Hiring Truly Driven Salespeople – In Just 7 Minutes with Kevin Gaither

Resources/Links:

• Free download, a plug and play interview template to improve your chances of making a great salesperson higher. Click here: https://www.insidesalesexpert.com

Summary

Is hiring driven, result-oriented salespeople who can truly propel your business forward a challenge? Many leaders unknowingly repeat costly mistakes, from ineffective hiring processes to poor onboarding and lack of proper coaching, leading to low performance and high turnover. By leveraging Kevin Gaither’s proven four-pillar framework, you can build a sales team that consistently achieves and exceeds goals, driving your business to new heights.

Kevin Gaither helps early-stage tech startup leaders grow their sales teams, sharing 25+ years of experience from building teams and avoiding mistakes he made along the way.

In this episode, Kevin shares insights on avoiding common hiring mistakes and building high-performing sales teams through his four-pillar framework of recruiting, onboarding, coaching, and performance management.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:44 – Kevin’s ideal client: A coachable and humble CEO, founder or head of sales in a growing pre-IPO tech company.
• 02:22 – The problem he helps clients solve: The number one thing that I see these leaders mess up is hiring.
• 03:25 – Symptoms of the problem he helps solve: Five things: slow rep ramp times, high rep turnover, low sales team motivation, poor conversion rates, and low team quota attainment.
• 05:20 – Mistakes his clients make before seeing him: I like to refer back to these four pillars.
• 07:20 – Kevin’s Valuable Free Action [VFA]: Do [develop an intentional, thorough, yet speedy interview process to increase the chances of hiring great people for your sales team] it yourself. Don’t pay me for it.
• 08:08: His Valuable Free Resource: Free download of a plug and play interview template to improve your chances of making a great salesperson higher. Click here: https://www.insidesalesexpert.com
• 09:07 – Q: KG, do you have any non-obvious pieces of advice sales leaders should know? A: And here’s my top six: Sales Kickoffs are an absolute waste of time and money. Sales leaders’ mission should be to see their reps quit and go someplace better. Curiosity cannot be taught. Motivation isn’t something that is done to somebody. And finally, and most controversial, your salespeople are not your friends.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“You can have the best culture and the best comp and the best product, but if you put the wrong butts in the seat, you're going to have a rough time being successful.” -Kevin Gaither Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Welcome, everyone to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m Tom Poland, beaming out to you from the sunny Sunshine Coast here in Australia. Joined today by Kevin or KG Gaither from another sunny coast. Whereabouts are you hanging out, KG?

Kevin Gaither 00:22
I am in beautiful southern California, just north of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. It’s beautiful out here today.

Tom Poland 00:30
Little birdie told me your neighbors are the Kardashians. Is that right?

Kevin Gaither 00:33
That’s right, we hang out and Ozzy Osbourne, we hang out from time to time.

Tom Poland 00:36
You say, hang out. Yeah, that would be interesting, among all else, right? Folks, KG’s thing is getting truly driven salespeople onto your team. Now, there’s all sorts of benefits with this. Of course. You start to scale sales, you take a whole monkey off your back, you can focus on the things that you really want to do, which might be product development to client work, but by golly, they’re hard to pick. You know? And if you get the wrong one, they just drain your bank account. If you get the right one, they add multiple return on investment back to your bank account. So it’s a specialty. Kevin’s had an early stage tech startup, working with them to grow leaders, sales teams. Got over 25 years experience with doing those building teams and sales teams. And so we’re going to get to benefit from some of his successes and perhaps some of your mistakes, as well, Kevin, on this little interview.

Kevin Gaither 01:28
No question. I learned more from my mistakes than the failures, Tom, that’s for sure.

Tom Poland 01:32
Absolutely. Yeah. And more from criticism than compliment. So let’s dive into it. The subject is hiring truly driven salespeople. Kevin, our time is going to start now, Sir. Question number one, who’s your ideal client?

Kevin Gaither 01:44
Yep. So I’m not a recruiter. Okay. But my ideal client is a coachable and humble CEO, founder or head of sales in a growing pre-IPO tech company. That’s my ideal client.

Tom Poland 01:57
So they’re ready to scale, they’re ready to hire salespeople to get the word out.

Kevin Gaither 02:04
That’s right.

Tom Poland 02:05
And they may not have the specialist knowledge to understand that getting truly driven, motivated, ethical, professional sales, result-driven salespeople is, that’s your whole thing in itself. So tell us about the problem you solve. Sum it up or is there more you want to add to that?

Kevin Gaither 02:22
Yeah, you’re right on and there’s not just one thing. What I end up doing is I end up helping those leaders at those pre-IPO tech companies avoid the galactically ridiculous mistakes that I’ve made over the past 25 years when building, fixing, and growing their sales teams. And the problem with these leaders is that they just don’t know what’s around the corner. And I help them give visibility because I’ve been there many times and the number one thing that I see these leaders mess up is hiring. And we can talk more about that down the line here, but that is, of my four pillars, that’s the first one. And it is the most important thing, getting hiring right.

Tom Poland 03:02
Yeah. I look at, and I think that’s true of every specialty, not just sales. And so often consultants can get called in to fix a team and the real fix is getting the right people on board in the first place. So what would you say are some of the symptoms that your ideal client is noticing in their work environment, which would kind of give them a heads up and they should be reaching out to you.

Kevin Gaither 03:25
Yeah, so I see these leaders, they’re making the same mistakes I made, and they’re doing it again and again. And when I see these five things, I know there’s a problem and I know I can help. First, slow rep ramp times, you expect them to ramp to full productivity in four months and it’s taking them six months, nine months. Number two, high rep turnover. It’s just this revolving door of reps in and out, right? Number three, will you find yourself asking the question, what can I do to motivate my sales team? That’s number three. If you say that I hear that, I know I can be very helpful. Right? And then the fourth one is poor conversion rates. This sounds obvious, but like you expect a conversion rate of X, but you’re seeing X minus. And then of course related to that is then low team quota attainment. Only 30%, 50% quota attainment. When I see those five things, Tom, or any one of those five things, I’ve been there and made that mistake. And I know at least some of the ways that I have solved that in the past with great success.

Tom Poland 04:30
I would say those five things are actually quite common. And folks, if you’re experiencing those, it’s not a disgrace. It’s kind of a normal situation. I think it just underlies the fact that every discipline or skill set within a business is a specialty in and of itself. So don’t be embarrassed to reach out and have a chat with KG if you are experiencing those symptoms. But let’s get back on the interview. We are talking about very ambitious growth orientated CEOs and team leaders. They’re in this IPO environment where shareholders expect a lot of them, they’re going to sleep every night thinking about how to get the next breakthrough. We’re going to be waking up driving to work, thinking about it. Bottom line is, they’re going to be trying things. What would you say are some of the common mistakes, maybe you’ve made that we could tell folks about that help them to avoid those mistakes in the future?

Kevin Gaither 05:20
Yeah, so I like to refer back to these four pillars. When I work with clients, I focus on these particular four pillars. The first one’s going to be totally obvious, for recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. And by the way, those are three separate things all baked into one: recruiting, interviewing, and hiring. So that’s the first pillar. And like I’ve said before, and you and I beat a dead horse on this one, that is one of the most important things. Second, for onboarding and training. So you make the strategic decision to make empires and you spend all this time putting the right butts in the seats, or at least attempting to put the right butts in the seat. And yes, but then you screw it up with poor onboarding and training. So that’s the second pillar I like to shore up once we get the hiring right. The third is lack of effective coaching. This is when you get these great people on board, but then they want to get better, but you don’t really create an environment that facilitates continuous improvement. And the last piece is little to no document performance management system. This is, what does it take to get fired? What does it take to get promoted? What does good look like? When you put all four of those things together, you’re cooking with gaps, but most are moving so fast that they don’t stop to focus on those four pillars. And I’ve made that mistake. So I’ve learned to shore that up.

Tom Poland 06:34
And I mean, none of this is rocket science. You could say it’s common sense, but my god, it’s not commonplace. And that’s the big thing folks is, very often, and you look, I’ve been introduced to Kevin, we’re not on any sort of affiliate commission arrangement or anything like that. I have no financial interest in money, Kevin, but for the love of God, please be smart enough to know that you’re dumb in some of these areas. And I say that with the greatest respect. I think that’s one of the secrets of success is that we don’t actually have to be smart at everything. We just have to be smart enough to know how dumb we are with something and reach out and get some help.

Kevin Gaither 07:07
Amen.

Tom Poland 07:07
Speaking of help, I’m going to skip to the top tip. What can you do to give someone an idea that… it’s not going to solve the whole equation for them, they might need you for that, but what’s one thing they could do?

Kevin Gaither 07:20
Yeah, so it’s going to go back to hiring again and I say this all the time: You can have the best culture and the best comp and the best product, but if you put the wrong butts in the seat, you’re going to have a rough time being successful. And as a result, I’ve had to self-teach myself, Tom. I’ve learned the most important thing that a leader can do is develop an intentional, thorough, yet speedy interview process to increase the chances of hiring great people for your sales team. And look, Tom, I didn’t go through some sort of formal training program. I sought all this information out myself with plenty of books to read, including top grading for sales, and never hired a salesperson again. And then, but that’s one thing, one big free tip. Do it yourself. Don’t pay me for it.

Tom Poland 08:01
Yeah. And that’s a nice segue into question six, which is where can people go to find out, get even more help?

Kevin Gaither 08:08
Yeah. So I’ve got a really valuable free resource that I have on my website. My most popular free download on insidesalesexpert.com is my plug and play interview template that I’ve created and hung over the last 25 years. It’s called 77 Salesperson Interview Questions. And it has 20 salesperson traits and characteristics and 77 real interview questions that I’ve asked and honed over the years that you can ask today to improve your chances of making a great salesperson higher.

Tom Poland 08:37
And folks to get that, go to www.insidesalesexpert.com. Is that right, Kevin?

Kevin Gaither 08:44
That’s right. You’ll see a lead page right on, right when you download, right when you go to the homepage there. Or you can go to my free guides.

Tom Poland 08:52
And so, www.insidesalesexpert.com, it’s this 77 real life sales interview questions. A great asset to have. Last question, Sir. We are out of time, but let me give you 20 seconds. What’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t?

Kevin Gaither 09:07
KG, do you have any non-obvious pieces of advice sales leaders should know? And here’s my top six: Sales kickoffs are an absolute waste of time and money. Spiffs in sales contests just aren’t effective. Sales leaders’ mission should be to see their reps quit and go someplace better. Curiosity cannot be taught. So make sure you hire curious people to begin with. Motivation isn’t something that is done to somebody. And finally, and most controversial, your salespeople are not your friends, Tom.

Tom Poland 09:42
A lot of wisdom I pack on there, KG. Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom and your insights. Cheers.

Kevin Gaither 09:47
My pleasure. Cheers.

Tom Poland 09:49
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.