Hiring experienced sales people who don't want to sell anymore is a strategic mistake. The speaker describes a candidate in Pleasanton with strong credentials who refused to travel or do field sales but wanted a VP role. This pattern is common among former employees of high-growth companies like Twilio and Mongo.
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in a distributed world, it's more important to visit customers. And he lived in the East Bay, in Pleasanton in the East Bay, which is maybe 20 minutes east of Oakland. He said, I'm willing to visit customers, but I won't go as far as the peninsula in San Francisco. He's just happy at home. He's happy at home, Lenny. And he don't want to sell. And this guy has the best LinkedIn and the best references, but he don't want to sell anymore. He needs a job. He wants to be a VP of sales. And I see this across the industry and I'm struggling to find answers. And I think the biggest hiring— we talk, we talked about a lot of tactical hiring mistakes that you can make today in sales. The biggest strategic mistake you can make today in sales, cuz there's so many veterans, there's so many folks that worked at Twilio and Mongo and wherever, pick any, any great company you want, right? There's so many veterans out there. You just can't hire the ones that don't actually wanna sell anymore. And there's too many. There's too many.