S6E27 - Nigel Green - How to Hire Elite Salespeople: The Only Sales Leadership Skill That Matters

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the surf and sales podcast. I'm Scott lease here with my co host and good friend Richard Harris. What's going on, man?

Dude, it's been a while. It's been a while since we've done one of these, so I'm excited to get back into the groove. I. I hope I don't mess it up. You know, that's always.

Sure, I'm sure we'll screw something up. We're a little, we're a little rusty perhaps, but we've done like 500 of these so we should be, you know, tolerable at least.

Yep.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So we've got a. A repeat guest. We don't do many repeat guests, but we do have a repeat guest today. His name is Nigel Green. He is a sales leader turned strategic advisor who helps equity backed companies scale better. And he just wrote a book, came out a couple months ago that's been number one across like four or five categories on Amazon for a while. And it's called how to hire elite salespeople. The only sales leadership skill that matters. And that is a thought provoking and provocative tagline. Welcome back to the show, Nigel. How you doing, my man?

Well, I'm great and thank you for having me. I'm honored to be a repeat guest. It's not something that I take lightly and I want to tell both of you, I really admire the work that you do. I look at both of you as separate but equal muses to the work that I do. And I want to thank both of you for charting the path that you chart. You make doing the work that we all do around revenue creation and sales a lot more enjoyable to be able to have colleagues, you know, in a fully remote world, as contemporaries. It means a lot to just watch the two of you do what you do. And I'm honored to call you friends.

Wow, thanks for that, Richard. Richard, make sure you clip that. So I did.

I was going to say put it somewhere. Scott. There are two things. First, you've already made the first mistake, which I'll correct in a second. But I've been called a lot of things and you've been called a lot of things. I don't think we've ever been called muses. So I, I take that very. As a high compliment. So thank you. That's a very nice compliment. But before we jump into this a little further, we want to give a shout out to our good friends Vasco, who are cutting through the notes and getting this Data all into your system, from your system to help build better, accurate forecasts. So you got all this stuff in multiple places, and they're helping to pull it all in and run the analysis to get you better information on your forecast as a single source, and it can even send it as a daily digest. Wouldn't you like, Scott, would you like to have had the forecast, not. Not the pipeline, but the forecast on a daily basis?

Yeah, I would have liked to have it, especially if I didn't have to do the work to create it myself.

That's. Yeah. So check out our friends at Vasco, because that's what they're helping us do. So that was the first mistake with. Because we're a little rusty. But now back to Nigel. And Nigel, say something else nice about us, please.

No, what we want to know. We want to know is why is the only sales leadership skill that matters how to hire elite salespeople? Let's start right there.

So I played a lot of football growing up, played in college, so 15 consecutive years, I put on shoulder pads and helmets and got to watch a lot of really elite football players and football coaches do what we call American football, right? The X's and O's, the talent, the recruiting, the combines. I've had friends go on to play in the NFL. And when I went into writing this book, like a lot of things, I go back to football because it's had such an indelible impact on my life and the way I think about the world and business and sales specifically. And what I kept recognizing in football was that the best coaches were no better at X's and O's than the worst coaches. But they had this ability to fill their roster with talent that was noticeably and measurably better than the competitors. You look at a guy like Nick Saban, who has won, I think, seven national championships in college, he one of them at lsu, the rest of Alabama, those seven years that he won a national title, it won't be surprising to anyone that keeps up with football. He also had a top five recruiting class, so he had the best players. If you look at Pete Carroll and what he did in college, if you look at Bill Belichick and what he's done with the New England Patriots, Talent trumps tactics in the world of football. And I thought, well, there has to be something that I can lean on and study relevant to selling. And so I look back at some of the top reps that I worked with and that I got to watch, I got to hire and have on My team, as I was a leader, I got to work with as a salesperson or even seeing my work as an advisor. And what's really fascinating about the elite salespeople is they don't need to be motivated. They really don't need to be trained on fundamentals. They need to be trained on how you do it. What you're offering is what your nuance is around the way you take your offering to market. And they, you don't have to coach effort. They figure it out on their own. And so if you go and hire people that are built that way, a lot of the things that we find to be important about leading or managing, managing a team, you don't need to do that anymore. Like, you don't have to have Friday calls, You don't have to send somebody an email on Wednesday to remind them that their quarterly business review is tomorrow and that you still don't have their PDF of their account reviews. Like, you don't have to do any of that stuff. Why? Because the standard they've set for themselves is so high that even if they miss it, you're never going to know. And so the great equalizer is getting really clear on what elite looks like in your context and then getting really good at finding them and convincing them to come work for you. And then once you do that, a lot of the other stuff that we wrestle with in the sales leadership world becomes not a big deal.

Yeah, it's almost like you're saying a lot of the kind of management hacks, tips, tricks, reminders, things that you do as a manager go away entirely.

They do. They go away.

You shouldn't have to do them. You definitely don't need to do them if you've got the right people and the right talent around you. You know, I'm thinking in my own experience, how many times did I get pulled into the office or conference room to have a chat with somebody who was like, oh, I'm just not feeling it today, or I'm not super motivated or whatever. And how many of those people actually were elite? Not very many of them, if any. Those conversations were also. Those conversations were always with people who were at the bottom that I was sort of trying to yank up to the middle of the pack or the middle of the pack, maybe to the top. So, yeah, it resonates with me a lot. I just never really thought of it in terms of, hey, all those, those stupid, silly things you had to do, all that work goes away.

Actually, it's funny, I was sitting here thinking, because I know Scott is one of these people. God is absolutely not even as a rep, but even as a manager, as a director, as a VP of sales. You do not have to motivate Scott. Right. Occasionally, and I think everybody does, he has a down moment, but it's rare that he has a totally down day. Right. And tell me if I'm wrong, Nigel, I'm curious. Those people sometimes just need to express it, but they don't even want your help to get out of it. They're just like, hey, Nigel, I just want you to know, like, this one threw me off, but I'm on top of it. I got it. Right. But let me. Let's go back to this elite thing. So what do you coach an elite athlete on? And then I've got a good, fun Deion Sanders story for you.

Scott knows the question, what do you coach an elite athlete on? You coach an elite athlete on the seemingly small moments that they. So elite athletes are unconsciously competent. Okay? So if you think about, like, I'm gonna stick with football because it's what I know, it's fourth and four. The Patrick Mahomes gets two plays called into his headset. Depending on what the defense gives him, he's going to run one or the other. And then if he doesn't like it all together, he has the ability to.

Sorry, I had to mute you for a second, Nigel, because you brought up the Kansas City Chiefs, and Scott and I both loathe the Kansas City Chiefs, but.

Oh, go pick another team.

Yeah, all right. Unmute yourselves. Sorry Nigel had to do that. Go. Continue.

Tom Brady goes. Gets two places again.

Jesus Christ.

Any NFL. Any. Any NFL quarterback. This. This is probably universally true. For any NFL quarterback. They. They get two plays from the offensive coordinator called into their helmet. Okay? They tell it, everybody in the huddle. Then they go to the line. He looks at the box, he sees what he gets. Are there five? Are there six? That's going to determine which of those two plays he's going to run. He lets everybody else know. Then the defense is going to shift. And then he's got to make a decision. Do I stick with this or do I run something else? He's not thinking. He's just doing it. Okay? He's just doing the job because he's mastered it. Then the ball snapped. And they do these unscripted things that when you go back and look at the film, they say, why did you do that? And they say, I don't know. And what you coach elite performers on is the ability in those moments when everything's happening really fast, to slow them down and get them back into their head and say, what. What actually was I. What was going on in my body, in my head in that moment.

So what's got it? But now, what do you do with an elite salesperson?

Because everybody exactly the exact same thing.

Can you give an example?

Yes. Okay. All this, all these tools that are out there now, like demo desk or gong is You. You watch them do what they do really well.

They.

And you just help them see the things that are obvious to you that they may not see in the heat of battle that they know might be a tendency. You tend to do this a lot. Did you see yourself doing that there? How do we work on that Now? Let me tell you, the rule of the game here for. For being able to do that is I have never found an elite salesperson that could go do that for an elite sales person, because they have the curse of knowledge. When you're really elite at a craft, it's very hard for you to know what you do that's not obvious. Okay. And so when you ask, when you ask an elite salesperson why are you successful? They're going to tell you something like, well, I work hard. I personalize my emails better. I slow down. I don't have off days. They're going to tell you some of these things that are like, well, that's just grit and work ethic, and that's not actually what makes you so talented because all of these other people do it and they don't have the numbers that you do. So what is it about you? It's the ability to see how they pause in the right moment. In a demo, when somebody else would get nervous and say something, they just allow the tension to be in the demo and they just sit with it with the customer. That's the type of coaching that you give an elite salesperson to say in that moment. What if you just sat there one more second? Because I think they were about to give you the gold. If you could have just sat there one more second and they're like, you know what?

You're right.

You're right, Scott. If I could have just sat in that discomfort for another second. That prospect was getting ready to tell me everything I need to know, but I got nervous and cut them off.

I. I wonder if part of this is the coaching that you give is you actually help them articulate and define what it is they do instinctually. A lot of them do this thing instinctually, but they don't know how to articulate it and share it with other people. And I think part of our job as coaches is to help somebody find the words for what they are doing. To your point, hey, did you see there? You paused right there. 99 of people would have chimed in and talked over somebody. You paused right there and on this second call you did it again. And this call the other day you shared. Listen to this part right here. You're doing it again. So one of the things that you do, you're very good at shutting up in the right moments, letting silence kind of take over, letting the conversation breathe. And then you'll hear that salesperson say, well, yeah, I guess you're right. Actually. Do you find that reframing to be accurate? Am I articulating what you're talking about?

You're nailing it. You coach elite salespeople by being able to identify name and pattern the non obvious behaviors that separate them from the rest of the team. And I start the book by saying the curse of the superstar salesperson turn sales leader. That's the first chapter we do. What if I don't even know who your favorite NFL team is but say the coach quit and or resigned or took another job and it's all over ESPN that the leading candidate to be the new head coach is the quarterback. You heads would roll. That is the dumbest thing in the world. Why would we do that? We do it all the time in sales. We take the number one sales rep and we put them in a sales leadership position. They, they cannot do what we just talked about because they are so elite. It's why LeBron James is never going to coach a basketball game. It's why Michael Jordan never will. It's why Peyton Manning's never going to coach a game. And it's why the best coaches of our generation in football, Bill Belichick, Pete Carroll, Nick Saban were all very forgettable football players. They don't have that level of talent. And when you don't have that level of talent, you can see the things that the talented can't see in themselves.

Yeah. That way across lots of different sports, not just football, basketball is that way. You take somebody like Magic Johnson, I.

Don'T know if you like that's where I was.

And they were terrible at it. Right. They can't do it. They can't find ways to articulate that stuff. And the best coaches are often role players, people who had it played integral parts like Steve Kerr for example, or Phil Jackson for example. In basketball they were A role player. They had championship kind of DNA, super high iq, right? But they didn't have the physical gifts or what have you. This is common across many, many sports. So the question becomes, then, how do I flush out these more difficult to see traits in an interview process? Because that, that's what, that's what the hiring managers are over here thinking. They're probably thinking, okay, I get what these guys are talking about, but how do I get that out of somebody in an interview when they stick a resume in front of me and it says, you know, eight quarters in a row over quota and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So how do, how do we flush that out?

First thing you have to do if you're a hiring manager and you're tired of your relationship with your. With successful hires, is I want you to go study your top two reps. Just study them, like in the same way that we're talking about. Watch them in every demo. Don't coach them, just study them. You go to school on them and then go watch the rest of the sales team. They follow a sales process that if you get, if you slow down and get really studious, you'll see the best reps don't always follow it that way. There might be additional things they do that aren't documented in the sales playbook, or there might be things that they don't take as seriously as others. Then you, then you go back and say, if I'm going to go, if my next person is going to be elite, not just a core player, they need to be like them. So what, what changes then in the sales process? So then you have to, when you look at your sales process and realize the nuances between the elite and the rest of the team, you have to ask yourself, okay, what are the tangible skill sets that, that allow them to do that or make that a reality for them. Then when you get really clear on those, you immediately make the job. The interview process mirror the process that the elite people use to sell the offering. You have to make your interview process maybe not sequentially, but have a component or an element that forces the candidate to not just tell you. Like Scott said, eight consecutive quarters of this forces them to not discuss, but demonstrate mastery at that one thing that you know needs to be a part of their acumen or their behavioral anatomy to be successful in the role. So if, if you're hearing this and you're like, well, I don't know that I have one step or element in my interview process that isn't a comp. That isn't just a series of conversations or a behavioral assessment. But it's never. I don't, I don't have anything that forces them to defend how they sell. You're doing it wrong.

I'm just sitting here in the silence thinking about what you just said, because it's all, everything that's come out of your mouth today has been really good. Like, you know, in terms of calling us amused, like you're amused. All this stuff. Like, this is amazing. Talk about stepping back from finding that elite athlete. How many steps should an interview process be short? Short of you, Short of you hiring, you know, someone to sell Boeing airplane engines. Right? Like that's, that's a different tactic. Like, let's talk in our world, right?

It needs to be, first of all, no longer than it needs to be. Most of them are too long.

Let's say there's six steps. Is that ridiculous?

No, I don't think it's ridiculous. And here, and here's my, here's my defense of that because I will have sales leaders say, we don't have time for that. I said, hey, nobody said, nobody told you how much time needs to lapse in between these elements. And I don't like the word steps because steps and I talk about this step means that they follow a sequential order. And I don't even believe that to do a good interview that things have to go in order. I just think that you have to get really clear on what are the elements, what do you need to see from a candidate because it's supported by how you sell the offering, the time that lapses between elements, I don't care. You get to decide. And the people that are involved at certain elements, you get to decide that either. So you can run a six component interview process in a week. My only rule is you don't skip steps. If you don't skip steps, you got a better chance of getting a good outcome. And where does that come into play? I think it specifically comes into play when we work with an external recruiter. We have a bias to skip steps. The biggest trap is when we used to work with them. And I think one of the good characteristics of a good sales leader is their ability to bring talent with them. One of the traps and the kryptonite of that is we like, we get. We hire the memory, not the moment. I'm gonna say that again. We hire the memory of the time Richard and I work together, not the moment that Richard's gonna come and sell this new offering today. And so if you skip steps during that and you hire the memory of Richard, you're gonna set your buddy up to fail and then your reputation is going to be at risk and you're going to be, you're going to be a casualty as well.

I like that memory, not the moment.

That's so good.

That's very true. Very true. So how do I integrate a team of elite players with B players or should I?

I think there are situations where you should integrate a team of elite players with B players and Pretty hard to.

Have only elite players.

Pretty hard. The, the situations where I think it warrants keeping B and even C players is if they are culture animals. So if they bring something to the team around culture dynamic, like they're a role player, like you said, if they're like the champion of values or they have some relationship with the offering that is so profound they remind everybody else on the team we're not just here to hit a number. Like this offering actually has a nobility to it. That's one example of when you, when you keep them around. The other might be they just understand a certain segment of your market because they used to do it or they used to sell something else into it. There there is an expertise around the customer or the way they perceive value that the rest of the team doesn't have and they're willing to transfer it to others. The other time would be if you can see them transitioning into a different non selling role that has asymmetrical value for the rest of the team. I've seen really average reps become great rev ops people become great product marketers become great sales ops or sales administrators people. Those are just some off the cuff situations where it's worth it and it's also worth calling out in a very similar way. Not everybody needs an elite salesperson. And there's a whole chapter that gives you some ways to think about do I even need to hire someone elite or will average work? But this book is intended for that sales leader that is doesn't want to have 12 reps, would rather have 6 really good reps, and wants to go further, faster with fewer people. Because one thing that I know to be true, and you guys see this in your work, the bigger the team gets, the harder it is to change. It's like do you want to turn a skiff or do you want to turn a barge in the middle of the channel? You've got a big barge. That thing doesn't turn very quickly. A skiff can turn on a dime. And I Want that quick turning team because in today's world you got to move fast. I don't want to have to pull everybody along. And there's a lot of merit and documented defendability of small teams with elite people will outperform bigger, average teams.

So this has been, this is really good. Like this is one of those podcasts where even I would go back and listen to this like three times. And that's pretty rare for me because I hate the sound of my voice. But your voice is fantastic. So it's 2025, right? Came out of 2020 was good. Even up to about 2022. Right. People could find jobs left and right. How do you find these elite players in 2025? What's it going to take to pull them away from something? Because usually the elites have jobs and it's going to take a lot to pull them away.

So you just nailed the first thing. You have to embrace the reality that they don't want your job. They are busy being successful somewhere else. So you can post it on LinkedIn and you're going to get a bunch of applicants. Those applicants can't sell or haven't sold. Just a reality. And that pisses a lot of people off. But it's true. I don't know one elite salesperson that's ever applied to a job. So you can, at some point you'll embrace that reality. And once you embrace that reality that elite salespeople don't apply to jobs, then you have to find a way to interrupt them. Okay. And there are a couple of ways to do that. Sometimes it's through a recruiter and that oftentimes creates a necessary layer of insulation from the sales leader. So not to be accused of like poaching, you know, you can almost recuse yourself. What I found to be the most effective tactic is leaning into the fact that they are an expert at their craft and asking to learn from them. And when you can get an elite salesperson, and I do this all the time on LinkedIn, I will go into matter of fact, I did it last week. I booked a demo sales rep, had a booking link listed on their resume. Everything that you mentioned, Scott, eight consecutive quarters of this president's club. And I was really curious about how they sold that offering. So I just booked a demo on that sales reps calendar and showed up to the meeting and was very honest and said, look, I just want to hear from you how you do this so well. I'll, I'll buy your time back. I know you got to hit you got a certain number of demos. I'm not a SQL. I just want to know how do you think about these very specific things? And if you show up to that meeting prepared, you're going to impress that rep and you're going to earn the right to continue the conversation with them and invite them to be a part of your interview process. At some point in the future. You got to show them that you are a leader worth leaving this place of security and comfort to take a chance and come do something special with you. That's the second thing you have to do. And the third thing you have to do is you have to go spar with HR and finance and tell them because they don't want this job, they don't want this comp plan. So I don't care what we budgeted for this position. I own the pnl. I'm on the hook. If the, if the OT E is, or the way we comp this out is 150 salary, 250 ot, I don't care. We're not doing it that way. We're going to guarantee we're going to pay on month one the equivalent of 250 and then we're going to bridge it down over time. And it's on me if it doesn't work. But this is what it's going to take to get someone in here that can run circles around the rest of the team that we have. And they, they don't want this conflict.

This last, this last part is really, really pertinent to conversations I've been having the last few days. I've, I've had multiple conversations with CROs trying to hire elite talent like this and getting essentially blocked because the CFO says, you know, that's 10k over the comp plan that we have budgeted for the role. And the CRO is like, what are you talking about? You know, talking about 10 grand total for the year. Jesus, take it out of somewhere. Come on, figure it out.

Right?

But the reality is a lot of VPs and a lot of hiring managers get stymied by this short term boxed in thinking of a CFO or a CEO who won't get creative with the comp plan, who won't kind of guarantee the commissions on sort of a diminishing draw, if you will. The way you're, you're talking about suggestions for VPs and hiring managers out there who are trying to get an elite talent on board, but are getting stuck and blocked by this kind of antiquated thinking of, oh no, that doesn't fit. You know what we've allocated for this. How do you suggest people try to go about getting around that?

So part of being an indispensable C suite executive, whether you're a sales leader, you know, a CRO or a cfo, is recognizing that your first team is not the sales team, it's the executive team. That's your first team, and that's who you are first and foremost, loyal and committed to. So in order to be a good teammate, you don't need to surprise them with this idea that you're going to have adopt a new playbook for hiring and that you're going to go after a fundamentally different type of sales rep. So you have to do the work, to sit down with your people, OPS leader and show them, this is the play I want to run. Can you get behind it? And this is what it's going to take. And this is how I need you to help me. And here's what we all stand to gain, team, if we get it right. Can I get your alignment? Yes. Okay. Now we're going to go talk to the CFO and we're going to have the same conversation. Here's the hedge. Here's what I think is possible for this business, your equity value, if we do it differently. So you have to have that conversation first before you even go about interviewing candidates. Because if you don't, you are going to have egg on your face with two different stakeholders. One, that elite rep that you went and wasted all their time only to just argue and bicker over $10,000 with the CFO, and then you've got a CFO who's talking to the CEO and the CEO and the people ops, and they're saying this guy Nigel is just going rogue. Why? Why does he think that you got to manage all of that before you go about this? And if you. I have never. I did it the wrong way for a long time. Then when you do it the right way, you earn so much board room and C suite credibility by being a great leader and teammate and educating them on why the way we've been doing it is no longer going to get us to the premium exit and the premium valuation we want in three years.

Yeah. How important do you think you said something earlier? How important do you think it is to utter the phrase, it's my neck on the line? I can't remember exactly how you phrased it, but it's like, it's on me. It's on me.

I think.

I think that's an important factor. You know this conversation I was having with the CRO the other day? I remember telling them that one of the things I did was tell the CFO and founder, listen, if this doesn't work out, you're going to fire me. I get it. I don't blame you. It's my neck. I'm sticking my own head in the guillotine. I believe that this is the right thing to do. You don't allow me to do this, I'm going to get fired. So you might as well just like, you know, let me do what I'm here to do. You hired me for a reason, right? If it doesn't work out, get rid of me. And I think, I think a lot of CROs and VPs won't do that. Actually, they won't say that phrase. And I heard you say, own it. Hey, it's on me. How critical do you think that piece is?

It is paramount to ever being a real CRO that is built to last, that actually has an exit that gets a premium valuation and gets to put seven or eight figures in the bank account. Because what it, what it signals is that if you're unwilling to do that, if you're unwilling to say, that's my net.

Yeah.

What it, what you're also telling me is you don't even run the P. L Like it's your money. So you don't, you're not treating this like it's your company. You treating this like it's a job. And you don't get to be, you don't get to be in the room, in the board where they wrote a check and with the CEO that probably has some rollover equity, which is the same thing as writing a check or put their own reputation on the line to go raise all this money. Because by the way, it all has to be collateralized on somebody's. Like somebody had to sign off on it. And if you're unwilling to run it like it's your department and your. The way you run your own personal finances. I don't, I don't even want you on the team.

I think that. I hope people go back and listen to that part. Yeah, right there.

Yeah. I think that's being able to say that statement will either A, guarantee you're there 16 months or B, guarantee you'll be there 24 months. Right. And running it that way like that's a. That's how I interpreted that. We gotta, we gotta do a wrap up before we do that. You know, Nigel, we always ask Someone, what question you want to ask us. But before I do that, I want to just thank again our sponsor, Vasco. Just picture this. You're stepped into a rev ops role and leadership is asking how you bring more AI into the GTM engine because everyone else is and you're feeling the pressure. But your CRM is a mess. It's all over the place and there's no budget to go hire someone to clean this stuff up. Well, that's where Vatco comes in and they'll connect your system clean and enrich your data automatically and give you an AI ready foundation. No code, no extra head cow. Thank you, Vasco. We appreciate you very, very much. So, Nigel, coming back to you. What? What? I don't even know if there's a question you could ask us that we would sound smarter than you on. You've done a great job. Like, this is a really, really good. Scott and I are tapping behind the scenes. Like this is a really good episode for you.

I've got a lot of questions. So one of the things that I'm really curious about in today's kind of world of the sales leader and the rev ops world is how, how do you coach a sales leader or CRO in a world where anyone with the right prompts could go ask, chat, GPT or cloud or whatever and not only get an answer for that one specific thing, but build an entire facade of a consultancy around nonsense that's not theirs. How do you help a sales leader in a world where when they're not hitting their number, it's easy for every single person to come at them with some AI generated bullshit answer that would solve a problem that is out of scope for anyone else in the company to be thinking about. But I see well intended marketing people sending sales leaders and you can tell when it's AI. You can see all the formatting or a CEO sending something. What's your take on it?

Man, that is a great question. What is my advice around all that? The main piece of advice I found myself giving is this is why it's important to talk to somebody who's actually done the job and done the work and done it multiple times before. You could just GPT an answer to all this stuff. So it's a little bit of check your receipts, work with somebody who comes recommended and you can validate their success and see the things that they've done before. That's number one. Number two piece of advice I usually give is don't ask for everything all at once like that. Really really chunk it up, break it down, you know, ask for one or two specific pieces of advice and feedback. How would you solve for XYZ thing, not the whole motion all at once. And if they can articulate in depth one particular thing, like what would you do specifically to scale referrals for us? And you can spend 30 minutes expanding, expounding on just that one topic. That sort of shows me that somebody, you know has a lot of experience and some expertise in this one area. And I don't think people who haven't done the work can do that. I think that they default to, oh, maybe let me GPT an answer that's 20 pages long and sounds really smart but doesn't go into any like specifics in depth and detail and so forth. So I, I, I, I, I always tell people to do that, ask for like detail on one or two specific things, you know, and then, and then I think, then I think it's just about really understanding how you operate and who you should be trying to work with. Communication style, for example, speed of execution, work hours, time zone, you know what I mean? Like if Nigel, if you and I are working together and you're a morning person and I'm a night owl, like we're not in sync, you know, that doesn't mean you're no good and I'm no good. It's just like we not might not be good for each other because our hours don't sync up. So I'm up at midnight, I got questions, you're up at 6am I, six hours later I went to bed. I don't even wake up till 10am Like I'm not getting stuff done as fast as I could be. And I don't think people, because we're all remote and everything, I don't think people think about these things as much anymore. About the challenges that some of these communication styles and time zones and distance. I think that stuff still matters quite a bit. Those are a few thoughts from me, Richard.

So a couple things. So first of all, I think the CROs are probably asking Chachi PT at this point who are the best people to ask for, right? So I think I'm hoping that's what they're doing. I think that's one thing. And the people who are good at it will have, you know, embedded themselves into the, into the LLMs. I also think you have to look at, particularly if it's someone new who's never done it. You have to know what you're getting, right? You're going to get what you pay for. Right. They're either going to overprice themselves because they don't know what they're doing, or they're going to underprice themselves. And I think that's always a challenge for them, you know, that, that you've got to pay attention to that along with every single thing that Scott brought up. And I think it does matter of going in and leveraging, you know, everything else you can, you know, how long have they been doing it? Who are their clients? Can you talk to their clients? Like, same thing you would do almost. You're interviewing somebody. How would you interview for an elite person? Right. And that's what we do. And you know, Scott does it and then, you know, in terms of what he does and I do it in the way I do it and you do it the way you do it. And you have to sort of examine all that stuff. Right. And I also think, like, you know, again, I would flip it and say if they're, if I think they're giving me GPT, well, I'm gonna go Scott Lee's GPT. You know, I'm gonna go and ask, you know, chat GPT. Why should I choose Scott, Lisa, or this person or that person? Doesn't mean I'm going to follow what the GPT says or the Claude says, but I'm gonna help. It's gonna help me put my arms around this decision. Right. And it's going to help me spend less time worrying about all the little details and allow me to start to think about the bigger things. So I think that's sort of my approach to it. And if someone's brand new, you know, Scott and I talk about this all the time. The brand new people who move into the consulting world of whatever it is they do. I don't care if it's sales, marketing, whatever their first year, they usually do okay. Right. Because it's all word of mouth of people they know. It's the second year that gets tough. It's being able to repeat on that. So if they're still in their first year, that says something to me right away. If they're in their second or third year, that's an indication that they, they got something going on or they've got a nice, you know, big pile of cash that they're sitting on. Right. You know, so those are, those are the ways I would look at it. So I hope that was helpful.

Yeah, helpful.

Cool.

Can I ask one more question or do we need to land a plane? No, you can ask sneak it in.

Sneak one more in.

So we, we, we all three play in a world where most of our clients are well capitalized. And one of the things that's true about the companies that I work with is the typical investment period is five years, 60 months. But they don't think about it in months, they think about it in like five years. And one of the, you use the word execution and I like deficiencies around that. I just use the, I just flat out say execution deficiency is one of the problems that I think is, is challenging the C suite. What, what I want to ask the two of you because it's something that I'm seeing with the equity backed C suites that I work with. Why do you think these well capitalized companies at a time when the cost of capital is so high, let even with short turnover in the chief sales role, why do they let them struggle so, so long before they bring in outside expertise or operating partner council? Why do we go six months to intervene on a problem we could have solved in six weeks? Like what's the psychology that you're seeing with the suite?

I'll jump in on that one first. And I agree with you, there's an execution crisis. I've been writing about it the last couple of weeks. Couple of weeks. Whether it's sales execution, SaaS training, execution. Sales training, execution institution. I think that there are a couple of factors that often play it. One, if it's a younger founder, first time founder, they're very scared about spending money. They think it's better to let it sit in the bank to show they're not being foolish with their money. They also think that they're smart enough to figure it out on their own. They often at the highest level for everybody, including the executives. And this is also at, at any company, you know, everybody wants, you know, better, faster and cheaper. And in reality they don't understand that what they really want is faster and cheaper and they don't realize that. Better. Faster and cheaper. It is cheaper when you slow it down and do this now. And it's cheaper now to spend 30 grand to bring one of us in than it is to make mistakes for the next six months and then bring one of us in. Right. They just burned all this Runway and they really didn't do it any better. And they certainly didn't do it faster, they just did it cheaper. That's, that's the high level answer to that question for me.

Yeah, they don't think about it long term.

Yes. And it's board pressure too. Like let's face it, like they're always under board pressure. Right. And they're afraid to take risks. They're not willing to go in and say it's my neck on the line. They're just unwilling, you know.

Yeah, they just, they just think, think too short term. And I think that they believe that whoever they hired for the sales or go to market role should be able to do all of this stuff. Shouldn't need any help, shouldn't need guidance, shouldn't need coaching. It's almost like the principle of the thing, you know, and you combine the principle of it with short term thinking. That's where we end up, we end up in, you know, this place where people struggle, fail, wash out, you know, and keep having.

It's the only, it's the only function that I know of that's, you know, paramount to business performance, that there is this aversion to getting outside help. There's not one CFO that doesn't get M&A deal from a third party. There's not one marketing team that doesn't have a quiver of freelance consultants for video ad spend creative work. We outsource billing and a lot of human resource functions all together. The third parties. And if the. And I'm arguing, I will tell them. Anybody that's listening that's in a C suite role or any equity investor that's listening, all of that is just every other department is meant to support sales. If you don't create a customer, you don't have a business. And so if you're unwilling to put it all on the table to create customers, including bringing in outside counsel in the same way that you bring in legal, fpa, hr, marketing tech, you will lose. You're just going to lose.

Yep. Well, that right there in and of itself is a philosophical belief that not everybody shares. And that's part of the challenge, right?

Yes.

What you said we could go on.

For out another hour about that.

That could be the whole show. One day.

That could be a whole show. When we have you back for the third time, we'll do that one.

And that's why they become insolvent or the cap table gets really hairy and they never get a premium exit. Never going to bring you exit, unfortunately.

That's right. Short term thinking. That's right. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you so much man, spending some time with us. Congrats on the book launch. This has been super informative episode. Really appreciate you spending the time with us, Nigel. We'll see everybody next time on the surf and sales podcast. Whenever that is, Richard. Whenever that is.

Tomorrow we have a couple more going. All right, we're back on the saddle on this. So good to see you, my friend. Good to see you, Nigel, my friend as well. And we'll see everybody next time.