Hiring For A New Era In Sales

Everything in sales is changing.

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The Sales Development Organization (SDRs) originated out of Silicon Valley in the 1980s.  The idea behind the SDR team was to put low-cost salespeople in the role of developing a high volume of qualified leads.  The more seasoned and sophisticated sales team would then work the qualified lead and bring the account to close.  The SDR model has proven itself to be the most cost-effective way to qualify leads and carry them down the sales funnel.  Many of the most successful companies today structure their organizations against this sales process and hire executive revenue leaders who know how to implement against this.

Marketing has always played a role in this process, driving the initial interest through brand and acquisition tactics, sending the unqualified lead to the SDR team.

But in recent years, the lines between lead gen., lead development, and close are getting less clear. As marketing tools and technologies have become more sophisticated, marketing is playing a much larger role in the sales process and in many cases owning it.  As communication tools and technologies advance (leaving aside the pandemic, video conferencing was already on the rise) more of those high-touch sales executives are interacting with clients leveraging the same methods as an SDR. As companies move towards a more efficient and mobile world, less face to face meetings are taken. Buyers continue to get comfortable with purchasing from a person they haven’t met and great sellers are adapting quickly to new technologies and tools that make them more productive and are more effective at demonstrating products and offerings that meet client needs.

So, how do we address this new world of sales and hire executive revenue leaders who can organize and operationalize a team against our changing landscape?

Here are three things to consider:

• Marketing is sales and sales is marketing:  Broaden your thinking and broaden your revenue leadership search to include executives who grew up in either division. Great sales executives know how to market and great marketing leaders prioritize revenue. The lines between sales and marketing are becoming less clear and what is needed for revenue growth is executive leadership that understands the full revenue ecosystem.
• Relationships only can take you so far. Often we are asked to prioritize candidates that have deep relationships in their target industry or category. This is short-term thinking and should be reserved for the line management role. Executive-level leaders need to focus on much larger revenue-driving initiatives including developing growth strategies, organizational design, customer experience, new business growth, retention, talent acquisition, people management, and more.
• Soft skills are harder to measure than hard skills. Vision, Intellectual horsepower, curiosity, creativity, adaptability, communication, leadership. All these things are difficult to measure and interview against and they are the hardest areas for individuals to develop. Spend more time interviewing against these areas than on past experiences. Don’t dismiss a candidate because they don’t have the industry experience you seek. The question you need to ask is does this candidate have the leadership and vision to develop a high-functioning revenue organization that addresses the now but is nimble enough to adapt for the future?

Sales is changing. The world is changing. Broaden your understanding of what executive revenue leadership looks like and your company will be well poised for a high-growth future.