100% right to focus entirely on this as it's at the root of everything wrong with our society. The data analysis and tools citizens are creating from just what's been released is so impressive. I've always said that if we turned the NSA apparatus inward to record everything politicians do and say, and then make it publicly accessible, that their bad behavior would stop instantly because of what citizens would highlight and expose. If enough of us keep the pressure on for the next few years, the dam will break and so many of the rats hiding in the shadows will be exposed, and hopefully brought to justice.

Ever struggle with creating a comp plan that will attract top performing sales reps without a ton of risk if they don't deliver? I have this conversation every week with business owners. It's happened so much that I'm working on a comp plan calculator that will let you put in the variables of your business and spit out all the details you need to create a structure that wins and is sustainable.