Chris Calkin (CRO at Census) Reveals the Sales Belief He Once Swore By—But Later Reversed

You have had over 15 years of experience in revenue leadership, rising from SDR to Manager to Director to VP of Sales to Chief Revenue Officer at companies like Tune, CircleCI, and Census. What's a belief that you had early in your sales leadership career that you've since changed your mind about? I.

Don'T know if you'll love this answer, but one of the main things is not everyone can do it. When I first got into sales management, I thought that it would be very straightforward to hire solid communication ability people that had a decent head on their shoulders and would be organized enough to do the job. And I really quickly learned that that was not the case. And the confluence of skills that are needed in order to be effective in sales was vastly more extensive than I had thought. You know, I thought, you know, this stuff is pretty straightforward, and that it would be easy to teach others, and that was not the case. I remember interviewing quite a few people and then being like, wow, why is it so hard to find a great salesperson? I actually think salespeople forget that themselves and that they undervalue their unique capabilities. And so that was something that definitely changed as I spent more time in sales leadership.