Hello {{First name|Predictable Revenue community}},

Community update: Next Friday (930am PT / 1230pm ET) is our next GTM Club. The format is simple: founders show up with whatever revenue problem is keeping them up at night, and we spend 90 minutes working through it as a group. No slides, no pitch. Just real problems and real experience. Reply if you want in.

Onto the newsletter…

Everybody talks about "hire slow, fire fast."

Very few people know what that actually means.

I've been hiring salespeople for over a decade. At Predictable Revenue we peaked at around 50 SDRs, 3 recruiters, and hiring about 5 SDRs a month. I have made every mistake you can make. And the biggest one, the one that cost me the most, was trusting my gut instead of building a real process. 

I still remember one hire where the process (and specifically our most junior team member) told me not to hire the rep. But, I had a good feeling in my gut about them and so I ignored the process. It was one of my worst hires. Not only were they not a good fit for the role (I’m being diplomatic here) but they were an immediate drag on our culture (and here).

Here's the thing about salespeople: they all present well. That's literally their job. They walk into your interview polished, articulate, and confident. They've got stock answers for every standard question you'll throw at them.

Go look at any salesperson's LinkedIn. They all hit quota. They're all 110%. Every single one.

You’re right to feel skeptical. 

A good talker is not the same thing as a good seller. It's a nice UI. Doesn't mean there's great working software underneath. And without a process that gets past the presentation layer, you're just picking the person who interviewed best. Which is a completely different skill than closing deals.

My hiring process is lifted from Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street, and I've used it across hundreds of sales hires. It has four stages.

First, a Screening interview. Does the resume make sense? Did they do what they said they did? Thirty minutes to make sure you're not wasting each other's time. My favourite section is that you ask for each role, “who was your boss” and “what will they say your strengths / weaknesses were at the time”. Their opinion of what their boss will say vs what they actually do say (in the later reference checks) is critical. 

Second, the WHO interview. This is the core of the whole thing. You take 3 to 5 of their previous jobs, in chronological order, and for each one you ask the same five questions. What were you hired to do? What accomplishments are you most proud of? What mistakes did you make? Who did you work with (who was on their team)? Why did you leave? Here’s a tip, the “who did you work with” question is a great way to find non-resume reference checks. 

Third, three Focused interviews that fill gaps from the WHO. For sales hires, this is where I depart slightly from the Who process. I run the same three focused interviews every time: sales philosophy, technical acumen and intellectual curiosity, and how they sell against the competition.

Fourth, reference checks. Not just the references they hand you. Back-channel. Find previous contacts. Go deep.

Now, the power of the WHO interview is not the questions themselves. It's what they reveal.

"What were you hired to do?" is intentionally broad. You want to see how they understood the role, not just the title. Nobody just hires an AE. They hire an AE at a certain stage, for a certain reason, into a certain market. Does this person understand the structure that was applied to their position? Or do they just say "I was an AE"?

"Why did you leave?" is even better. Whatever made them leave their last company is what's going to make them leave yours. Pay attention.

And the career arc across all the roles is where the real picture emerges. Are they on an upswing? A downswing? Have they plateaued? Watch them swing from the monkey bars between opportunities. Do the transitions make sense? Is the slope going up?

Here's why this works on salespeople specifically. It puts them in storytelling mode. They're not running their prepared answers. They're telling you about their experience. And you get a lot more honest, open answers when people are narrating instead of performing.

At Predictable Revenue, everybody hated this process. Hated it. At first. They thought I was insane for making them do it. I forced them to do it anyway. And here's what happened: every recruiter and hiring manager who eventually left the company took this process with them. They asked for the document. Every single one.

Because after you push through the initial resistance, you start hiring different people than you were hiring with your gut. Better people. Better-fit people. The kind of people who actually succeed in the role instead of flaming out at month four. 

This process was likely the single biggest contributor to our success as a company. We built an incredible group of folks that are now mostly Directors and VPs at bigger companies. 

Further messing with the Who process, we added a fifth step, the culture fit interview. We invite the candidate in after office hours and supply food and drinks. The only instruction is that you must teach us a game. I find you really get to know folks in these interviews. You see how they will interact with your current team, how they do in uncomfortable social situations, and how well they can teach people something new. 

We’re looking for red flags that we missed in the interview process. Some people are amazing interviewers but this isn’t your typical interview so it throws them off. I find you really get to see what they’re going to be like every day. 

That hire I made that the process (and team) said, “don’t do it”, the person bombed the culture fit. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and hired them anyway. Big mistake. 

I'm fine if somebody had a bad beat. They worked at a startup and product-market fit fell apart. That happens. I actually prefer somebody with a chip on their shoulder, but I need to understand the story.

Hire for trajectory. Not pedigree, not where they went to school, not the brand name on their resume. Trajectory. Are they getting better? Are they figuring things out?

Self-direction matters. Can they operate without someone holding their hand? One of the best candidates I interviewed recently had no real manager for months at a time and still crushed it. He figured things out on the fly and self-sourced aggressively. That's what you want.

Self-awareness is huge. I want to hear somebody describe a real mistake they made, like getting yes'd to death by excited prospects and not multi-threading to actual decision makers, and then tell me what they built to fix it. That's growth.

On the flip side, if they give zero team credit and position themselves as the lone hero while everyone around them was useless, that's not someone you want on your team. If they're a good talker but can't go deep on mechanics, process, or deal strategy, you're looking at the UI, not the software. If they can't describe mistakes without deflecting, they haven't actually learned anything.

Every interviewer fills out a scorecard after every single interview before anyone is allowed to say anything. That’s right, we have to sit there in silence and submit our google form before we can talk. It’s awkward but it works. You're making make-or-break company decisions and you need structured data to compare candidates against each other. Letting people talk or wait before filling out a scorecard dilutes the quality of feedback or lets other people's biases and opinions take over a process. 

I know it feels like overhead. Do it anyway.

Here’s the scorecard format I lifted from EOS: 

GWC: Does this person Get the role, Want the role, and have the Capacity to do it. 

Culture Fit: Assess the candidate against each of your company's core values. 

Both components use the same simple scale: 0 means no evidence, 1 means some evidence, 2 means all the evidence you could want.

Sales is the most important hire you'll make as it relates to growth. Full stop.

Hiring the wrong salesperson doesn't just cost you a salary. It costs you 6 to 12 months of missed growth. You take your step onto the next tread on the staircase, and instead of going up, it goes down. Now you've burned through the capital you needed to hire the second person, and you're back at square one. Except worse, because now you're behind.

That's not a theoretical risk. That's what actually happens to most startups that rush this.

So stop pretending your gut is a process. Your gut is how you ended up with a great talker who can't close. Build the process. Run the interviews. Fill out the scorecards. Check the references. Take the time.

Collin

PS - If you pre-ordered The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers, you already have a copy of my hiring guide in the pre-order benefits doc I shared. If you didn’t but want a copy, drop me an email with your receipt (doesn’t have to be pre-order) and I’ll share the doc.