Why is it so hard to hire great sellers?

Having mentored over 50 start-ups in the last four years, I am amazed how frequently companies have hired AEs (account execs, sellers) who are not a good fit. Often, they have attractive CVs showing, but somehow full short at their new employer. There are several reasons.

* Poor job spec. Right upfront, people do not always identify what really matters. Do you require someone with industry expertise? Do you have a clear sales process that you need someone to implement, or someone with the ability to work it out from scratch? If you don’t know what you need, you won’t get it!
* Interviewing that doesn’t really get under the skin. It’s very easy to have great conversations with charismatic people. Often, they are very good at selling themselves. But are you getting the true story? It’s critical to ask questions which uncover true experiences, and to include exercises that allow you to see how they operate. (I have lots of content I am happy to share on this – let me know – and check out my previous post.)
* Not knowing what good looks like. If you’re hiring your first sellers and you’ve never been in sales yourself, how will you make the right choice? (This goes back to excellent interview processes – per previous bullet.)
* Once they’re on board, do you set your new sellers up for success? On boarding them effectively, ensuring you know where the leads are coming from and pointing them in the right direction, training them thoroughly on the right messaging, investing time in that training, … All too often, I see companies bring on a seller, throw a couple of documents at them and expect them to succeed.
* Ongoing management. Once you have a seller ramped up, what is the correct cadence of communication and management? What questions do you ask to ensure you know if the deals are moving in the right direction? How do you trust but verify what they are doing? There are good processes for getting under the skin of these things, but quite often inexperienced sales leaders will either be too hands-off, and therefore not see the crash coming until it’s too late, or they will be too in the weeds, and the seller loses accountability.
* Blaming the wrong thing. In start-up world, if you’re failing to sell something it may be because your seller is not doing a good job. But it might be because you are selling to the wrong market, or with the wrong message, or with the wrong product. Too many organisations churn through sellers, and sales leaders, before addressing the underlying root cause.

None of these are insurmountable. Many great organisations do great sales and hire great salespeople. Including early-stage start-ups. Let me know if you’d like any more thoughts or help on any of the above.