Become the Sales Rep every VP wants to hire with Jonjo O'Hara | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast

Speaker 1: 0:00

I have the really good recruiters that have been through an exercise and they throw me three or four excellently qualified ones. I'm keen on your thoughts on how to find the right candidate.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Resilience, I might call it, and competitiveness. They're perhaps the founding traits that I tend to look for. How you assess for those is a different question, but they're perhaps the traits that I think are the foundational elements of a really tough performer.

Speaker 3: 0:25

Welcome to Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. You might be a salesperson, you could lead a sales team, maybe run a business, or you're a battle-tested entrepreneur. Then we built this podcast for you. Great salespeople are built, not born. We learn so much from the deals we win, but we learn even more from the deals we lose. In each episode, we bring you some of the world's leading salespeople, sales leaders and experts in sales tech to share their best lessons from both their wins and their losses.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Before we start, please check out the screen of your phone or laptop and, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you've clicked subscribe and pressed that like button down below. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple, click the plus sign to follow so we can let you know when we publish each new episode. If you liked the episode, drop us a comment with any questions about the show. We'd love to get to know our audience. Great businesses always feature world-class salespeople, and the best salespeople are always learning, so let's jump in. Welcome back to another episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. I'm Dan Bartels, here, as always, with my trusty sidekick, simon Peterson. Mate, how are you, buddy G'day Dan? I'm really well, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:45

We're almost at the half year.

Speaker 3: 1:46

We've been a bit remiss. We haven't recorded as many as we would have liked to. This year We've both been quite busy and we're joined by Jonjo O'Hara. Mate, jonjo, we've been long-term friends, excited to have you on the podcast. Hi guys, pleasure to be here, mate. A mate, we had a background for you, for our listeners obviously run tenant recruitment. You've been the recruiting game for a while, all the way from being a Bradford City professional footballer to to running a recruitment firm in Australia. Mate, how did that come about?

Speaker 2: 2:14

yeah, nice one. Thanks for that. Thanks for the segue, dan. I like to talk about it, maybe more than I should. It's been a few years since I had the shirt on now, but my background as it relates to this topic it's something I'm really passionate about is high performance.

Speaker 2: 2:25

As I mentioned, left school to join the world of professional football. I'd spent my childhood in uh professional sport within a professional football academy, throughout really high performance focused. In my early 20s realized that I wasn't going to quite make the the grade and make a full career in the game. That was my first entrance into sales. So I started working with with the football association union. We worked and did some work to bring corporates along to uh, enable some career pathways for ex-pros. So that was my entrance to sales.

Speaker 2: 2:53

And then I was parachuted into melbourne via uh a sign-in. A club sponsored me here so got a plane with a backpack and decided within a week of being in melbourne that I needed to be a long term, so joined recruitment. It was on the visa list, among some other things was why it was a great choice for me and going to it first 18-24 months hated it, to be honest. It was a real log a daily struggle to go and do it, persevered, ended up being quite good at it, going and join a best-in-class firm where I became a top performer and then a manager, and then, a few years ago, I set up my own firm, which is about to be three years old, and we specialize in SaaS sales recruitment Mate.

Speaker 3: 3:33

That kind of leads us into the topic we want to chat about today, which is how do you become a seller that every VP or business wants to hire? And I think it's a question I know I consistently ask myself how do I be a leader? Because it's a question I know I consistently ask myself how do I be a leader? Because even as a leader in an APAC-based sales firm, when you're working for an offshore organization, even an Australian organization, most of what you do as a person sitting in the commercial org is sell Like, how do you be a person that every org wants you to have? So that was our topic for today. Simon mate, you've been in this game for a pretty long time and you've done a bunch of different things that ended up with a sales career.

Speaker 1: 4:11

When you think about that as a question mate, what comes to mind for you? Look, it's an interesting one. I think I've worked with recruitment firms. I've worked with internal recruitment within companies and often you get a long list of candidates and that's really hard sometimes. But I think a couple of things stand out for me. I think the network of a good salesperson is fundamental. They know people that work with you or they know people, so that sort of network really helps.

Speaker 1: 4:35

And I think the other key attribute I love is genuine curiosity. And I think obviously it depends on what stage of a career you're hiring a salesperson. But the junior sales people probably don't have the network of clients they've sold to before. So what other attribute do you look at? And I think for me, curiosity, genuine interest in a customer and how they run their business, et cetera. So as you go through interview cycles, that's probably the one that sticks out the most.

Speaker 1: 5:02

And I think as you move through your career and you start hiring seasoned enterprise sellers, I still think that curiosity still needs to be front and center. And the really good ones are just naturally really curious about their prospects, their customer, their business, the problems they're trying to solve. So I think that's where I'd start and it's proven pretty good in terms of initial filtering. I know, John Joe, hundreds of candidates a year, I would imagine what are some of the things you look for? Because I think you're hired by enterprises to go fill important seats and, in my opinion, I have recruiters that throw 40 candidates at me and it's almost like mud on a wall. And then I have the really good recruiters that throw 40 candidates at me and it's almost like mud on a wall. And then I have the really good recruiters that have been through an exercise and they throw me three or four excellently qualified ones. I'm keen on your thoughts on how to find the right candidate.

Speaker 2: 5:56

Yeah, for sure, and it's always subject to the particular position that would be specific to that company and that CRO. But there are some foundational things which I think are really important, and you mentioned curiosity. I probably would frame it as emotional intelligence. I always find that's a really common principle that the best reps have curiosity plays into that by emotional intelligence. The best reps that I tend to work with just have that, and it's really hard to articulate. You just get that sense when you're having a conversation with somebody. They are curious and they're thinking about things in a certain way. That really plays out for me. The other, perhaps two big things are a grit resilience might call it, and competitiveness. They're perhaps the founding traits that I tend to look for. How they, how you assess for those, is a different question, but they, they're perhaps the traits that I think are the foundational elements of Ready to Forma.

Speaker 1: 6:47

So how do you assess a candidate for grit? I love the idea of grit. I've seen salespeople with it. I've seen salespeople without it. Have your first conversation with a new candidate, how do you go about understanding whether someone's got the right level of grit?

Speaker 2: 7:03

I'd really love there to be a greater data-powered tool that gives us a greater assessment here, but we're already working on time serve for the most part. So asking about certain challenges that person has undertaken and managed to come through the other side, be that extracurricular. So we know that people from sport I'm biased, but people from sport often make very good salespeople because of the nature of adversity they've often had to face. It doesn't have to be sport, it could be any type of extracurricular where you basically we talk about the 10,000 hours rules, basically where you've had to persevere with something that perhaps you didn't want to do for the sake of achieving a long-term goal. So I like to see examples of somebody who's gone and done that and faced adversity and they've found some value in doing that and they can articulate why it was valuable to go through that journey and what going for a lesson.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Yep, great. And EQ, that's a big one. I'm really big on EQ. Talked about it, the need for it, for years, for years. What do you signal a candidate that's got the right level of EQ and they really understand what it is? Not just about scoring the highest on a maths test. It's about understanding the people around you, understanding what's driving them innately, figuring out how to get to your goals, etc. How do you sort through the myriad of answers to questions to figure out whether one's got the right level of EQ?

Speaker 2: 8:28

Yeah, again, it's a little anecdotal, but one thing I like to do is ask I'm looking for self-awareness. When candidates answer certain questions, what was your experience in this role? And if they're able to be very self-aware as to what part they played in success or failure of that role, that tells me that they're able to be very self-aware as to what part they played in success or failure of that role, that tells me that they're really self-aware and they've got emotional intelligence. If they're very quick to blame it on the environment or their surrounding, I don't think they necessarily have that, but if they're quiet before coming and saying, look, I was great, this didn't quite go so well and these are my weaknesses, these are the areas that I probably missed on, I think that's a really good sign of self-awareness and that's a big part of EQ for me.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Where does it become maturity versus EQ? Because I look at people who've been around for a period. I don't think I think you can learn emotional awareness, but I think there's an inherent level of when we talk about EQ's emotional intelligence. It's the emotional quotient right, and it's a bit like you have a level of IQ, you have a level of EQ right, but over time there's an aspect that you learn for just having been in different roles or having had a career around. I've seen this before and I had the approach. But then there are people that I meet who are early in their career, who just fundamentally my daughter. She's 12. She has an exceptional level of EQ right, and she's learned that from her mother, who's a kindergarten teacher, and I'm a sales guy.

Speaker 3: 9:54

There's two very different pieces here. How do you differentiate between someone bringing experience and therefore maturity to a career to someone who has this emotional intelligence? This is a piece of someone I've talked about so many times, and the reason I'm intrigued by this is when we look at what we're after for a seller, for a business, we want someone who our clients can relate to. We want someone who they're willing to open up to so that we can rely on our pipeline and our forecasts in a more detailed fashion. We know someone's got behind the scenes and they actually genuinely are building relationships and partnerships. That's the stuff we want. But how do we differentiate between someone who's just seen it before to someone who fundamentally does that?

Speaker 2: 10:41

Yeah, it's interesting. I'll put it back to you guys. What's your experience with using psych assessments and other types of assessments to nail?

Speaker 1: 10:49

this. Very rarely have I used psych assessments. Yeah, I've been put through a few in my time. I've worked for companies that get candidate do it and maybe heretical to suggest, but I find if I get someone to do an assessment I look at the results. I might take it into account. But to be honest with you, the conversations, how did you handle this difficulty, how did you achieve success? And the answers to those questions that I think are more telling than a fairly a psych assessment.

Speaker 1: 11:24

It's an interesting one. I haven't seen it in hiring salespeople probably for at least five or six years. We did it a little bit at SAP, we did a little bit of it at Salesforce, but not the last sort of 10 years have I relied on it. I think it's a tool in the kit bag but it's an interesting one. When I'm talking to somebody about their experience and the response to me is I did this, I did that, I didn't do this, I didn't do that, I probably have a few red flags going off in the back of my head around emotional intelligence, because I think good sales reps are the difference between winning and losing. But I think the best sales reps bring the team along with them and when they talk about success, a little bit of self-deprecation, a little bit of empathy for the people that are not necessarily put in the spotlight, and when I see that behavior I know that worked really well in the team.

Speaker 1: 12:20

And I think when you're trying to bring in a top performer, you need to, as an employer, demonstrate to that candidate that they'll be joining a team that has an EQ, that works together, that empathizes with each other and helps each other. So I think it's a little bit of a two-way street. So I'm not sure site tests for me personally are the be-all and end-all. I think some organizations mandate it, others don't. I don't think it's for me, a determinant. I don't know. Dan, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 3: 12:50

Yeah, going back to your point about understanding like a sports team, right, and I've got a similar background. I never made it to be a professional athlete but hey, I was close to being a professional referee, as you want to find, but't get paid very much doing my stuff, so you can't quite call it professional. But if I look at when you're building teams from a sports perspective, a psych test from a sales perspective is almost like saying is everybody a striker? I don't need an entire team of strikers, I need strikers and midfielders and wingers and defenders and a goalkeeper. And if anyone who's been in a team with has a goalkeeper, I will tell you. And look, I did date a goalkeeper for a while, so goalkeepers are as mad as a cut snake. So how do you? Anyone who wants to sit in goals with a different colored shirt on have balls peppered out and they're just mad, right. And how do you do a psych test and find the person that's mad enough to stand in the goals the whole time? Hold on, that person fails the psych test every single time and sales is a little bit the same. You don't want someone that's mad on your team but you've got to build a team of people who all bring different skills that everybody gets to learn from, because nobody's perfect ever. Everyone will have a peak and a trough and needs to learn from everybody. Everyone has a strength and a weakness and so, as a leader, when you're building a team out, I don't know when Simon and I built a team together, we actually intentionally looked at have we got people who've come from different software backgrounds?

Speaker 3: 14:20

Have we got people who've come from different ethnic and gender backgrounds or gender mix? Have we got people who come from different ethnic and gender backgrounds or gender mix? Not because it was to fill a quota, but it was okay. What are we missing as we're building this team out? That, as we're looking at different candidates, we'll bring that flavor, and it wasn't always. You didn't make a decision based on okay, we need to go and find someone that's coming from Western Sydney, et cetera. It was what's the thing that we're missing in this team to make this a really well-rounded and balanced team, because we knew that at some point the team would need to lean on that to become more successful tomorrow, and you didn't know when it was going to be or what it was going to look like, but it always eventuated. So I think that to answer your question about psychometric testing, I think it's really difficult because unless you're a psychologist, you're giving me a psychometric test.

Speaker 3: 15:12

Here's the results of someone's psychometric test. I don't know how to use that properly, but what I do know is to have a look at. Here are the different aspects of building a team. What do I need to put on the park? Because this is what our go-to-market is going to look like. This is our plan for the year, and there are different teams that you need for chasing 100% greenfields versus teams that are going to look after a whole suite of existing customers, teams that are building out, trying to deal with a very mature product in a saturated market, or teams that are building a product in the start. They have completely different engagements and different experiences you need and approaches. So how do you go and find the right people for those fit? And I think that maybe the psychometric testing gives you some of that. I don't think many sales VPs experts in using it. Probably my answer to that question. Long answer to a short question.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Really interesting, probably my answer to that question. Long answer to a short question really interesting. It sounds um, like what you're saying, that is, each hire that you make is is built for purpose. It's not, um, a playbook in which you hire the same kind of rep each time. You're actually building that for that specific time and place and what the organization needs. How common common is that? That's what I mean, because my experience would tell me that much of the time VPs go and try to hire a very specific profile which is actually quite like themselves. What you're talking about sounds quite brave to look at it that way, that philosophy. How common do you think that is?

Speaker 3: 16:39

I don't think it's very common at all. In fairness, I think you're right. You'll see a lot of VPs not just VPs people, leaders in general will go and try and hire people who reflect themselves. Hey, if I did it this way, I'm going to go and hire three people, just like me. But again, if you go back to that concept of building a team, I don't need three strikers, I need a team of people who all bring and great leaders. If you don't read any leadership textbook great CEOs or leaders of countries or whatever it might be go and find people who have skill sets that they don't have to make the decision more well-rounded and that's what good leadership looks like.

Speaker 1: 17:19

And they listen to them, yep, well-rounded, and that's what good leadership looks like. And they listen to them, yep. And I think the problem you've got is, if you go and hire a bunch of people that look like yourself, you go sit in a room and do your planning and there's no challenges, it's all groupthink, and I always like to have someone that will throw a real curveball. And it may not be the right answer, but I want to give that alternative point of view a go, and 99 times out of 100, you get someone that's come from a different background or a different software background or in some cases, not even software at all, and they come in and they have ideas I just never would have thought of. I love that. And I think the other thing is when I'm interviewing interviewing new candidates I love the question when they start asking about the culture of the team and what's important, etc. That dialogue goes backwards and forward in an interview tells you so much about the lived history of the person you're interviewing. So if they are very keen on culture, they've obviously experienced good and bad cultures to know now what's going to make them successful and happy. And I think bringing somebody into an environment where they're not the same as everybody means that there's a path for them to learn from the other people and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 18:31

I think typically a great sales team let's say the average sales team's probably got about eight people on it per manager. The trick that I've always thought through is every one of those eight people is better than everybody else at something, and once you've got someone in there that can absolutely nail a presentation somebody there that has the best network, somebody there that has, let's say, the best way of bringing executives into a deal at the right time. Each person has a skill set. I think, as a leader, once you know where your superstars are in each of the areas and everybody is good at something, you also know where you're lacking. And I think what I personally like to do is I like to make it known to the group that if I'm talking to Chris, you're the best presenter out of this bunch. Everybody sees me say that they lean in and Chris will help them with with a presentation. But it's not all about chris. You've got another person on the team that absolutely nails the value proposition and once you understand the skill set of that team, everybody goes to the right person for the right answers and you have a really collaborative environment.

Speaker 1: 19:34

I guess when I'm interviewing, I want to find out what the person I'm interviewing, what their superpower is, because, as dan said, nobody's perfect in, nobody is even close to perfect, but everybody's bloody good at one or two each other, and I think there you end up with a team of people that are happy to lie down in front of a bus for each other to help them win a deal, and that's when you start to get a really cool environment, great EQ across the team. And so I guess if I'm interviewing to join a team, a lot of the times I'll ask a question what are you really good at? What do you suck at? What are the things that me joining this team is adding a lot of value to the whole team? I think those sort of answers in an interview kind of scenario I love that stuff and it's really important to have that sort of diversity of opinion.

Speaker 3: 20:39

I think that kind of leads, though, simon, to your opinion on this. Johnjoe. But when you start to look at a new candidate, right. So how do you present yourself? You're looking for a role, or someone's brought a role to me, and I'm now engaged in a conversation with a recruiter or potential leader, right, how do I position myself? In a light that I'm putting forward my best elements and all the things about me, but I actually think that's half of that's the wrong view, because a recruitment process is a sale, right, and at the end of the day, you've got a company who's going to buy your time and effort from you for an amount of money, right. So we spend so much time in the recruitment process as candidates doing all the things that you coach a salesperson not to do. Turn up and here's my feature, function, benefits of all the things that are about me when actually the sales process is all about the person who's recruiting. Right, they've got a problem on their side. They're in the market because someone left, or they've created a role, or they've got to replace someone or expand, or whatever the problem is, and so often you end up the first thing for me as a salesperson, as a sales leader. Sorry if I don't get questions from the person turning up. Not a salesperson. If they end up talking for most of the meeting straight away, on my note will be not a salesperson because they haven't been able to elicit from me getting. What's my problem? What do I care about? Talk to me more about the culture. These things are really important to me but, more importantly, they're more important to you. If I haven't been able to spend at least 50% of the time talking and they haven't managed me through that process, they're not a salesperson.

Speaker 3: 22:23

So I think the question you asked is the top John, go to me. That's what you're looking for. If they can facilitate that piece, okay, tick, they know how to sell. They've got a good understanding of how to manage the conversations. Okay, now what do they fit in my team? Have I got four reps like them or what else would they add? Okay, where do I need to drill in? Is their type of selling or experience close to what I need to go and leverage here? So I think that piece of kind of turning around I think becomes really interesting. John. Joe, is that an approach people take or does it resonate with your experience?

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think that is a successful tactic. But it also depends on the person you're interviewing with, because from experience, some CROs don't actually have that approach. Not just a handful of occasions that perhaps have had where the person has come to the interview and very much on the front foot qualifying and the CRO has been a bit taken aback.

Speaker 2: 23:20

Tell me about you, I want to hear about you. And in fact the person was as a good salesperson does, was really trying to qualify so they could then come back and say it sounds like this is your problem. I think I could fit it because of this. And the CR actually said I didn't like that approach because they just wanted me to. They just wanted me to tell me what I wanted to hear as opposed to it being authentic. They just wanted me to tell me what I wanted to hear as opposed to being authentic. So that's just a very single point example, but when it might not work, I think. But to your point I agree. If you're going in there and you're just talking about your own features and benefits, it's not going to go well. But just marrying the two and being able to read whether you have the opportunity with the cro, or whether that is the right cro you want to work with, if they're not going to give you the opportunity.

Speaker 3: 24:02

Maybe that's something else as well, but I think in that scenario, there not to cut you off right, being behind and understanding early in that conversation. This is not working with that CRO or whoever I'm going to be interviewing with. Why are they focused on something being authentic? What's happened to them that when they're recruiting for somebody, authenticity is really important to them? So great salespeople work out early on and say, hey, you've given me some dot points and punchlines or whatever's going to be around what you're looking for. I want to make sure I'm displaying how I can do that, but just give me some information about why this is critically important to you. I don't know.

Speaker 3: 24:42

Our culture right now is really superficial in the business and I need people who have their heart on their sleeve and I want to know that at the end of the month you're going to care about your deals. Now it's not about fitting the answers to that. They want to peel the onion back and work out if I'm going to go to battle with this person, am I going to enjoy the win or the loss or the win beer at the end of the month as to what we did, and that's really important for them. But I think some of that unpeeling becomes really critically important and it's a sale process. Right, it is a sale. You're selling that. If you're in an interview process for a seller and you can't sell yourself, how can you sell my product?

Speaker 1: 25:20

Yep, because you should know yourself right. Yeah, you might not know my product yet. Yeah, yeah, john Joe, interesting. Obviously, the tech industry and SaaS in general has been through a lot of turmoil over the last couple of years. I think we went through a massive hiring binge middle of COVID and back into COVID. Salaries went through the roof change middle of COVID and back into COVID salaries went through the roof. Then there's been a couple of years of mass redundancy. I guess my network, I know so many people that have switched jobs, et cetera. What's? I guess resilience and grit are obviously key attributes to having a smile on your face going through all of that. But you're seeing a lot of candidates. So are you seeing a change in the way people are hiring sales people? Are you seeing a lot more conservativeness in terms of companies bringing new people on? What's 2024 look like as a sales candidate?

Speaker 2: 26:15

yeah, for sure you're right. The monday right now is a creative hiring, so only hiring reps. They're going to bring immediate increase or immediate value, and with that comes some conservative philosophies on hiring really, and tenure is a big part of that. So there's a bit of a juxtaposition in that every CRO wants to hire for tenure. Average tenure for tech sales people in melbourne, sydney, right now is about 1.7 years. So there'sa small handful of people that have three or four years in each company.

Speaker 2: 26:47

So it's a real, it's a real challenge to be able to go and show that resilience when often it might not be being your fault that you've had a couple of misses in a year market, because the market really, I think that is something the reps are coming up against a lot and it's really about either educating the, the hiring manager, on how they do have resilience despite a couple of misses and giving lots of context.

Speaker 2: 27:11

That's important. But I'd also say and I think there's we're cautious of this being a toxic type of mentality. But I do think from personal experience and I've been through it myself if you can stick it out, you should, for the most part in certain environments, and of course I'm talking if it is a toxic workplace and it is causing you a certain degree of considerable stress, then you should find somewhere where you can be happy in your job. But I think we all know sales is difficult and there are going to be difficult times and challenges. But staying in the same place and getting the exposure that comes with that not just because it looks good on your CV it does have a remarkable effect on your ability to grow. I think so again, market dependent, but where you can, I would be advising reps to stay in the same role for as long as possible, particularly right now, because that seems to be like a market demand.

Speaker 1: 28:06

Have you found the way interviews are conducted has changed over the last couple of years? I think we've been through a few interview cycles in the last 12 to 18 months and a lot of it is not face-to-face. So me growing up in tech, it was all face-to-face and now it's moved a lot to Zoom and Teams et cetera. Is that having an impact on ability to hire quality talent or are you just seeing a lot more face-to-face starting to come?

Speaker 2: 28:31

back. Face-to-face is coming back, but still in small pockets. The majority is still virtual, at least for the first and maybe second rounds. And the reason for that is during COVID there was such an abundance of opportunities everybody was hiring all the time. So a cro might say put five 30 minute sessions in my calendar this week. I want to meet everybody we don't want to miss. There's going to be how an opportunity coming up and became there.

Speaker 2: 28:53

The emphasis was quite casual though those interviews. They were meet and greets and they were 30 minutes. Do it on zoom, great. I think we've been caught asleep at the wheel to an extent, because now a lot of candidates are going into those interviews like uh, coffee catch-ups, and the pace has changed. Now a cro wants to know if you're going to come and I'll go, I'll add value right away. Uh, and I'm getting feedback as to this person wasn't prepared, he was just there for the chat, except I'm not wasn't a role I was interested in. That's just not appropriate with times right now. If you're taking an interview, it really needs to be qualified, you need to go and prepare and both parties really need to be committed to that and getting something out of it, because there's just no time for coffee catch-ups at the moment, without any qualification.

Speaker 3: 29:40

So within that process, I kind of think that's always been there. But, to your point, when people were chasing you, you could be a lot more cavalier around. I'm making good money here and look, if I talked, I had a lunch the other day and there were 12 of us and 11 of the 12 people at the lunch had been made redundant in the previous 18 months and most of them had roles and good roles, had been made redundant in the previous 18 months and most of them had roles and good roles, and that's fine. But people had gone through this cycle, right, and I think the process of people then looking at the market economic, the market demand has changed. Its power has shifted right.

Speaker 3: 30:15

Versus people chasing you. You're now looking for an environment that might be different to where you are today. Hey, the market's a little bit tougher. I'm not closing deals as quickly as I possibly was before. My quantity of pipeline is down compared to where I was. So people want reps, wanting to look for the green grass somewhere else. But again, you hear the messages from people like yourself saying, hey, if you can stick it out, I would Not necessarily somewhere else. But as they approach these conversations, it gives some detail here to people when we say prepare for the role, what are we talking about? Looks great in the context of yourself as a recruiter, but also from VPs like ourselves who are hiring. What does good look like when someone turns up prepared? Johnjo, you definitely see more of this than we do. What is your view of really well?

Speaker 2: 31:06

yeah, and you guys know way more about it than me, but I'd say the likeness is to like running an enterprise sale as opposed to a smb transactional sale. The people that are really well prepared I've already looked at their network contacts within the organization and perhaps gone and done a back channel reference before the first interview see if it is going to be worth their time and if it's qualified. They're not looking at pd as their sense of truth for that position, so they're looking for their networks. They probably already know the products or they're asking people their trust in the network about the products to make sure it's referenced, and then they're coming with a plan as to this is what. Well, this is what I know already from the brief, what the challenges are. But this is what I need to find out from this conversation the recruiter plays a big part in this as well. I would say to make sure that person's prepped.

Speaker 2: 31:53

What I found personally, as I've become more experienced in recruitment, is if you're sending somebody into particularly senior people, executive people, if you're sending somebody into an interview without bullets in the gun, it's your fault to an extent and you're going to get found out. So you can't send cannon fodder into a process and say, hey, it's your job, it's your job to go and do a good job and win that interview. If they're going in and they're, they were just in there to make up the numbers then you're going to get found out and your credibility is going to be lost quite quickly as a recruiter. So the crew has a big part to play in making sure that you have the prep and everything that's not available on a website, but I think it's just digging in as an enterprise seller with doing any type of deal. Who do I know and what do I need to know for this to be a really a really good conversation, not a surface level conversation. Basically, what do you reckon, simon?

Speaker 1: 32:44

It's an interesting one, I think. Look, the best recruiters I've worked with actually dry run multiple times with me before I'll do an interview. They'll talk me through the personality, the person I'm interviewing, hot buttons et cetera. If I'm working with a recruiter that has recruited for this leader before and they share successes, failures et cetera with me, I know I'm in a good way. I've been through a recent exercise where I had a fantastic experience with a recruiter who really leaned in, spent the time to walk me through, based on his understanding of me, what my best sales points were, and then asked me to pitch and when I sucked at it, invari, invariably the first time, he sort of workshopped with me. Okay, so I wouldn't pitch it that way, I'd pitch it this way. This is why a woman that I was interviewing with, why she'll be interested in that, and for me it became a partnership in that hiring process because obviously as a recruiter you get paid when I get hired and if I don't pass the interview you've got to find somebody else, right, right, so it delays the pay. So for me, the best relationships with recruiters are ones of coach and mentee. It doesn't matter how senior you are, et cetera. I've found. The best recruiters I've worked with are the ones that genuinely want to help me perfect my pitch, know where my strengths are, know where my weaknesses are, et cetera. It's interesting.

Speaker 1: 34:13

I had another experience where I had two or three recruiters I was working with and I just said look, tell me about my CV, is it okay? And two of the three of them came back and said, yeah, no, it's really good, it's fine, all good. The third one came back and said mate, simon, your CV sucks, it's too long, it doesn't get to the point, this and this. And I'll tell you what. Out of the three recruiters I work with, I want to work with a guy that said my CV sucked because there was some value add for me as a candidate and it gave me a lot more sense of trust in the recruiter. And when I trust the recruiter, he or she spends the time with me to talk about how I'll make my pitch, because my pitch is never going to be perfect because I don't know the CRO I'm interviewing with quite often, and they do so those are the real things I look for.

Speaker 1: 35:00

Gone are the days as a hiring leader where I want a recruiter to give me 30 CVs and I'll spend some time and pick the top five. I like 30 CVs and I'll spend some time and pick the top five I like. I actually want to work with a recruiter that I know has spent some time coaching the candidates I'm going to talk to. So it's that real partnership is one of the things I really love in that process. And it's not a transaction, it's a complex sale. And what problems am I solving? What problems are the recruiter solving? All those sort of things double up.

Speaker 2: 35:33

You mentioned, you'd like to see a handful of CVs that are really qualified for what you're hiring. What are the super skills? I mentioned it before. What are the super skills that you think are really important in 2024 to become the seller that every BPM will hire?

Speaker 1: 35:50

I think, first and foremost, I want to know the story. So I hired somebody that had never been in software before and I spoke to the recruiter. He was an airline pilot and a Royal Navy pilot as well, so clearly smart. So I didn't have to. If you're going to be a Royal Navy pilot and a 747 pilot, you can do your math right, so that's great. But I wanted to know the story behind the person and why they felt that this was a good career move. So I think, first and foremost, I want to have a story, and that story might be I've been in SAS for 20 years. I've sold to all the big four banks. This is my success. That's a story. So I want to be able to tie the bullet points in their CV to a dialogue. That would mean that person will fit in with what I'm trying to hire for, and for me, that story is fundamental, I think.

Speaker 1: 36:40

Do I care whether they know my product or not? Not at all, and obviously there are some situations where it's critical. Where it's critical, let's say I'm dealing in cyber security and I'm hiring somebody to negotiate with the hacker. I don't want to hire someone that's never done that before, so that's obviously a fairly unique scenario. However, the vast majority of SaaS sales it's about the outcome you're creating for your customer or your prospect. So I can teach you the features of the product, but tell me about how you would articulate a value proposition, and quite often I ask them to sell the product they currently know really well to me because it teaches me around how they elicit.

Speaker 1: 37:21

Where my problems are how they pitch the value proposition, how they lean in, how they use their EQ to really understand what it is that I'm trying to achieve, how they use their EQ to really understand what it is that I'm trying to achieve. So, for me, those two things do they have a story and can they pitch a value proposition genuinely? And I don't really care whether it's my product, they're doing it, I know. Dan, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 3: 37:40

Yeah, the features that I look for and attributes in a candidate can pop up in a couple of areas. Firstly, there's a smell check when you read someone's resume right. Have they got some general areas of experience that you can see can translate to what you're doing today? I'm recruiting at the moment for someone and they have an interesting role and there's probably three or four people in the country that kind of do this thing today. So no one's a pure fit. So you're looking for people who've got similar types of experiences that you can fit into this mold. But how will it work? But then, underneath that, the next step is okay, have they got a level of intelligence? Have they got a level of problem-solving capacity?

Speaker 3: 38:25

I think, particularly in sales, whether you're problem-solving for a team or problem-solving for a customer that's a massive aspect to what I'm either looking for in their resume I'm looking for in the conversation I have with them to find that fit. I always like to including in my search process that resume. At the hitcher desk you go how is that a fit? Quite often they've self-assessed that this could be a fit and you can often work out early on if it's not a repaid they're just literally resume trawling and trying to chuck them everywhere and you just exit out of those conversations, but often it's I've got a fit because of these areas and this is interesting to me and, okay, let's have a look at that, because often some of those hires are your best hires.

Speaker 3: 39:06

I got my start in sales in SaaS with a sales background but zero SaaS experience, and I sold myself into Salesforce over a period of four or five months and it was the guys that recruited me. They said look, if you can sell products as well as you sold yourself over a four or five-month enterprise cycle, go, please. Yes 100%.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Do more of that right. But it's interesting when you first jump into a role when you've not done it before. Dan, new to SaaS, it wasn't about you selling the specific product, it was about just a genuine understanding of the process, and I think an interesting one. That sort of popped up for me recently was looking at CVs of people that are probably first or second gig in sales, so fairly early on in their career. I'll give you one tip Do not use ChatGPT to write your cover letter.

Speaker 1: 39:57

It sticks out like a sore thumb. What's fascinating is I read one a couple of weeks ago and I saw some really good long words which were in the right context, and I actually asked the person what this particular word meant, because you wrote it in your cv and he had no, he made something up, clearly had no idea. That's a red flag. Obviously we didn't move ahead with that high. But if you're new in your career and you're happy to leverage chat bt, chat, gpt, don't get it to write your entire CV. And that goes to your story, dan. So you're first into SaaS and you are talking genuinely about your experience and genuinely about how you would go about something, and it came across as very valid thought through. And yes, the person that hired you said I can take that talent and point it towards selling SaaS software, and that's a big difference.

Speaker 3: 40:51

Yeah, they're the core attributes. Someone who is a problem solver, being in sales is always being a problem solver. How do you uncover the problem the customer has? And the product, the service, the thing that you do can help them solve that problem. There's 45 other ways they can solve that problem, but they're engaged by you to solve it with your organization. The way that you solve it, that's it. That's what sales does, and you talk to enough people, or the right types of people, that you are clear that when they buy it from you, product or service, you can deliver what they're asking for or what they need.

Speaker 3: 41:26

Sometimes you're fulfilling a need they already know about. Sometimes you're're creating the need and can you solve the problem that's in front of you as a salesperson, which is always it's the start of the year, so your number zero go again right away. And I think that's the other piece of like, the attribute you're looking for, which is, I think, where salespeople. There's a couple of interesting recruitment firms that just purely focus on converting athletes into salespeople. But when you look at athletes they're so used to, hey look, it's the start of a new game and the score's zero. It doesn't matter how good I performed or how well I ran or swim or whatever last time. Hey, we might have pumped this team by 40 points. The last time when the ref blows time on, it's zero again, and when the ref blows time off, they'll tell us whether we won or lost.

Speaker 3: 42:13

We can be at the side of the equation and there's a season and we go again. So I think, like that, understanding they've got those attributes of, they've seen and they've experienced this and okay, if you can't talk to me about, you've done this in sales, you've seen another part of your life, you've done this in right. So I think, like they're the core attributes and how do you bring those to bear? Because no one's perfect for a role. Doesn't matter whether you work for the competitor in exactly the same role. You're not perfect for it because you haven't done the role they're asking you to do.

Speaker 2: 42:43

I think that's the big gap are there any tactical attributes that you think very important right now, and I'm thinking about things like which might not have been so important many years ago personal brand and the like. So are there any particular tactics that you think are really interesting and you'd like to have on your team?

Speaker 1: 43:05

I love when I'm talking to somebody where they can connect dots. For me it sounds really simple. But if they've sold to a customer that I'm targeting, so the types of customers. So let's take an example If I'm hiring somebody and I want to put them in financial services sales, say, if they've had I don't even care whether they've sold similar to my software before have they engaged with big four banks? Do they know it works? Do they know the buying cycle, I think, and and so connecting the dots in that sort of environment, that's, it's very tactical.

Speaker 1: 43:39

But if you're researching a role, think about the key prospects or the best prospects that the company you're interviewing with will go after. And what do you have specifically in your kit bag that will aid them in getting that particular prospect into the pipeline. And very tactical, and to your point before, john Joe, in terms of have you spoken to people that are already inside that business? One of the tactical questions to ask is what's the perfect customer for this company that I'm going to go interview with and understand what the ideal customer looks like and bake that into your interview. Bake it into how you go solve the problems, because I can tell you what when you do that, the person you're talking to, whether it's in Zoom, they'll start nodding, or when they're across the table from you, they're leaning in and they're frantically scribbling notes because you've just jumped about 10 people in the queue to get their role.

Speaker 3: 44:33

Yeah, I'd say the same thing. I think it's. The world today is we talk about influencers Salespeople are paid influencers but we're influencers to a really tiny segment. The business doesn't care if we've got 40,000 followers on a LinkedIn page. They care of the five customers you've got to sell to this year, or 50, or whatever. What have you got to do to get your quota? Can you influence them to say, yes, that's all the company cares about, right?

Speaker 3: 45:02

So in that process, whether it's you've already got those connections or how would you go and build it and have you got evidence that you can go and build it quickly? Already got those connections or how would you go and build it and have you got evidence that you can go and build it quickly? And it's typically, I don't think in the more I look at it in enterprise sales, it's not do you know how to run LinkedIn or can you build a social campaign? That might be one of the tactics and things and the tools you use, but that's important, but it's not the be all and end all. It's can you get because at the end of a deal cycle, did you get in front of the customer and the right people and can you connect and the person you can't get a hold and no one else can get a hold of? Can you get a hold of that person and how would you show me you can go about and do it? So I think, like that core piece of are you an influencer?

Speaker 2: 45:50

And what. That's what we're all searching for. In the context of becoming a seller that VPs want to hire, then would you recommend that somebody might build a career around the problem, though I solve problems for CFOs and try to stick to that problem to gain market value as much as possible.

Speaker 3: 46:04

I think that kind of goes back to if, as a salesperson, I think you end up with a career that says I solve problems, rather than I solved problems for CFOs, because you never know where you're going to end up, you never know what your product's going to be, you never know what the market shift's going to look like, so I think it's, but as a salesperson, if your core, fundamental piece is I solved problems, like I think, that's pretty key.

Speaker 3: 46:26

Now we're running out of time and I know Simon's got to jump in a minute. John, joe, we ask a question at the end of every podcast, which is the top couple of tips for the listeners, based on the topic of the day. I know, mate, obviously top tips, three things that are out of our conversation today or otherwise. To be the seller everyone wants to hire, what would you leave people with?

Speaker 2: 46:44

Sure I would. Networks is massive. I've said this before you don't build a career by applying to job ads, so go and solve problems, become an expert in solving that problem and make as many people that are relevant that problem know about you. Have a really good recruitment partner that knows the industry and knows what you're good at and knows how to position you for your next career opportunity, particularly when you're not looking for it, then that's really important. So you don't miss, and I think upskilling is really important. I know you're passionate about this, dan, so I get your thoughts, but you should be spending as much time on professional development. It's one of the most important things you can be doing. So, whether that's getting a sales coach or finding ways to be better at your craft, I think that's a that's good advice for anybody.

Speaker 3: 47:25

It's awesome everyone. Thank you so much for joining growth pulse, the b2 B2B sales podcast. If you haven't already, if you're listening, if you're watching or listening on YouTube, please click the subscribe button and if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple podcasts, please click the plus sign and follow along for the next podcast. But, jonjo, simon, thanks so much for your time today. Everyone look forward to the next episode and talk to you all soon. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 47:51

Yep, Thanks guys.