How to Hire Salespeople in 2025

Most companies still hire salespeople wrong in 2025.

They rely on resumes, gut feeling, and vague interviews instead of testing real skills. In this episode, Raul and Toni explain why that approach fails and how to replace it with a system that actually works.

They break down a practical process to identify what you really need, define the skills that matter, and test candidates in realistic scenarios. No fluff, no guesswork, just a repeatable way to hire people who can actually sell.

This episode is brought to you by ZoomInfo, the Go-To-Market Intelligence Platform. ZoomInfo gives you high-quality B2B data and sales intelligence on in-market buyers across companies of all sizes, powered by AI-driven automation with integrated outreach tools to help your GTM teams build pipeline and close deals faster.

Check them out at zoominfo.com/revenue-formula

Want to work with us? Learn more: revformula.io

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:41) - Hiring is Broken
• (07:09) - Basics of Effective Hiring
• (12:35) - The Myth of the Perfect Candidate
• (14:20) - Understand your Needs and Context
• (16:56) - Time Pressure in Hiring
• (22:02) - The Three Step Solution
• (29:10) - Assessing Candidates: Interpretation
• (30:16) - Assessing Candidates: Talking
• (31:21) - Assessing Candidates: Showing
• (32:53) - Assessing Candidates: Doing
• (36:53) - Iterating on the Process
• (39:57) - Roleplaying in Sales Hiring
• (43:33) - Hiring Sales Leaders
• (46:00) - Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Creators and Guests

Host

Raul Porojan

Voice of Reason in Revenue / Former Director Sales & CS at Project A

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

How to hire salespeople in 2025
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[00:00:00]

Introduction
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Raul: So I'll make a promise here within the next 20 or 25 minutes. If you actually listen to this and apply this, you will be better at hiring. I guarantee you that it's almost impossible to not be true

Toni: if you listen to this and you are gonna, you know, keep hiring like you did yesterday. I think it's your own fault.

Raul: You give me one candidate. Gimme a profile. I don't even need their cv. I can interview them. I know exactly what it is that, that you're looking for, and I'll be able to tell you whether that's the person or not. And that's not 'cause I'm a wizard, it's because I know what I'm doing. And you can also know that.

Toni: So I think one thing that Raul and I have in common, yes, we did the whole go to market CRO playbook. Um, but during that period, at least myself, I think in Falcon, uh, now Brandwatch, I think I hired a. Probably 200 people and then planned a, you know, different, different time. Uh, probably hired another 50 people or something.

So this is overall 250 people, you know, ranging across [00:01:00] a lot of SDRs, a lot of junior profiles obviously, but also a bunch of VPs, uh, at the same time. Right. What I only found out recently, Rahul, is that you, what, you hired what, 400 people? 500. What's, what's the number that, that you currently think, uh, you've been, you've been part of hiring,

Raul: so the numbers are probably somewhere in the hundreds.

Of the hires, but, uh, interviews, it must have approached at least 500 by now, and that also includes a lot of very executive people. So, uh, head of sales, probably a hundred, 200 interviews just there. And then, uh, also CROs, VPs, um, and obviously I had my graduate program for SDRs. And then sales consultants.

Hiring is Broken
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Toni: Yes, we kind of have done this a couple of times, but what. Looking into this right now, and especially with 2025 in mind, um, what do you think are the main issues? What do you think are the, the, the main problems surrounding hiring the right people? Right, because it's, it's not that easy. It's not that easy [00:02:00] enough to do this, right?

It's also not to that easy to do this at scale from, from, you know, your, your current view into this, what, what, what are the main problems behind this?

Raul: So first of all, why now is because especially this year, I've spent a good amount of my time doing exactly that. And funnily enough, I've even had some people who listen to this podcast be candidates, uh, for companies that I recruit with and for.

So if you say fractional CRO, then to a large extent, building orgs, um, has become one of the things this year. I think there are structural reasons for that, um, because that is what is just so important to those companies. Uh, but then also that. Just in 2025, hiring is still broken, so people still rarely know how to do it.

Well, mistakes are very costly, and maybe you can go into that, like, why, why is this so important? But then also more and more founders are kind of waking up to the realization that I, I say this a lot, uh, this is just anecdotal, but, um, I say [00:03:00] 90% of founders, uh, or 50% of founders think that they're a top 10% hiring person.

Top 10% leader. But that's obviously not true. And I do think that more and more people are waking up to that. So there is more kind of, um, conscience about how good people actually are at that and are seeking support, um, and are seeking for ways to actually be really good at it and have true confidence.

Not to fake. I don't know better, but I, I'll just assume I'm great at it.

Toni: I think if you're early on in the journey, let's say you're hiring your first few sales reps. Um, very expensive to not get right. If you're a little on the journey and you're maybe adding VP sales or new VP sales or you know, new geo new segment or something like this, you're basically run into the same issues again, right?

Hiring the first set of those folks. Um, can. Basically determine whether or not your whole company or that specific project is gonna, is gonna work out or not. Um, in my own [00:04:00] case, when I was, and this is probably the, the, the bigger hiring story I have. Um, I was setting up the US office. Um, we had a, a bunch of awesome, talented folks already there, and after two, three years I was basically ready to go back.

Um, but at that point I also needed to then, you know, find someone that's gonna take on leadership of the go-to market side of the US in that case. Right. I couldn't just leave it there. Um, so this became a top priority for me to kind of, you know, my wife was already on the, on her way back, basically kind of bought a house and everything.

Um, and, um, for me to complete the transition, I need to, I need to fricking hire someone. Um, and this is, I think, where some of the problems sometimes start is, number one, you are under pressure to find someone. Um, and then you know that that leaves you down a, you know, all kinds of problems. I think on that end.

On the flip side, uh, I ended up hiring someone, VP of sales, experienced, you know, ticked all the right boxes, [00:05:00] uh, showed up basically after two or three weeks, got. Almost wholesale, rejected by the team

and fortunate and Well, what do you, what do you do then? Right? And you know, to a degree you obviously need to kind of give support and, and try and figure this out. But at some point you just need to, need to pull the plug, which I then did and then rebooted the whole process. Took me another three months to find someone.

In this case we were serious. B you know, it wasn't all that super terrible. I was there as the backup anyway, but at least for me personally, I couldn't, I couldn't move back. Right. Kind of. I was kinda stuck there. Um, and it's just insane, um, the, the amount of issues you, uh, you run into when you, when you just hire wrong, uh, right.

Kind of in my case was even. Can tune even find the right person, right? I mean, it, it goes, it goes into all kinds of different directions. Um, once you mess this up once, um, and wanna, wanna kind of correct it afterwards. And I think for [00:06:00] earlier stage founders or earlier stage teams, sometimes that then finds its way, uh, back into the equation as a, um, oh, we are always hiring the wrong sales reps.

You know, no one can actually sell what we are doing here. And, and that then becomes its own little. Terrible downward spiral. Right. I'm sure you have heard some of those stories too. Right? But that's the, um, that's the raw fly in from my side in terms of how, how, how terrible and expensive hiring pool league can actually become from an organization.

Raul: And also the responsibility changes, um, even from a founder perspective early on, you're the one hiring the people, maybe even leading them later on, you think you're out of the, uh, out of the equation because now you have these wonderful HR people. I would venture it's still your responsibility to make sure that you have a great hiring process, um, and to have a great culture beyond that.

And if I say that it's broken and people are not where maybe they should be yet, [00:07:00] why is that? It's not necessarily that people just suck in and they can't learn it because it's so difficult. I think the opposite is true.

Basics of Effective Hiring
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Raul: Um, if you get some basics right, and I think within the next. 20, 30 minutes, we will go through some basics, which already will make you better if you, if you just follow them.

It's that simple. Um, yeah. But people just don't bother spending the time and effort to, to, to deal with this and to get good at it. Um, a lot of founders now are reading books, go to market books. They, they're getting coaches, they're getting consultants, UME, other people, they're going to courses. They're in Slack forms with other founders.

But very rarely have I seen a founder. Who's actually read a book on hiring on how to actually do it? Who has really thought about this process and dedicated some time into it? I don't know if this is less or more important than go to market. I think both are important.

Toni: Before we get back to the conversation, a quick break.

Most teams I talk to that are trying to [00:08:00] scale strategy is not the problem. It's almost always execution. They've got dashboards telling them what happened, but nothing that actually drives what to do next. That's why I've been watching what ZoomInfo is doing lately. They've completely rebuilt themselves.

It's not just a contact data anymore. It's a full go-to market intelligence platform that sees buyer signals and launches the motion automatically. Strategy turns into action and growth becomes predictable. Check it out at Zoom info.com/revenue-formula. You know, there's some, some people say, oh, leadership can't be learned.

Leadership, you're either leader or you're not. You're born a leader or you're not. Um, and that's its own whole, you know, can of worms and, and, and bs in there. But do you think that a lot of people basically have the assumption that, you know, they have the ability to, to look into the soul of a person where they interview them, to then figure out whether or not this is a good [00:09:00] high or not?

I mean, do you think that people think that this is. Like a, a born with skill and therefore, why should I spend time, uh, learning it when I already know I'm really good at it? Uh, which obviously, you know, you're probably not, but did, do you think it has to do with that?

Raul: I think you

hit the nail on the head that this thinking, well, I'm good with people.

I'm, uh, I'm a, I'm, I'm a, I'm a good person to understand others. Like I, I, I do well with people. I understand people very well, and a lot of people think that, and, and they probably are. That does not automatically translate to hiring necessarily. It is one of the skills. And if you are great at that, perfect, it's probably gonna make you much better in what we're gonna discuss.

But you still need to know what the hell it is you're doing and why you're doing it and who you're looking for. And I think just from a. First physical, first principle perspective. These things are just lacking. So, uh, just as a practical example, a lot of founders will be able by now, sometimes [00:10:00] perfectly, sometimes half perfectly, to tell you some fundamentals of go to market.

Like, what is this? What is go to market? What is uh, what is an ICP? Why is it important? So just the first principle perspective of things is quite out there on some aspects in hiring. I think this is very rarely the case, so they just do things. Um, for example, they, they, they just copy interview processes from old companies of theirs or they copy Google's interview process.

'cause if Google does it, it must be great, uh, or the competitors. And, uh, they don't really understand why. So what is it they're looking for and what will actually get them the right people? And, uh, I think that's, that's just simple as that. There's a lack of first principle understanding and effort to, to get better at these.

Maybe just to add before we jump into it, I think before I shit on a bunch of people, 'cause I do think even most HR professionals with 10, 20 years of experience and even recruiting agencies very rarely have any idea of what the hell they're doing there. Yeah, they might be good or they might [00:11:00] not be good, but they would not be able to explain to you what they're doing and why and what they're looking for.

They just do whatever they learned over time and has kind of yielded

some results.

Toni: No, and I mean, what, what I've personally experienced is if it's like a high profile, um, hire like a vp, maybe C level, something like this, people now started to do those, um. What is it? Psychology profiles or you know, tho those, those weird things.

Um, and they think when they, when we do this then, then we've done a thorough job, then we've done a good job in, in hiring the person. Um, and to be honest, and like some of the things I've been thinking about hiring, uh, you've cleaned and cleared some of that up, actually it becomes, because this is a process, because this is something you can reason through.

Number one, you can learn it. And number two, you can improve it. Um, and I think that's at the end of this session here, people should be able to walk away with like, oh, wait a minute. This is actually those four steps [00:12:00] and that's how I should be thinking about it. And that's, that's what I need to do in each step.

And that's kind of. That's how I get to the best results here. Also, doing this across multiple people, right? Because you're not just one person hiring, you're multiple people hiring. So let's, let's just dive into this now, uh, Raul and, and, and then try and take this apart how this thing works.

Raul: So I'll make a promise here within the next 20 or 25 minutes as we're done with this.

If you actually listen to this and apply this. I don't do this every episode. You will be better at hiring. I guarantee you that it's almost impossible to not be true. And it all starts with what's wrong right now and, and why am I so adamant about this?

The Myth of the Perfect Candidate
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Raul: So hiring nowadays focuses typically on the wrong things to start with, and that's already a shaky foundation.

We hire based on cvs. We look for track record, we look for a certain kind of experience, industry experience, product knowledge, all that jazz. And, um, four years of experience, five, six, whatever. That's a standard. I think this applies to a 90% of job, uh, uh, uh, uh, descriptions I've ever seen, but also internally [00:13:00] to what people are actually looking for.

The problem is that all these have very little prediction to whether the candidate is actually a fit or not, maybe specifically to your specific situation and company. This is hard to believe. So bear with me on this one. 'cause I know a lot of people will fight me on that mentally. Um, people still think that the best hire is just the same girl or lady who, a guy or lady who did that job at a competitor and I disagree with that.

Or someone who just has a great CV and they were, uh, head of sales at this and that big company who's now a unicorn and, and now you're looking to get the same person to make you a unicorn. It very rarely works out that way. They call it kind of the rainmaker hire. And why doesn't it work out? Well, first of all, the reason that those startups became what they were and what they are now can be attributed sometimes to those people, sometimes not even a CRO can coast by in a great environment.[00:14:00]

I've even seen absolutely terrible CROs. I'm not gonna name names, uh, in my estimate at least. Who went on to be CROs of billionaires, uh, sorry, of billion, uh, dollar companies and even sometimes did it twice. So I think there's very predictive value in that. But that's anecdotal. But then there is even more specific to your company.

Understand your Needs and Context
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Raul: I think you really have to go inwards and look at where you are right now, and there are some levers that are just so specific to you, your phase, your timing, the specific people in your company, your product, your positioning within the market, the market itself, the competitors, the life cycle of the product.

Is it an early adopter situation where you still have to educate the market? Is it a late adopter situation where you get the, sorry, late majority situation? All these can be major factors. Why those rainmakers or those people that you think have those great cvs don't work out. And a very common situation that people do wrong a lot is, I sometimes poke fun at that, but um, the last head of sales didn't work [00:15:00] out.

Let's just hire someone from Google and pay them a shit ton of money because Google with its 250,000 employees in year 25 of its existence, or 30 by now. Um, is comparable to your three people startup right now, or 13 people? Obviously not. Right. And there's just a lot of factors that go into that and, and I do think that there's people who might be good at a certain point in time and you to need to figure out if that is the time you're looking for, but then also specifically when you're looking at, okay, I'm, I'm thinking about what do I need?

Oh, we need someone with four years of sales experience. Why? Why do you need someone with four years old sales experience? Why not three? Why not seven or 17? And these are not nonsense questions because the point that I'm trying to get across is you're not looking for someone, you're not looking to hire someone with four years of sales experience.

You're looking to get some jobs done. Hopefully that's why you would hire someone. You hire a person because there's something that needs to be done by that person. [00:16:00] And what you're looking for are indicators that that person can do that. And. Specific skills that enable that person to do that. The problem is that you think that people who have four zero experience have those skills, and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes they take less time to develop, especially in high talented individuals, which by the way is a reason that sometimes by just focusing on the years, you, uh, filter out people, uh, from your point of view who are actually high performers. I've seen this quite commonly, by the way. Um, but what you're looking for.

Are specific skills for a profile. You want a certain amount of jobs to be done and you better have an idea of what that is. And you have an, you should have an idea of who that person could be that gets that done and that's what you're looking for. What the four years of job experience is, is a proxy.

That's what I would call it. I'll define that later. But those are proxy criteria.

Time Pressure in Hiring
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Toni: I think one other thing that's very real for, for most people listening is, [00:17:00] um, there usually is also just a time pressure component to it that. I think creates two issues. One is it leads to less care and some of the things that you're outlining right now.

You know, there's probably some people don't know the process, but some people just skip some of the steps and trying to find shortcuts, which then lead to poor outcomes. And then the other thing is, especially in an organization where you have a talent team that does some of the recruiting, or you're working with the recruiter, you know, they're, they're.

Goal is to just place someone. Um, and your goal is to get someone really good in, and those two things sometimes collide, right? Kind of the, you know, to a degree, I had this conversation a lot with my VP of sales. It's like, um, hey, you know, I, I need to fill the spot, uh, and I'm being super picky and if I reject too many people, then talent is pissed at me.

And, and you know, vice versa and so forth, right? So it's like, um, there are even more. Forces at play here than just like making the wrong [00:18:00] selection. There's sometimes those just time pressure and reality pressure happening that, um, that is not helpful in trying to, as an organization get to the right outcome, which is having awesome, talented people only in your organization.

Raul: To be clear, what I'm proposing now is, is not necessarily taking more time. I would venture that very often it will even. Make you faster, because what makes you faster in hiring is confident hiring and confident decision making, and you will be much more confident if you have two things. Number one, you know what the hell you're doing and why you're doing it, right?

That's the first principle thing that I'm talking about. And number two, you know specifically who you're looking for. Again, the jobs to be done, the profile, and then you find good ways to assess against those things if you do that. All of a sudden your decisions will be much easier. You'll sit down with your co-founder and you will have a very clear idea of what to talk about.

Right? And this is, if we're looking at hiring processes nowadays, this is a, a little bit of a caricature of how things [00:19:00] are, but also not that far from the truth. Very often the way that it works, especially in startups earlier on, is you have a bunch of people talk to the candidate. Let's say you're hiring a head of sales.

You have a bunch of people talk to the candidate, including hr, all the founders, some other important people. Oh, they need to talk to the head of product, they need to talk to the head of marketing. They need to talk to two sale, uh, the two sellers in the team right now. And you do all these talks, you do all that investment, which by the way is one reason many times why you overhire someone when you shouldn't, because you invested all this time.

And this is a bias you have to raise from your record, um, because that investment is nothing compared to the investment of actually working with someone who's a wrong fit. But then you put in all that work, all these people, you spent eight interviews and 12 hours talking to the person. And then you sit down and you discuss, okay, do we hire that person or not?

And what typically happens is people talk about all kinds of things. They talk about the vibe of the person. Oh, she was cool. I can see myself working with [00:20:00] her. They've all asked the same questions or very similar to the same questions. Eight interviewers. They all asked, oh. Tell me about a time when you faced struggles within your company, this and that and the other.

And as you already realize, I'm not a big fan of that question. And they all talk about the same things, which was a terrible use of your time. So going back to the timeframe, you wasted a large amount of time doing the same thing. 'cause you were not coordinated and you did not know who plays what role, who do we really need in there and who finds out what.

And then we sit down and we discuss, is that the person or not?

Toni: I think on a, on another level, um. At least this is the situation I encountered a lot was talent pushes you some, uh, some profiles, you say no to a couple, and then they're like, okay, gimme some feedback. You know, what, what can I, what can I do better next time to find better and different profiles?

And then honestly, like, I don't think my feedback was ever helpful. Uh, but also it's not like that. [00:21:00] Talent team tried to give me a, a good overview of how to even give feedback, right? Kind of there, there's so many little steps messed up here, um, that we're kind of, you know, starting to, you know, point out very specifically.

Um, and, um, and all of that together. Can you know if role, if you can fix all of that, I would be pretty amazed.

Raul: I, I'll plug this one, so maybe a second time at some point. Call me, text me if you want help with this. Um, because I do think the kind of, the proof is in the putting and also in the execution, but you will still be better if you do the following things.

One more thing that you just saw said was, which I thought was very interesting, is when you have all this done, your discussions about the candidate, which will be much, will be much more fruitful and also more efficient and more confident. But also, and that was a great point. The feedback loop to the people who bring you those candidates will be much better.

And, uh, so I think that's just another point because you will be much more able to say precisely what was off about that person. Where did they score wrong [00:22:00] and or not good enough? And where were they good? But let's get to it.

The Three Step Solution
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Raul: What's the fix? There's three things you need to do. Number one, define your proxies.

Number two, define and rank your profile. And number three, find a great process, design it, and then execute it. That's really it. Now obviously all these terms mean nothing and you might think, okay, it's gonna tell me the same thing I already know, probably not. So proxies, this is the simplest one, and this is already where most companies stop at.

Proxies are the vitals, the indicators of someone, uh, for whatever is you're looking for. Think cv. Resume. As you might also realize by now, I'm someone who gives not a lot of shits about resumes. I think they're important for one thing, and I'll talk about that in a second. Also the LinkedIn profile, referrals from other people, from VCs, from your colleague, from Via, or whatever.

Those are proxies. Now. Those have their place and you need to understand [00:23:00] them. Um, but we'll talk about that in a second. The second part is the profile. And those consists of two things. Number one is the jobs to be done. So again, if you're hiring someone, you better have some kind of idea of what they're supposed to do.

And this is, by the way, not a nonsensical term either, or a sentence either, because a lot of startups just hire people opportunistically, oh, he was cool. I think he will find something for him to do. Even if that is the case, then you should have some form of idea of how that should look like. Otherwise, it's not a good hire, probably or rarely turns out to be good.

So number one, jobs to be done. The way I like to do it is I really like to sit down with people and write those down, and you would be surprised how many people that think they know this because when I say this, like, oh yeah, think about the jobs to be done. Yeah, yeah, I know all that role. Keep going, keep going.

When you sit down and say, okay, let's take an hour and actually write those things down, maybe eight, nine or 10 at most, and rank [00:24:00] them in order of importance, maybe even give them a weight. It's not necessary, but for sure you need to rank them. I had companies where that one hour has turned into three weeks, and that was not by my fault.

It was because they realized they had no idea what actually was there to be done. That's the part about the jobs to be done. Second part, the profile, the characteristics. What is that kind of person like? What can they do? And typically this is a lot about skills. It can sometimes be about something like culture fit, for example, also, but it's a lot about skills.

So for example, I'm recruiting a lot of sales roles right now where the number one thing is their sales toolkit. And specifically in that case, for each of those points that we had, we also wrote down exactly what we meant. So as that example, we had eight criteria. We wrote them all down, we cut it after eight.

We ranked them from one to eight, meaning if one, someone was graded, one, two, and three, the rest was meh. We probably still hired them, but not the opposite. And then we described [00:25:00] exactly with a couple bullet points. What do we mean by that? So when we say uh, uh, sales toolkit, we are looking for example for someone who was a consultative seller.

And then we also describe what that would look like. By the way, very helpful to HR and the recruiting agency. Mm-hmm. So that's the profile. And then the last is devise a process that assesses the candidate against these things, which is again, where a lot of companies go wrong. So they have a process, maybe they copied off the internet, maybe they rely on hr, the recruiting agency to do that for them.

But very rarely do these cookie cutter processes. Define, uh uh, uh, um, assess people against the specific things you're looking for. So what do I mean by that? If you're looking for a head of sales and that head of sales will likely have to hire a team, probably five people within the next year, you better assess their hiring skills.

It's nice to talk about all kinds of 10 things you found on a Google Best [00:26:00] practice sheet or on that HubSpot post, whatever, on their blog. But what you need is to find out the things you want. So whatever it is that's in those eight points, that's what you need to assess against really hard and it pays off very much to be very precise about that.

So that's the eight things we're looking for. All the other things. Oh, but they were this and they were that and the other. Maybe a deal breaker, probably not as important, right?

Toni: So this gives you a lot of clarity. I think from my own perspective, I think everyone does the proxies. Everyone stops there, actually, obviously as an interview and talks about stuff. Um, yeah, but I think that's, that's basically a tam That's your, you know, that's how you filter down to your ICP, you know, I wanna say. Right? Kind of. That's, that's basically how you get your, that's how you get your prospects, if you will. That's really just a filtering approach. Um, and then I think the next two things people just don't do.

Really figuring out, you know, in terms of profile. Like what are, what are really the things we want that person to do? Um, writing this out [00:27:00] ranking, I think the ranking part is pretty, pretty key by the way. Because it's like, uh, no one will ever tick all the boxes. Forget about it. It's just not gonna happen.

Yeah. Right. So you need to have some other way to get to a result here. And then the last thing, which I think is super tricky. Super tricky. Um, how do you then test for these things and how do you assess it and how do you distribute this across the different people in the, in the process doing it? Like, um, would love to, you know, I think people get the proxy stuff.

I think the profile and process piece, I think that's a really interesting piece,

Raul: and I agree that these become exceedingly more difficult, as in proxies are the easiest to find. Profiles sometimes can take an hour, sometimes a bit longer, and process is really where things are at and the execution of that process.

Even. Maybe one more thing, why proxies are so difficult and so difficult, so, so unlikely to get you the right candidate. You said something there, which is that, um, a lot of people do the proxies already, and that's true. And if you really think about it, [00:28:00] honestly, a lot of times. Decisions are made, uh, made.

So there may, maybe there's an interview process, maybe there's an HR person talking to the candidate. Then maybe there's a couple founders or whatever. And what very often happens is that they do all this work and all this talking, and in the end they still. Decide based on the cv. Yeah, so they still go, oh, we have three candidates, but she had more experience in the industry and also she had a, a good, uh, station that this and this competitor we're gonna take her.

You knew that all along. So if you don't wanna follow this process or a similar one, be my guest, do whatever you want. But if you really just boil it down and you're actually just hiring by CV and then maybe some vibe checks. To shorten that vibe, check to a lunch and a and a CV check and then go ahead and hire them.

Like, yeah, because that's really what it boils down to. You didn't win that much with those additional eight hours of work by six founders and founding team members. Yeah, so I think the most [00:29:00] important one, and that's why it's also, this is one I'm gonna focus on 'cause it's also the most difficult one is the process and maybe Bart will blend in some, that's the chart that we have for this.

Assessing Candidates: Interpretation
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Raul: So, very simply explained, there's four major things you can do. To assess people, and they have different qualities of how much they're worth in actually, uh, defining whether that person's good or not. But they all have their use. And so the first one is interpretation, right? This is, um, basically on the proxy level.

This is where you just look at SCV, you look at LinkedIn referrals, right? This, this founder colleague, you have this buddy from university. Uh, but this is okay. It has the lowest recruiting value by far. I think we've talked about a little bit why maybe we'll get into more, uh, into more wises later. It has its place though, right?

I'll get into that in the application, but the place for that is early on. Very, very early on. 'cause you have to do [00:30:00] some sort of screening for candidates. So if you are looking to do some LinkedIn outreach to candidates, you need some criteria. And I get that you need some criteria. You need to think about what that would look like.

That's where proxies have their place just in doing some basic filtering.

Assessing Candidates: Talking
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Raul: A bit better than that is talking, talking about things, and this is probably the first two is where 80% of companies I've seen actually are located. Um, and this is not where you want to spend most of your time with, by the way, but it's where companies spend most of their time with.

Um, it's the classic, it's the most used. It is the. Tell me about a time when you had to, when you had a difficult client and how you still managed to close them. Tell me about a problem you had with a colleague and how you solved that. How would you describe your approach to this and that and the others?

Um, how do you, what do you learn about enterprise sales, yada, yada, yada, all that stuff? It has some value, um, again, especially early on, typically more when an HR person talks to that, uh, [00:31:00] that person. And here and there sprinkled in. If you do it well, um, it has its place and if you know what to, what to ask, um, 'cause some things can give you a little bit of an indication, but the things I just mentioned before probably don't do that very much again.

Most companies stop here and this is where I would not spend most of my time. This is what I do because I have no other choice.

Assessing Candidates: Showing
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Raul: What you wanna do is you wanna shoe show and do and what is, what is showing. So this is where the candidate shows. Past results of the work previously, and that's two different things that this can work out.

So number one is sometimes people do that and that's already good, is you send them something to do in sales. Not so common, but can still be good. Um, for head of sales or CROs, I've seen, oh, devise a go-to market strategy for us. Put it into three slides. Something like that, or in other departments, uh, even much more in design departments.

For example, show me the actual designs. Show me the logo, show me the type forms, all that [00:32:00] stuff. Show me the result of something. Um, but then another way that you can do that is show me the result of your previous work. So maybe the job you're currently at or maybe a job before. And there's some things that you can do about the, uh, even in sales, about the, the sales positions that work out, but especially also for other positions.

Sometimes it's very easy. Show me a marketing campaign. Very easy. Show me the landing page you've built. Show me the sequence for that. For a marketeer rather easy to do, uh, or show me a program you've built for a technical person. Show me a product you've built, right? These are things that can work out where you see the results and then you talk about them, uh, about the results with them.

Again, the way you can engineer that is on the spot or before, maybe a couple days before you send them something to do and then they bring you the result and you look at it. That's the showing part.

Assessing Candidates: Doing
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Raul: The best indicator is doing things together. This is where you work collaboratively on something [00:33:00] live with the candidate.

And before I go into the example, I can already foreshadow that there is some that you already know. All of the listeners probably know them. This has the highest recruiting value by far. You get to see the entire process. You can interact with the process with the person, ask questions about that. You can poke holes and make adjustments on the fly and change variables.

You can make it as realistic as you want and you can see the outcome and see what it's like to work together with them. There's nothing that comes close to the bank for your buck when it comes to that.

Toni: This is to a large degree, how many, many, many other roles are being hired for just not and go to market.

Yeah. I, I feel, I feel us go to market folks, we're way too vibey and way too like, no, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a genius. I can figure this out. You know, I just need to look into someone's eyes and I kind of know. But then you talk to developers, for example. Uh, the do part is like a [00:34:00] normal thing for them. It's like, yes.

You know, as a last step, we are gonna invite you to the office. We are gonna spend two hours in a, in a, in a room with a whiteboard, and it's gonna be two engineers from our side, and you then being the third engineer. And we're gonna give you a problem. We wanna work together on that problem. How would you solve that problem?

Not necessarily in a, you know, sitting down and actually writing the code perspective, but how would you go about actually kind of solving this thing? Right? And, and what, what I've seen, you know, when we hired like this. Um, the results were always really strong. Like, uh, in the end you just immediately know what's gonna work, what's not gonna work.

And I think when people hear this from a rev ops or a CO, whatever, you know, go to market perspective, they're like, well, you know, development and engineering is different. Design is different, right? It's all different. Well, it's actually not, I think many of these tests. That you will do anyway, and you will run into and see in the first one or two weeks of working with that talent.[00:35:00]

Some of that you can do in an hour or two as, you know, one of the final steps in the process actually. Right. And I think that's a major takeaway for everyone here to realize like, wait a minute, um, uh, I need, I need to stop thinking that this can't be done. I started thinking how I can get this done instead.

Right. Which is, I think it would be good for you to spend also a little bit time on that role to, to yeah. Make this clear for people. How do you devise those tests? How do you actually do that?

Raul: Yeah. So I'll give you, uh, a couple, five examples I brought with me. Maybe we'll come up with even more, but you said something so interesting because, and this is, uh, actually happened also.

Uh, I have worked with a couple companies this year where I've implemented this, and one of the companies I worked with 'em from March to July in Munich. Very nice startup in Munich, food tech startup, and we did this in sales for head of sales for account executives. The founder liked it so much that he was like, okay, can you bring this to all departments?

I want all my [00:36:00] departments to hire like this. This is what I want it to look like. Then I sat down with the head of the other departments and they told. I don't think we can do this for my department. This is obviously easy for sales. This works out. I get it, but it's impossible to do for my chemical lab.

It's impossible to do for marketing. It's impossible to do for a recruiter. And um, I disagree by the way. We found ways to do role plays for all of them, even for the lab chemical engineers. But, uh, it's funny that everyone thinks it can be done for their thing, right? It can be. And it's not even time consuming.

So in the same amount of time. It takes you to do all the spiel that you did before. You give me one candidate, you give me a profile, or we devise it together. I don't even need their cv. I can interview them. I know exactly what it is that you're looking for, and I'll be able to tell you whether that's the person or not.

And that's not 'cause I'm a wizard. It's because I know what I'm doing. And you can also know

that.

Iterating on the Process
---

Toni: The one thought that keeps coming up in my mind, it's like, yes, there's this cool process here. Um. [00:37:00] In itself is awesome. You know, all of us really actually like processes because suddenly we can improve it, we can iterate and and so forth, but there's even like a system spiel to it.

Um, where usually when a hire doesn't work out, I just say after three months, hire doesn't work out. You know, like, okay, we need to kinda let the person go. What people usually do is they go back like, oh, we should reassess our proxies. Like, ooh, you know, that person came straight out of college. Maybe you don't wanna do that anymore.

Maybe you want to, you know, they need to have at least six month, you know, for an SDR or six month of work experience or something like this, right? They go back to fixing the proxies. But here, when I look at this, actually, well maybe, yes, look at your proxies. Sure. But really probably look at the. Profile, if I get the piece right in terms of, you know, what skills are you looking for, what jobs to be done you're looking for?

Did you get the ranking right? Did you get the order of those right? Is something missing? Should something go away? You know, it's basically kind of that led you wrong, the, the down, the wrong road. [00:38:00] Um, and, you know, have you maybe done the assessment in the right way, right? The person maybe score extremely high on the really important pieces, but then later on it turned out, you know, he or she wasn't.

And maybe you need to kind of, you know, tweak this a little bit. This is really, especially for high volume roles, SDRs, uh, AEs, uh, CSM, support and so forth. I think especially for those kind of roles, having this, this process, a documented process, um, and being then able to refine not just the rough stuff, but also the details, I think that can become really nice goldmine, uh, for, for you, for you building up talent in your organization.

Raul: I don't know if you're familiar with that, but Mark Robers in his book Sales Acceleration Formula, which is still one of my probably favorite sales books, he has this approach where he describes how he did it at HubSpot. I'll take his word for it, that he did it that way where he didn't do it exactly this way, but quite similar actually, where he had it 10 things written down that he was looking [00:39:00] for.

Go read the book, by the way, you'll, you'll read that in much more detail. And then he ranked those things by importance and he gave candidate scores on them and then later on. Every three or six months, he would look at the scores that he initially gave those people. See whether those people actually worked out, uh, and, and became good consultants.

I think there is even a piece there and how he correlated that to actual revenue produced or even conversion rate sales cycles and so on. And based on that, he had a feedback loop where he could say, wait a minute. We thought that this, and that was pretty important. We figured out that people actually don't have these skills, uh, so much they didn't rank that high in the interviews.

Let's take that out of the catalog. So the next batch of people we hire within six months or 12 months, we will be much more precise on knowing what that skill looks like. I found that to be really interesting, especially for later stage companies, right? Um, you have, you can have an iteration on that based on the real life performance of the people you ended up

Toni: hiring.

Roleplaying in Sales Hiring
---

Toni: Let's get some examples in what, what, what [00:40:00] are, what are ways, um, because when we kind of did the research on this and, you know, you told me your, your approach to this. Some of these pieces were like the real aha moments. I felt

Raul: there was a very classic one, which everyone knows and is great. It's the sales role play. There's all kinds of variations on this, and I advise you that if you just think about it a bit more deeply and use it to your advantage, you can do a lot with that, so bang for your buck. Time-wise, a good sales role play interview, like a skill check interview is probably the most important hour within your whole process.

Even nowadays. It's quite utilized though still. I think basically every single sales role, even head of AE should do that. A head of sales should do that. The way that that works is typically very simple. You send them something upfront, make sure that material is, is good, right? It can be a video, it can be something, it can be a, a presentation on your company.

It can be a website if you have it, whatever. But something maybe three, four days in advance that they can look through in an hour or two. [00:41:00] Then you play whatever kind of sales scenario you want to deal with them. So typically for an ae it could even be that, um, you, you overtake an inbound lead and you work with that.

It can be a cold call for an SDR, whatever. There's different kinds you can do. And typically what I like to do, um, is I like to do at least two run throughs of that. So I'll do one run through where the me for example, me playing the prospect, and you will be the candidate Tony, were. Tony will do just one run through 10 minutes and I'll be very neutral because I wanna see what their approach is, like, what frameworks they're using, how are they conducting the, the talk, how is their communication, their verbal communication, and everything that goes into that.

I'll just wanna let them do their thing for 10 minutes. Then for example, me, I like to, uh, have a little bit of introspection. I wanna talk about what they did then, right? Um, tell me about the frameworks you used. Why did you do this? That was an [00:42:00] interesting choice. How do you think about, uh, the customer in itself?

What would happen now, do you think? That was a good call? That's a two, three minute discussion. I'll give them some feedback. Typically two pointers. For example, hey, I think your intro was not very good. You didn't give a lot of structure on what was about to happen, or, hey, I don't think you actually understand their decision process.

Can you go a little bit more into understanding that example and then I'll have them do it again a second run, maybe seven, eight minutes, a little bit shorter. Um, and focusing also on how they're doing that. And I typically do that for two reasons. Uh, number one is. I wanna see more of their sales approach.

I wanna see kind of how wide they are. So can they adjust their voice? Can they be a bit more cheery? Can they be bit more serious? Can they spend more time on that? Right? So I wanna go away a little bit from their comfort zone, but then also almost every company I ever work with, uh, adaptability and, and feedback.

Working is quite important. So that's why we do that. Then some more follows on that. But I'll [00:43:00] go over that. Sometimes I'll even do a third run through, and then I'll, for example, be, um, an angry, oh, sorry, I forgot to say that. That was my bad. On the second run through me as the, the person playing the, the prospect will typically also behave differently.

I'll have a couple more objections. I'll throw in a pretext. I'll see how they handle that. I'll be more realistic. I'll have a real world scenario or problem that sometimes is actually out there. So this time I'm not gonna just lay flat and let them do their thing, but I'll be more realistic. It's cool

Toni: that we talked about the AEs.

Let's just say that was more of an AE salesperson role.

Hiring Sales Leaders
---

Toni: Let's, let's talk a second about hiring a sales leader, uh, because I think there's. You know, there are more nuances to, to look at it. It's not only talking to a, a, a potential customer, but it's also managing the team managing app. Like how do you, how do you test for these things?

Raul: So let's say for example, we'll just do three criteria you're looking for here. Criteria. Number one, they need to lead the team. They need to coach the people. Cool criteria. Number two, they need to, uh, change a lot of [00:44:00] processes and implement those within the team. For example, bonus structures and processes.

And number three, they need to hire more people into the team. That's the three things you're looking for in this example. For all of these, you can do role plays. So first one, you need to coach the team. Very easy. I'll either bring in an actual salesperson, I've done this, or I will just play the role play.

Sometimes I'll do this right after what we did before, which is the sales role, play themselves with the leader. I will then play five minutes of a role play, and I will then have that person give me, uh, feedback and coach me on that. I'll sometimes be a bit more difficult. I will not accept the coaching.

I will not understand exactly what they want. I will look for how concrete are they, how able are they to articulate and teach me something? Are they a good coach? In a nutshell, very easy to do, right? Give them something to look at. One call, have them coach, give feedback easy. Second thing we were looking for is someone who builds processes and implements them within the team.

This is a bit more diff, it takes a bit more work, but it's also quite simple. So for example, a very classic is, oh, the head of [00:45:00] sales will need to implement a bonus structure. Send them some information upfront. In a little case, tell them, Hey, I will need you to run a weekly sales meeting. By the way, this is also scenario I'd like to do, run a 15 minute sales meeting, and within that sales meeting.

Present to the team, the following changes with the bonus structure and sell it to them. 'cause this is a difficult thing, right? It could be a point where you lose your team and, and people are very pissed at you. So maybe do that. And again, the execution is where it's at. And then the third part is they will need to hire people.

Very easy. Interview me as a candidate for your team. You can send them some information upfront if you want to. You can also do this on the spot. You can, especially if they were an experienced leader, you can give them, Hey, uh, I'll give you three minutes to think about a process and run a 10 15 minute sales interview with me.

If you think about it, those like all these things are so on the nose. You cannot spend 10, 15 minutes doing that with a customer and not know exactly what they're made of. You will always have a very good idea and a very concrete and confident idea of how they can [00:46:00] actually do the thing.

Final Thoughts and Takeaways
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Toni: So, wrapping up here, I hope everyone took a little bit away from you.

So, number one, hiring well is, you know, maybe some people are really intelligent that, but as with many things in life, you can process the, you know, the shit out of this. Mm-hmm. And I think the process we went through in terms of, uh, talk, show, do and interpret, sorry, I kind of mixed this up. I think that's, that's really important piece and especially on figuring out that, um, you know, people are stopping at the proxy level.

Totally neglecting the profile and the process piece. So those are, those are really good things to get right, and if you get them right, suddenly you can, um, you know, refine them, et cetera. What we didn't spend much time on is how you can distribute some of those questions across all the different people that doing the interview, right?

It's not just one person doing it and need to, not to get through every single question as one in one go. You can flatten this out a little bit. Um, but I think those are topics you can just hit us up on if, if you need additional help on [00:47:00] this. Um, but otherwise, honestly folks, if you listen to this and you are gonna, you know, keep hiring like you did yesterday, I think it's your own fault.

Seriously, I think there's something that you can improve here, uh, and I hope you do, uh, and obviously feel free to send this to some other hiring managers in your company. To get this one right too. Um, and

Raul: feel free to hit us up on that. Very happy to discuss about that with

Toni: you, Raul. Thanks a bunch for this.

I think this was really, really insightful and very practicable, very, very actionable for tomorrow already. Um, and yeah, see you everyone next week. Cheers. Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.