Hiring Great Sales Talent

Summary

Revenue Builders Podcast: "Hiring Great Sales Talent"

Date: May 5, 2022
Hosts: John McMahon (Five-time CRO) & John Kaplan (Co-founder, Force Management)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, John McMahon and John Kaplan delve into the art and science of hiring elite sales talent. Drawing on decades of executive experience, they dissect the interviewing process from both the company’s and the candidate’s perspectives. The conversation focuses on the importance of thorough preparation, defining success profiles, and the critical role of characteristics over just skills and experience. Listeners can expect actionable advice for both interviewers and job seekers, candid anecdotes from the field, and memorable stories about what can make—or break—great hiring outcomes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining What You're Looking For (Position Profile)

[02:31] John McMahon stresses that most companies don’t clearly define what they want in a candidate:

• Many organizations hire without a written "position profile" detailing required knowledge, skills, characteristics, and experience.

• Hiring managers often rely on resumes, which aren't third-party certified and don’t reveal critical characteristics.

• Quote:

  “A resume is so funny to me because no one has ever certified a resume. Right?... No one's truly certifying that stuff.”
  (John McMahon, 05:07)

• The most important hiring criteria are candidate characteristics, which are hard to change later.

2. Getting Specific about Characteristics, Not Just Skills

[06:16] John Kaplan notes the common tendency to use vague terms:

• Managers often mention traits like "drive" or "grit" without specifying what that looks like in practice.

• [07:14] John McMahon draws a football analogy to stress that “sales is not sales,” and roles need different skill sets, just as football positions do.

• Key Takeaway:
  Success in fast-paced environments requires intelligence and drive, as skill development takes time, and adaptability is crucial.

3. The Importance of Evidence in Interviewing

• Interviewers must prepare targeted discovery questions to uncover real evidence of key characteristics.

• Quote:

  “Give me an example of where you had to utilize your coachability skills.”
  (John Kaplan, 11:48)

• For every item on the position profile, formulate open-ended questions to extract stories and examples, not just "yes" or "no" answers.

4. Balancing Qualification and Selling the Opportunity

• Interviews should be balanced: 50% qualifying the candidate, 50% selling the company and role.

• Many managers fail to sell why their organization matters, often because they haven't emotionally connected to the company mission themselves.

• Quote:

  “Some of the best interviewers have emotionally connected to what they do matters and why it matters and therefore it comes across in the interview process.”
  (John Kaplan, 16:37)

• First-time managers sometimes look more for a 'friend' than the right hire, and fail to assess skills and risks properly.

5. Dividing Responsibility: Company vs. Candidate

• Elite companies treat knowledge and skill development as their responsibility, while expecting candidates to bring the right characteristics.

• Quote:

  “Knowledge and skills are the responsibility of the company... The responsibility of the individual is to bring their characteristics or their character to that equation.”
  (John Kaplan, 19:43)

• Mapping out “knowledge, skills, and characteristics” helps in everything from sourcing to onboarding to promotion or demotion.

6. References: A Highly Undervalued Resource

• Most companies don’t check references properly, and when they do, they only call provided references (who are likely to be positive).

• The value lies in "back channel" references and asking for more connections beyond the current list.

• Quote:

  “If you really just do a little bit of work, it's not that hard to back channel the person and figure out, hey, what's really going on with this person.”
  (John McMahon, 23:21)

• Kaplan shares a memorable story about catching a candidate lying about being a Division 1 athlete by directly calling the coach during the interview.

7. Advice for Candidates: Interviewing as a Sales Call

• Candidates should deeply research the company and the interviewer.

• Quality of candidate questions reveals preparation and genuine interest.

• Quote:

  “If this interview is not that important to them, that they're not going to go and do homework... then why would I ever expect that they're going to do that when they're selling my product.”
  (John McMahon, 30:32)

• Approach the interview as a consultative sales call: What problems do they need solved, how can you address them, and what sets you apart?

8. Memorable Moments: Standing Out in Interviews

• Handling pressure and objections:
  [33:44] John McMahon recounts a CRO candidate who, when doubted, simply paused and winked—demonstrating confidence and composure.
• Creative persistence:
  [35:00] A candidate once sent a single running shoe with a note, “If you give me a chance and give me a shot at the interview, I'll bring the other shoe…” — exemplifying tenacity and creative follow-up.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “The most important thing to hire are the characteristics. Those are the things you'll never change in the person, right?”
  — John McMahon, 05:50

• “Sales, sales is sales. If you could sell inside, you could sell outside, you could sell major accounts. And I just don't think that's true.”
  — John McMahon, 07:24

• “You have to get good at this. Because recruiting will determine you as the sales leader. No matter what level you're at.”
  — John McMahon, 36:47

• “The most elite companies on the planet are the ones that begin with people. Forecast sessions begin with people. QBRs begin with people… That's how a company grew from zero to a billion dollars in less than 10 years.”
  — John Kaplan, 37:18

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Segment Timestamps

• [02:31] — The Problem with Interviewing to the Resume; Position Profiles
• [07:14] — Sales Role Specialization Analogy (Football)
• [10:44] — Core Characteristics: Intelligence, Drive, Coachability, Adaptability
• [11:48] — The Evidence-Based Interview and Discovery Questions
• [13:43] — The Sales Interview: Qualifying vs. Selling the Opportunity
• [19:43] — Company vs. Candidate Responsibilities: Knowledge/Skills vs. Characteristics
• [22:29] — Success Profiles: The "Gift That Keeps on Giving"
• [23:21] — Reference Hygiene and Back Channeling
• [24:55] — Lying Candidates and the Power of Direct Verification
• [28:59] — Preparing as a Candidate: Treat the Interview Like a Sales Call
• [33:44] — Memorable Interview Objection Handling (The Wink Story)
• [35:00] — Creative Follow-Up (The One Shoe Story)
• [36:47] — Final Advice: Recruiting Defines Leaders

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Final Takeaways

• For Interviewers:

  • Define and document what makes someone successful in every sales role.
  • Prepare open-ended, evidence-seeking questions.
  • Balance between qualifying rigor and selling the opportunity.
  • Don’t cut corners on references—go deeper than the standard list.

• For Candidates:

  • Treat interviews with the depth and prep of a critical customer call.
  • Come armed with thoughtful, researched questions.
  • Seek creative ways to stand out and demonstrate your problem-solving approach.

• For Everyone:

  • Recruiting is a key lever for organizational success; companies distinguished by the quality of their people will always have an edge.

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This episode is a must-listen for sales leaders, recruiters, and ambitious sales professionals aiming to master the art of both hiring and being hired.

Transcript

[John McMahon]

Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co founder John Kaplan, the show goes behind the scenes with the people who have been there, done that, and seen the results. If you enjoy our content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. Revenue Builders is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Find [e-mail] Enjoy today's episode.

[John Kaplan]

Hello and welcome to another segment of Revenue Builders. I'm John Kaplan. We've had a couple of great conversations with some talent gurus, Mike McSally and Chad Peets. And today we thought it would be a great idea to just kind of follow up with some of our takeaways. Specifically on the topic of interviewing. My esteemed colleague John McMahon is here for this conversation. Johnny, how are you? Good.

[John McMahon]

Reporting for duties, Cap.

[John Kaplan]

All right, buddy. All right. Hey, buddy. You and I are constantly confronted with this conversation with our customers, your board members, and on this conversation of the war on talent. And what I thought we'd do today is really dig into that piece, the critical piece on interviewing and how not to cut corners there. So what I thought I'd do is just kind of throw you up a softball to begin this and just talk about, you know, some of. And we'll talk about it from two perspectives. We'll talk about it from the interviewer, the company that's interviewing the candidate, and then the interviewee, the candidate and their responsibility in the interview process. So let's start with the interviewer and just tap into some of your great experience on some of the great hygiene things that you think about to be really good at this.

[John McMahon]

Okay, so first of all, I think a lot of companies don't know specifically what they're looking for. So as an example, I got asked one time to go in to speak to a CEO of a public company, and they had started on Insights as an inside sales company. And then they decided we got to get bigger deal sizes. So now we're a public company. We want to bring in, you know, outside salespeople. So some of the venture capitalists asked me to go in and talk to the guy. So when I went in and spoke to him, what he had turned out is the they had hired 20 outside sales reps, and the outside salespeople were half as productive as the inside salespeople. So I said, well, first of all, could you show me what your position Profile is. And he said, well, what's that? And I said, well, you or your CRO must have at least a one page document that describes what specifically are you looking for. And he said I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. And I said, well, could you call your CRO and ask. Called the CRO and CRO said no, we don't have anything like that. And I thought, well, no wonder you're missing, right? And then the next question was, who's doing the hiring for these outside sales reps? He said, well, that's my VP of sales that's always been here since the beginning of the company. I said, is that the person that was also your inside sales leader? He said yes. Does he have any outside sales experience? No. So here you had a company with a person that had no outside sales experience that doesn't have a profile of specifically what they're looking for as far as knowledge, skills, characteristics and experience in this position that they're looking to hire. I think it's really important at least to write down for the position that you're looking for, what is the knowledge that you need the person to have? What are the skills that they should possess, at least at a minimum level. Because especially if you have good onboarding training and good development training, what are the key characteristics of this person? Should they be intelligent, should they be driven, should they have integrity, should they be coachable? Those types of things. And finally, how much experience should they have as a minimum in doing these things? And where I think a lot of companies make big mistakes is they interview to the resume. But what I always thought is a resume is so funny to me because no one has ever certified a resume. Right? You know, it's, there's no third party that says everything that's on this resume that the person put together, you know, is truthful and to the point, all the dates are accurate, all that type of stuff, whether it's LinkedIn profile or it's, it's a resume, no one's truly certifying that stuff. So, and then finally a LinkedIn profile or a resume, what does that truly tell you? It shows you experience in jobs and you might be able to determine from the jobs they had, you might be able to tell a little bit of the skill set that they have, maybe a little bit of the knowledge they have, but nothing of the characteristics. And I've always found that about those things, knowledge, skills, characteristics, the most important thing to hire are the characteristics. Those are the things you'll never Change in the person, right?

[John Kaplan]

Yeah. And those are, those are tough ones. Like, so first of all, you were an early adopter, I remember an early adopter of like specifically using the success profile. And I like how you've really kind of defined that on knowledge, skills and characteristics. What I found is when, you know, sometimes when I ask about these, 99% of time they're not written down. And then when I do ask about them, they give me characteristics that are very generic, like edge and drive, grand and grit. And so kind of walk me through a little bit like what feedback do you give CROs? And, and you know, people that show you like, okay, here's our characteristics. How do you help them kind of dig into that and turn that into something that's observable?

[John McMahon]

Well, first I got to get them to buy into the fact that the person or the position that you're looking to hire for. So are you looking to hire for an inside sales rep, an outside sales rep, an outside territory sales rep, a major account rep? What type of a, of a person are you looking for? And the reason I say that is some people will say, well, salespeople, they're all the same. Sales, sales is sales. If you could sell inside, you could sell outside, you could sell major accounts. And I just don't think that's true. So I say the analogy I give is, is football, Football. I mean, is every position the same? Can Tom Brady, who's a quarterback, can Tom Brady also play wide receiver or also play, you know, slot receiver? No, he can't.

[John Kaplan]

Why?

[John McMahon]

He has knowledge of the game, but he doesn't have the skill set. You move him to a different position and on the first play you'll say, what is he doing in that position? That's no different than we're hiring for different types of territories. You're hiring for different types of major accounts. What is the skill set that they need to have in order to be successful in that position? Right. So I got to get them the first buying into the fact that they have to. What type of knowledge do they have to have to be successful in that position and what type of skill set do they have to have? Once I can get them to buy into that, then I say, okay, let's talk about a little bit about characteristics. So knowledge, if you're going to people, if you're in a fast growing software company, things are constantly going to change. So what's going to change? It's going to change. Your product's going to change, your competition is going to change. Your customers are going to change. All those things are going to rapidly change, which also means your messaging is going to change, everything is going to change. The discovery questions are going to change. So you need somebody that can pick up knowledge really quick. So what characteristic is that? They have to be pretty, they have to be highly intelligent. Right. So they can keep learning and learning and learning. And then what about the skills? You know, do they have to get to an economic buyer? Do they have to know how to build the cost justification? Do they have to know how to overcome different types of objections? All of those. There's a part of it is knowledge, but a big part of it is a skill set that they basically can do almost as if you woke them up from a sleep, deep sleep at 2 o' clock in the morning. They just have the skill set, they can handle those types of things. So then they start to realize, wow, if I'm in a fast going to be in a fast growing company, two of the most essential characteristics I have to have in a person is intelligence and drive. Because skills take a lot of time to develop. Right. If somebody's really smart in a classroom, I can teach them stuff, or on the job, I can teach them stuff pretty quickly. But it's the skill set that takes a really long time to develop. Like if you're going to be the best dart thrower, the best quarterback, the best golfer, it's going to take thousands and thousands and thousands of reputation repetitions. And if somebody doesn't have the drive, the competitiveness, the motivation to be able to do those things, they're just not going to pick up the new skills. As your company starts to grow. Right. And change.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, I love.

[John McMahon]

Those are two of the real key characteristics. The other ones I'd say is, you know, coachability, are they coachable? Right. And people say, well, yeah, you know, Joe or Sally, she's coachable. But are they then adaptable?

[John Kaplan]

Right.

[John McMahon]

So a lot of people will take feedback, but can they actually go and adapt? That's the hard part is what I found it. So I'm looking for people that are coachable, but they're also adaptable. Right. They're willing to change.

[John Kaplan]

I love the way that you just kind of outlined that. And I think one of the biggest gaps that people do. So you brought it all the way down to what characteristics would I need to see? And from an interviewer perspective, so you had knowledge, you have skills, and then that's going to drive certain characteristics. Then I ask the next question is, okay, what evidence do you have that, this person possesses that and, or they've done it. So I find way too many people making the leap of faith that says, well, Brady understands the game so well, he certainly could play receiver, but they don't sit in that moment of preparedness. And let's dig in here to the skill sets required of the interviewer that really has to prepare great discovery questions to get people to tell them about relevant experiences that would, you know, for example, you brought it all the way down to the characteristic of coachable. Give me an example of where you had to utilize your coachability skills. And that's asking a discovery question. It's preparing discovery questions to really make that come out in an interview. And so that takes preparation all the way down to the questions you're going to ask to get the evidence right. Does that resonate for you?

[John McMahon]

Yeah, absolutely. Because if you think about it, if you just have a resume, which is what most people interview to, we already said it doesn't show any of the characteristics. It shows maybe a little bit of knowledge and maybe a little bit of the skill set. So you have to have a position profile that says here's the knowledge, skills, characteristics and experience I'm looking for. And for each one of those bullets, you have to have an open ended discovery question to your point to be able to uncover that right in the interview. And the resume might just be something you're talking to, but it could be the LinkedIn profile. But it can also just be the fact that you need that person to respond that proves that they have that knowledge or they give you evidence that they've developed that skill set. And you can tell specifically if you're knowledgeable about that skill set or that knowledge area, you know, whether or not they're giving you the right answer or not.

[John Kaplan]

I love that. I love that. John, let's talk a little bit about the balance. Some of the other kind of mistakes or hygiene areas that I see is that people don't have a good balance when they interview people. It's got to be a healthy dose. Like 50% has to be qualifying the candidate and then 50%, you should be prepared to be excited and have energy about selling the opportunity to the candidate. And a lot of times when I've sat in on interviews or I've asked about, you know, follow up on interviews, the people don't have that. They really don't understand that either they spend the whole time qualifying or they spend the whole time selling. And it's really, it's really a balance. Can you talk a little bit about that.

[John McMahon]

Well, I think it is a balance. You got to figure out that.

[John Kaplan]

While.

[John McMahon]

There'S times when you got to ask questions, you got to give the candidate time to ask the questions that they want to ask. Then in that process is where you also are trying to sell the opportunity. But to your point, I found that some of the companies that I've been at, a lot of my sales leaders really couldn't sell the opportunity and they couldn't sell why we're different and why it would be so meaningful for the person sitting in front of them to come to this company. Right. So they weren't able to just like product market fit. They weren't able to look at the candidate and say, based upon your skill set, your knowledge, your experience, here's specifically why this is a great opportunity for you.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, I. It brings me back to the days when at PTC when, when I had to grow the, the mid Atlantic region and I had just joined the company and I was told, you got to go recruit. And I was like, all right, well let me wrap my head around this thing. So I got to recruit and I had to bring on, I had to grow that region fast. And it was a great experience for me, John, because I had a great opportunity. Why? Because I just joined the company. How did I leave another company that I had spent 10 years at? And I thought that I was going to spend another 10 years at that company. And so what I found, and I got some great advice from one of my leaders back in the day that said, John, just share your experience of why you joined the company. And so I've kept that exercise for the next 25, 30 years. I've actually said to people, they say, hey, we're going to interview this candidate or whatever. And sometimes I'll turn the tables on the interview and I'll say, hey, really quick, why XYZ company? Why your company? Go sell me the company. And they'll be like, what do you mean? Like we're interviewing this candidate? I said, yeah, I know we're interviewing this candidate, but why sell the company? And what I wind up or why, you know, why should that person join the company? What I really wind up doing, giving them really, I think good advice because it was given to me, well, why are you here? And I found that some of the best interviewers have emotionally connected to what they do matters and why it matters and therefore it comes across in the interview process. But I don't know what your experience is. I find people woefully prepared to really talk about why what they do matters.

[John McMahon]

I think, you know, the mistake that a lot of first time leaders make is that they're almost looking more for a friend than they are for a candidate that can really be successful in the role. So because of that, they do some people a disservice because they truly don't have the knowledge or the skill set to be successful. But they like the person, or the person used to play football and so they're really competitive or they used to play hockey or something, so they're super competitive. So they go just off of that, you know. And one of the things. So people would come into my office sometime, you know, we want to hire this person and I ask why and they talk about, well, really competitive, used to play football or hockey or something like that. And I go, that's great. Now let's go over like the skills and the knowledge that they're supposed to have, you know, and then finally what I'd always ask is, what's the risks? Well, what do you mean? Well, you, you know what the knowledge base should be? You know what the skill set should be? They can't. Do they have 100% of those? Okay. No, they don't. Okay, which ones are they missing? They're missing this knowledge, they're missing this skill. Do we have an onboarding and development process where we can give that person that that knowledge and are we giving them to a manager that can walk them through the repetitions and repetitions and repetitions to develop that skill set? If not, we're taking a giant risk. We're doing this person a disservice because they're coming to the company lacking some of the things that we know make people successful in this position and we have no capability to cover the risks. So unless we believe they're just magically going to gain this knowledge and magically going to gain this skill set, we're taking a risk. And that's what happens with companies. They just constantly are taking risks. Their attrition level goes way up. And then they wonder, why is our attrition so high?

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, I like that. Some of the most elite companies on the planet that I see today, they really break that down and they say knowledge, skills and character and your vernacular characteristics and the knowledge and skills are the responsibility of the company to bring them the knowledge that they're going to need and to give them the opportunity to enhance their skills, to develop the skills, to position that knowledge effectively. And the responsibility of the individual is to bring their characteristics or their character to that equation. And it is really, really powerful. I find companies, if you're listening to this today, you should really def. What are the knowledge, just as John is highlighting here, what are the knowledge and skills required for this job? And then what characteristics or what character traits are the ones that really position and drive that to the next level? So it's kind of a, it's kind of a. Definitely a shared responsibility. Let me shift gears on you.

[John McMahon]

Just one other thing. What happens also on the back end of this is if you don't know when you bring in the candidate in what you know, what are the necessary. Again, knowledge, characteristics and skill set. What happens is what I found is when people have called me and said, hey, we're having a big, you know, pretty high attrition, can you come in and try to dissect what's going wrong? And then I get the managers in the room and I ask them specifically, let's go one by one from the. For these different people that you've lost. Okay, how about Joe? How about Sally? How about Sue? We go down the line and they give me answers just like you were talking about earlier. They lack grit. They lack, like, determination. And then I say, well, tell me what grit is. Can you define that for me? And then can you tell me how you uncover that, you know, in a person? And what I find is there's just a lot of blank answers. And it goes back to the fact that if you haven't defined it when people are coming into your company, then there's no way you're going to be able to define it when they were trading and they're leaving your company.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah. And in between, Johnny. So these success profiles are big. Well, yeah, these success profiles, you're talking about the, it's the, it's the gift that keeps on giving. So not only does it help you source, it helps you recruit, it helps you interview, it helps you onboard, it helps you develop, it helps you promote or demote. And it's just, it's, it's, it's a basic, basic necessity.

[John McMahon]

No doubt.

[John Kaplan]

All right, all right. So, yeah, switching gears. Let me, let me. Another one. Johnny. It's a pet peeve of mine is this topic of references. I always ask, did you check references? And people always say to me, I can't. I cannot believe how many people wind up saying to me, well, and they have him and a Hemingaham, and they give me the, you know, the yabba dabba do. And I'm like, did you check them or not. And they're like, well, John, you know, the references, they're just going to be good references anyways. And that always massively hurts my stomach because you miss so many opportunities with this topic of references. But give me kind of some of your thoughts on the hygiene of references. I certainly have some strong opinions myself. But let's start with you.

[John McMahon]

I just go, I have to try to back channel people. So I know that they're going to have some references they're going to give me. But to your point, for the most part, those are going to be really good references. And I might call one of them just to get a feel for what they have to say. But where I'm really going is I'm going to try to back channel. So, you know, in my company, maybe I have 100 sales reps and then 20 sales leaders. Somebody must be able to back channel this person into the company that the candidate currently resides in. And it's. So if you really just do a little bit of work, it's not that hard to back channel the person and figure out, hey, what's really going on with this person. Sometimes you find out, you know, there's a lot of people leaving, maybe leaving the current company, and maybe this person is just one of them. But other times you find out, hey, you know, this person's kind of a bad apple and here's the reason why you need to stay away from them.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, there's so many, so many golden nuggets here. One of my favorite stories, Johnny, was I was sitting in an interview with a guy years ago, and he's telling me about how he played baseball for Clemson. And I'm like, wow, that's, you know, Division 1 baseball. And, you know, I have some experience with what it takes to be a Division 1 athlete. It's not easy to balance, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, and, and so I said, hey, you know, what would your coach say about you? And he gave me this, you know, he gave me this description. He's sitting in my office. And I said, hey, let's call him.

[John McMahon]

Yeah.

[John Kaplan]

And he's like. And he's like, well, yeah, he's like. He's like, okay. And I said, well, do you have his phone number in Red Flag number one? I don't have his phone number. I said, you don't have your coach's phone number? And he goes, no. And I said, okay, well, how hard is it to find somebody in Clemson, South Carolina? And so I call information and I get the phone number of the baseball coach, this true story. And I call the baseball coach with the dude sitting right across from me. And the guy's wife answers the phone. I just kind of explain, hey, I'm sitting in, sitting in a room with. Interviewing one of XYZ persons former players. And he just wanted to say hello. And she was like, oh, that's nice. And hey, Hank, or whatever his name was, Hank, somebody's on the phone. Hank gets on the phone and I say, hey, Hank, I'm sitting here with XYZ and I'm pumping the kid up and I'm like. And he told me this and told me that. There's silence on the phone. I'm like, hank, are you there? And he goes, yeah, I'm here. And he said, and he said, Mr. Kaplan, I don't know what to say to you. I know the individual you're talking about, but he never played for me. Wow. And I'm listening and I'm making contact with the candidate, Johnny. This is a true story. And while I'm closing the conversation with the coach, the kid got up and left my office.

[John McMahon]

Wow.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah. So I've never forgotten that experience. And then I saw statistics that 75% of applicants lie on their resumes about something and I thought, wow, of the.

[John McMahon]

Resume never being certified by a third party.

[John Kaplan]

That's unbelievable.

[John McMahon]

There's so many times where I found like really bad mistakes in the profile or in the, in the resume.

[John Kaplan]

Here's a couple of other things that I found. Just really good hygiene things. Knowing that most of them are going to be good references. I like to do a couple of things and I still do this today. I ask for more names. So if this is a tree and this person worked in a great environment and I explain the environment and I explain how happy we are for this candidate, this potential candidate that we really want to hire and who else do you know like this candidate? So it's an opportunity to get additional names as I found really, really good hygiene. Here's also a great one. Here's a great question I think you can ask people is you can ask, hey, we obviously love Rachel and. But what I want to do is I want to be a good coach and developer for Rachel. Can you give me an idea of some of the areas that you think are going to be great opportunities for me to coach and develop Rachel? What I found, John, is that it either highlights a risk that I've found on the resume or it just gives me fantastic insight. I've gotten things like, hey, Rachel's Outstanding. She's going to struggle a little bit. Money's really, really important. And when you change a comp plan, you're going to have to spend extra time or. I've just gotten some fantastic feedback. Sometimes I've gotten feedback that's been red flag ish and that I've had to dig in with the candidate. And most times what I get is just real honest, good areas of opportunity to coach and develop these people in the future. And so this all comes from the concept of references. And most people don't even call them.

[John McMahon]

No, never. Yeah.

[John Kaplan]

All right, let's do this. Let's switch gears a little bit in the remaining time that we have. I wanted to also talk about the responsibility of the interviewee, the candidate, and advice that we can give candidates that we get. People calling us all the time and saying, hey, I got an interview with this person and you know this person, or blah, blah, blah. What are some of the great hygiene examples that you might be able to share with the audience on how to prepare to be a great candidate?

[John McMahon]

Well, one, they should know a lot about the company. So they should. These days it's not too hard to go to the website and figure out what the company does. And just like checking out a candidate, it's not that hard. And back channeling any candidate, it's not that hard to go figure out on LinkedIn who you can connect to that knows something about the company. Right. So that's number one. Number two, they should know about the person that's interviewing them. Right. They should know about me or know about you. And they specifically our backgrounds. And all of this goes to them being able to ask really great questions. So what I've always found in the interview process is I say, okay, John, it's your turn to ask questions. What do you want to ask? And from the first question, I can tell that they haven't really done their homework. Or I can tell, wow, here's the opening salvo. This person's really done their homework. They're deep into what we do, who I am, some of the people on the team, they were asking fantastic questions for me. I always tell a lot, not only about the candidate when I'm interviewing them, when I'm asking the questions, but their questions tell me a lot about them. Also, if this interview is not that important to them, that they're not going to go and do homework on basically the customer and the company, basically the company that, you know, they're calling on, then why would I ever expect that they're Going to do that when they're selling my product.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah. That's such a great point, John. I, I, I always encourage people to treat it like a sales call, just like you said, like, you know, prepare great discovery questions. And when you think about it, the best advice that I could give people is be a problem solver. So they're interviewing you for a reason. They have a problem, they have an opening. They have challenges, they have, they're looking for people to do certain things. And when you think about it, it's like those four essential questions. What problems do you solve? How specifically do you solve them? How do you solve them differently or better than anybody else? And where have you done it before? If you can keep that mindset when you're, when you're interviewing, it's a, it, you just handle it like a sales call. And therefore, you become a walking audition for what you. What, what you're gonna, what they're gonna want you to do. Yeah.

[John McMahon]

I find the good people have already done their homework. They've already connected to somebody in my salesforce. They've already gotten a background almost. They almost know what I'm looking for because they've done that deep a homework. What, what I get worried about is whether or not some of my leaders have basically given them, you know, the answers to the answers to the test.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah.

[John McMahon]

Then I kind of get a little mad in some respects. And now I'm going to go really deep on, Even deeper on this candidate. Right. Just to see if I can throw them off because they're just, you know, they, you know, it's no real fault of their own. It's really the fault of the people internally in my company that are giving the answer to the question. Because now we're not, we're doing, again, we're doing a disservice to the company and to the candidate because we're not really figuring out if they're a perfect match because they basically got all the answers. So now they could come in and find out, oh, this is really not a place for me. Or I really don't have the skill set to be able to handle this, so. And I gotta go.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, yeah, I like that. Johnny, give me something that stands out for you as the most unique thing that a candidate has done to stand out in the interview process. Do you have any that kind of come to the top of your head?

[John McMahon]

I interviewed a guy that's probably a C. He's a CRO somewhere right now. Kino helmet.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, I remember Keno.

[John McMahon]

And towards the End. I like to. They'll always ask you like, so how do you think I did? And sometimes I like to really give them an objection to see if. How they handle objections. So I said to Kino, I'm not really sure you can do the job. And I got quiet. And then he sat across the table and got quiet. And I looked at Kino, and Kino looked at me, and it was probably 30 seconds at least of dead silence, which felt like, you know, five minutes. And he winked at me. I started laughing, and he started laughing. I said, okay, buddy, you got the job.

[John Kaplan]

I love that. I love that.

[John McMahon]

I mean, to be able to have the presence to just be quiet, not say anything. And then as we're staring at each other, just wink. Oh. Told me a lot about the guy.

[John Kaplan]

That's awesome. I remember a great sales candidate. Her name, Kelly Demers. And she was from the military, and she was working for some chemical company now. Was it now Co Chemical. And we used to hire a lot of those folks. They were really disciplined. And. And so I don't know what the deal was, but I was dragging my feed on, you know, setting up an interview with her, whatever, somebody. She was referred from somebody else. And I was like, I can't remember what the. What the situation was, but I was dragging. I was just dragging my feet. And a box shows up on the office, and my administrative aide brings me the box, and I open the box, and there's a shoe in there. There's an athletic shoe in there, and it's my size. It's a running shoe, and it's my size. And there's a note in there from Kelly Deemers that says, if you give me a chance and give me a shot at the interview, I'll bring the other shoe, and it'll be my gift to you. And it was so clever. It was subtle. It was, hey, dude, I'm trying to get a hold of you, and you're not getting back a hold of me. And I thought that it was something I've never, ever forgotten. And we hired her, and she did really, really well and went on to do really great things.

[John McMahon]

Her creativeness and her determination to get in the door. And she probably will do the same thing with some of the customers, too.

[John Kaplan]

Ye. Yeah. It was a walking audition. All right, Johnny, great conversation today. I think we could go on for a long, long time. I think it was just really good interviewing.

[John McMahon]

What I would say, though, Johnny, at the end of the day for the audience is you have to get good at this. You have to know what you're looking for. You have to know how to uncover those things in the interview process because recruiting will determine you as the sales leader. No matter what level you're at. You hire really good, you're going to be very successful. You hire bad because you can't. You don't know how to interview, you don't know how to recruit, and chances are, you know you're not going to the championship.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, I like that, Johnny. It's a good. That's a good final thought. I, I think about, you know, the most elite companies on the planet are the ones that begin with people. Forecast sessions begin with people. QBRs begin with people. And assessments and recruiting and growing up, you know, under you. I remember the first questions that you would always ask us is, who'd you interview this week? How many energy interviews did you have? And that's how a company grew from zero to a billion dollars in less than 10 years. Was scaling with great, great quality candidates. So great time well spent. Good to see you again, brother.

[John McMahon]

Good to see you.

[John Kaplan]

You got it, brother. And to all of you out there, thank you for listening to revenue builders.

[John McMahon]

Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to check us [e-mail].