A sales leader who ran 150 reps at Sales Sniper argues that meritocracy is non-negotiable. Leaders must sell themselves to keep credibility, and only pure merit-based cultures attract killers and push out weak links.
When I was running Sales sniper, I had 150 absolutely savage sales reps. And in order to get to that point, there was a ton of lessons that I had to learn. One of the first ones is that the culture of your sales team is dictated by the leader. I did the sales for Ryan Sirhan for a long time, and he told me that in the sales environment, lead from the front. And I disagreed. And then I realized how stupid I was for disagreeing, because when the leader of a sales based organization is no longer selling, it changes the dynamic massively. And I saw that shift when I removed myself from sales. And I would have to step back in periodically to kind of lift the standards again. Because the culture of a sales team has to be one of absolute fucking meritocracy like nothing else. The moment you become focused on developing the reps, and it's not a meritocracy that attracts the best and forces the people who can't hang to leave, then you're never going to have the team that you want to have. So if you want to run a savage sales team, if you're a manager or whatever, like you are the one that will dictate the culture, and if you're a little pussy and you won't get on the phones, you're never going to have a good team.
