Jason M. Lemkin warns against hiring washed-up sales managers from big companies who know the lingo but can't recruit or deliver results. These hires often fail within a sales cycle, wasting months and resources. Pick performers, not brand names.
Wash up is there are plenty of folks that were mediocre at Dropbox, Salesforce, Google Box. There are plenty of folks that were actually pretty bad sales managers. And they all need a job because they got fired. You can attract one of them to your startup, and they will know the lingo, they all know the acronyms, they will know the vernacular, they will talk your ear off, but they won't have two great people that can join them, and they won't meet it right. And many of you will make that mistake. Many founders will say, you know what? I'm so attracted to the logo, I'm going to hire the washout. And it won't work. And you'll either figure that out in one sales cycle or. Or you'll burn through a lot of time and you'll figure it out in nine months, but you'll figure out that the wash up doesn't work.
