Notes Sales is an art form. There are many aspects to it and the buying/selling “dance” is amazing. The best way to train/coach sales people is to use real phone calls, not role playing. One of things you should be doing from the start is to record all your calls and video meetings so that you can go back and take better notes as well as to learn from the recordings. At the early stage, you should have a brief before the meeting, have the meeting then have a debrief afterwards so that you can get the best results. For SDR, he is looking for candidates that are hungry, driven and open to coaching. Account executive - Same as above but someone that has experience with the price point and sales cycle. Someone who has the ability to understand all the different software systems being used in their daily tasks. People with little to no experience can sometimes be better hires as they are more foldable and less stuck in their ways. Do reference checks on sales people, they interview well. Call mutual connections, not just the references provided. Interview success is the lowest indicator of potential high performance. During the interview, have a role play and after ask them to change one thing. Then do the role play again and see if they implemented the one thing you asked them to change. If they did not, it may not be a good candidate. You should document the top behaviours that a sales person should exhibit to be a top performer. Then when providing feedback, refer back to those behaviours. Get you customers personal email and cell phone number. When they live their company, you can still contact them as they go to a new company. Final Five What is your favorite sales or leadership book? The Challenger Customer by Brent Adamson Do you have someone that you follow/read for sales/leadership ideas? Jill Konrath, Tom Snyder Are you available 24/7? Do you have strict personal time boundaries? Very strict time boundaries What is your favorite tool used for sales? Truepeoplesearch.com What one piece of advice do you have for all the founders/CEOs/VP Sales out there? Go try things that are out of your comfort zone, study what the best people do differently and approach sales more like a science. Mentioned Books Steve’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saleskickoffspeaker/ Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/springeradam/ Training: https://startupsales.io/training/