Revenade leaders, Scott and Tim, discuss insights about how selecting the right people for the right roles helps businesses operate to the best of their abilities.Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Sales
Experience, a podcast where we will share insights, lessons learned, and best
practices from sales leaders. Each session we will do our best to provide
experienced based information that you can immediately apply to help your
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Hi, this is Sarah, and today we’re going to be continuing our series on
people, process, and technology. Last time we talked about how process and
technology seamlessly work together. So today we’re going to be picking up
where we left last time with people.
Before we dive in, let’s take a brief look at this day in business history
where we highlight a key event that took place on this day.
This day in business history marks the birthday of the Rose Bowl. Since
1902, the Rose Bowl has been a definitive marker of college football
excellence. Along with providing entertainment for millions of households across
the nation New Year’s Day, the Rose Bowl serves as a sponsorship mecca.
Sponsors pay up to $20 million dollars to get their name tacked on as a presenter
of this famous game, and corporations dole out big bucks for commercials, up to
a million dollars for 30 seconds, but it’s well worth it. An estimated 35
million viewers will be tuning in to this year’s game and over a hundred
thousand attending the event live. So if you’re looking to get your company’s
out there, this isn’t a bad marketing strategy.
Sarah: Now I’d like to take a
minute to introduce our current guests, Scott Williamson and Tim Phillips, from
Revenade. Scott Williamson’s the founder of Revenade and serves as the firms
managing partner, and his partner at Revenade is Tim Phillips, who serves as
the managing director. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Scott: Sarah, it’s great to be
here again.
Tim: Thanks, Sarah! Good to
be with you.
Sarah: Great! Well, Scott and Tim,
we all know that people are really important to selling, and, in this industry,
there’s kind of a huge turnover rate as far as sales people and sales leaders
go. What are some red flags and common mistakes in finding the right sales
people for your organizations?
Scott: So, you know, Tim and I
talk about this all the time with our clients. In fact, we’ve talked about it
internally as well, and hiring a sales person is a very, very difficult thing.
When you think about it, sales people, in general, are very good at talking
about how good they are. And so the best sales job that a sales person will
ever do is in the interview cycle. Every deal that was ever closed at every
company they’ve ever worked at in the past is automatically attributed to them.
So the challenge in any organization that’s trying to hire a sales person is to
get that interview cycle correct, and that’s very, very difficult.
Now, Tim,
you’ve interviewed many, many people in the past. You’ve hired lots of people.
What are you seeing as some of the common pitfalls in that process?
Tim: Well, I think there
are several pitfalls, but last cast this, if we may, in terms of best practices
that people can use. Number one is really understanding what type of sales
person we need at what point in time given the evolution or the maturity of our
organization. So this ties back fully to our last conversation, Sarah, on
process and why we said we really need to define what is our sales process, and
what are the roles that are required to manage that process? That, then, leads
us to know what type of sales person do we need to be looking for?
So, let me
give you some examples of different types of sales people. We all have heard of
the term the hunter and