A sales leader with 30 years of experience argues that trust and transparency build credibility, but extraordinary growth demands strategic unreasonableness. He hires for cultural fit and high-energy salespeople, citing Don Valentine's principle that world-changing results come from pushing beyond conventional expectations.
The world changes and grows on the unreasonable amount.
Tell me, in terms of building a strong sales culture, what practices or principles would you prescribe that are good ingredients?
Look, it's one of those questions I've pondered for 30 years. And I've read a lot. And so, I think you've got to be able to work out how do you interview for a cultural fit because you can always evolve who you want to be. But you've got to be able to recruit people who what you want to be is going to resonate well with them. We wanted to make sure that we were a high-energy organization, that we weren't full of pretense. So, therefore, we And this was the tough balancing act. We didn't want to hire a lot of lone wolves, but as you know, high-performing, really hyper-performing salespeople tend to be, get out of the way, you know, give me it, give me the brief, leave me to it, don't micromanage me. And look, so we had to— we needed to get those, as I mentioned before, some with a pathological need to win, but also shape them so they were happy to Chew the fat, shoot the breeze, whatever one you want to use there. And look, the other aspect of it is, I'm an open, transparent sort of person. You kind of get what you see with me, and I find that's one of the better ways to build trust. So that was always a part of who I've been historically in how I build a team, is me acting in a trustworthy way. manner. But I've also got to be able to balance that with a level of being unreasonable. I'm not sure if you've read much about Don Valentine when he really grew Sequoia Capital. And then their x-axis was about the founders, the leaders of the business. Are they reasonable or unreasonable? Of course, Don Valentine's premise was that the world doesn't change on the reasonable man. The world changes and grows on the unreasonable man— unreasonable person, I should say. So what, you know, the founders and the early-stage directors and executives at Dubber, because we wanted to achieve significantly greater results than others, is that we had to be unreasonable.
