Sahil Mansuri’s Post

What The Hell Are We Doing? Shocking tidbits from the field. Spending 200+% of Sales & Marketing for every Net New ARR Dollar Believing you'll recruit Unicorn candidates from Job posts Requiring twelve-plus year Sales Director candidates to perform a discovery call in an interview panel Not coaching and mentoring employees who deliver less than 20% of plan/ productivity and/or not replacing them. Spending exorbitant marketing dollars chasing ecosystem partners at user conferences when your solution needs to be integrated and partner-approved in their marketplace, ........hoping scanned leads will buy. Fabricating Use Case(s) that don't exist. Seriously... Boards and CEOs must manage the ships and hire better to accelerate your efficient, profitable growth and expected return.

Calling all B2B founders preparing to scale sales in 2024. Here's my take on who you should hire first: Two salespeople who are early-career and absolutely share your values. Why two? Double the data points. If it's not working and you only have one salesperson, you'll constantly be questioning whether the problem is your product or the person. Why early-career? They don't bad sales habits yet.* They are less expensive. They have more life flexibility. Why share your values? Salespeople are your brand ambassadors. Whether they succeed or fail in this role, they'll talk to a lot of people on your behalf and will either reinforce the brand you've built or tear it down. *Hold off on hiring that enterprise sales rep from a big successful company who thinks they want to roll up their sleeves and join a startup. It's an expensive bet and rarely pans out.

Hiring for Go-To-Market (GTM) roles has been a passion of mine across multiple industries and company growth stages. The energy of GTM folks and the unmatched impact they have on a company’s revenue growth, market reach, and competitive positioning are transformative. But there are some unique dynamics to be aware of when filling these roles. Let’s take Account Executives as one example. Is this your 1st AE or your 50th? The first seller into an organization does more than just sell; they help identify and target initial market segments, they establish sales processes and strategies, and they need to be adaptable and resilient in less structured, high-uncertainty environments. Do you have time and resources to train, or do you need sellers to ramp up within a few months and start driving revenue? This will determine whether you can hire for transferable skills or whether you need to require directly applicable experience. Consider what segment they have experience selling into—SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, Strategic—and how their previous/current employers define that segmentation. Do you segment clients based on headcount, annual revenue, or annual spend? Has the seller been responsible for net-new business, cross-sell/expansion, or renewals in their current role? Is this aligned with what you need them to focus on? What quota amounts have they successfully achieved and exceeded? How many deals did it take them to get there? What is their average deal size? What was their average deal cycle length? Has the seller heavily relied on a sales development rep or inbound leads to generate pipeline for them, or have they actively engaged in business development activities in recent years? Does their overall sales motion align with how your sales team needs to operate to achieve your business’s short- and mid-term goals? Let’s get all cylinders of your company’s GTM engine firing in order to drive revenue growth. _____________ I'm Christine Bonfante, a Talent Acquisition expert, passionate People Operations advisor, and founder of Talent Magnet Solutions. I help industry disruptors and innovators hire top talent and retain and engage their teams by developing great places to work.

👨🏼💻 My Next Opportunity ⬇️ After a month of phone calls, emails, DMs, JD reviews, and resume updates, I’m ready to *formally* announce my job search. I’m an entrepreneurial leader who: 📈 operates at increasing levels of scale 🤝🏼 creates relationships grounded in integrity 🤔 makes iterative decisions in the face of ambiguity I am looking for a role as a: 💼 Director of Partnerships with a SaaS platform. Leaders in this role sit at a critical intersection within the broader organization. They are typically tasked with answering questions like: 🔎 Who is currently sending us our best future customers? Who could be? 💰 What systems and incentives are needed to create and strengthen a mutually beneficial relationship? 🧐 Which partnerships should we prioritize? Why? 💡 What are our partners teaching us about how we can best serve our customers? They are activators, evangelists, and systems thinkers. Like in sales more broadly, roles like this are along a continuum. Some might manage one partner (e.g. AWS), while others will build entire ecosystems. Roles can include sales and product responsibilities. Most recently I was towards the middle of that continuum, as I led a high-touch referral partnerships channel where VCs and PE firms would send us leads as part of a consultative sales process. I 40x’ed the channel. It’s a rapidly growing corner of the sales world built on trust, value and increasingly, automation. Even the top partnerships leaders are shocked at how fast it’s evolving. Flexibility and long-term thinking are table stakes. My job now is to find CEOs and Sales Leaders who need someone who can step in either create a partnerships strategy from scratch or build upon early successes. I'm sure I'll find them. Too many to list here, but thank you especially to Ted Kirk, Scott Pollack, Joey Katona, Cassady Churchill, Kyle Edquist, JJ Houldin, Ted Gonder, Tracy St.Dic, Andrew Edelman, and Brian Abernethy for helping me refine what’s next. Truly, it means the world. Onward! — #sales #saas #partnerships #partnershipleaders #fintech #gtm

I've been on LinkedIn since 2004. A lot has changed, including me. But one thing stayed the same: assuming who I am and what I do automatically translates. It doesn't. Allow me to reintroduce myself... Hi, I’m Amy Volas 👋🏻 Sales is my first love (I've sold $100M+ in revenue), and startups are my second (built enterprise teams, 2 exits). I've made every sales and hiring mistake in the book and watched thousands of others make the same ones, from Fortune brands to pre-seed startups. The biggest challenge across the board? Talking to people about the jobs we're hiring for is easy. And it's hard to find the RIGHT person to do the job that will stick around. Sales and hiring aren’t that different. And they both are screaming for an overhaul. Every bad hire is like a bad sales call, costing more than we can afford. That’s why I started Avenue Talent Partners in 2015. My partner in crime, Taryn Lanaghan, joined in 2018 to level us up. We remove the guesswork in the hiring process to help founders and CEOs confidently hire executive Sales and CS leaders. ... And when they don't need us for an executive search, we consult on closing hiring gaps. Here’s the truth: I’m not for everyone, and that’s okay. I do my best work with founders and CEOs who: 1. Prioritize the hiring process 2. Embrace open communication (even when it gets hard... people get tricky) 3. Prioritize people (candidates, team, prospects, customers, and partners) over transactions because they realize building a sustainable, successful business takes time 4. Consider the short, near, and long-term impact of their decisions 5. Understand why hiring is the most important thing they'll do and aren't afraid to ask for help when they don't have time or have gotten it wrong Remember, you can still be excellent and an expert in everything else and still suck at hiring. Hiring is hard, but it’s the key to everything. CEOs who get that? They’re the ones who win. That's my jam.

If you fit the description, and are in the #Bay or #NYC, I can’t understate the speed at which you should run to explore this opportunity. Navid Zolfaghari is the truth. #Jobs #SalesLeadership #Metronome

So anyway. Cold calling. If you're a staffing account manager, and you're still making ice-cold calls... Woof. That's a rough job in 2023. It doesn't have to be. Staffing can do more to help new sellers. For example... here's a staffing growth strategy I've seen: 🔹 Hire 5 new account managers, 🔹 Over 2 years ◾ 3 turnover ◾ 1 hits goals ◾ 1 beats goals Instead, they could... 🔹 Hire 4, and put $70k toward marketing 🔹 Over 2 years ◾ 1 turns over ◾ 1 hits goals ◾ 2 beat goals Same spend. Better results. It's not 2008. Adjust your outreach strategy! #staffing #recruiting #coldcalling #marketingstrategy

We work with companies who are hiring their 1st Sales Leader. Often these are stretch hires. Here are five things I wish I had known as a first-time VP Sales: 1. Joining at the right stage matters; I would have asked "why now" more insistently. Asking the right questions, including gaining access to all the metrics, will help here. 2. Being excellent with data - the role is much more than just "selling." Being able to dissect data to help make decisions is key. 3. Hiring is much harder than expected. Knowing when to hire, who to hire, and spending time interviewing while trying to hit a number is tough. 4. Assess FVP fit (Founder/VP fit). It's not a 9-5 job; you need to ensure the right fit here. Invest time outside of the interview process to ensure values and ways of working align. 5. Build the sales playbook early; documenting this really helps in understanding where the gaps are and building trust with the Founder and VC. #vpsales

How to improve your cold calling conversion rate... STOP COLD CALLING Okay maybe that is a tad too zealous. But seriously, the warmer you can make your calls - the better off you will be. Prospect: Hi Me: Hello John, Harriet here from Storm3, I am an exec search recruiter, specializing in placing senior sales talent into HealthTech's. Are you looking to scale the team this Q3? vs Prospect: Hi Me: Hello John, Harriet here from Storm3. I've been working with (competitor) to build out their commercial team after they failed to fill crucial roles for months. I've been keeping an eye on your Linkedin and it seems you are yet to fill your VP position - what impact is this having on your business? Not to say it will stop the hangups and 'do one's' but sure does have a better success rate. #sales #coldcalling

My Finance brain understands why some companies lay off top performers in an attempt to save money or make up for over-hiring.... very short term thinking but I guess that's the goal of trying to shed expenses quickly... because top performers make more money than the average sales talent. My Sales recruiting brain doesn't understand that because in my mind, your long term top sales talent will consistently bring you money. That's why over the last few months a lot of the sales leaders we are speaking with have decided to ONLY focus on hiring experienced, consistent President's club level sales talent and essentially let go of the bottom part of the org... quicker ramp up time. So to my top sales performers who have been laid off despite always exceeding quota, hear this: it's not you. It's them. It hurts but don't take it personally. Some companies just have different visions on how they view growth. Stay resilient.