Someone quit Monster.com's Toronto sales team, then pitched their former boss on a new recruitment agency they'd just started. They landed the boss as their first client, turning the departure into a business deal.
When the industry started shifting online, I was recruited by Monster.com out of Toronto. They said, hey, you want to come to Toronto? We need a director of sales to focus on selling to the enterprise market. And I said, sure. So, I hopped on a plane, I came to Toronto, and that's when my career really took off because Monster was the first publicly traded company that I'd ever worked for. Quotas were, I mean, it was a very high-demand, high-pressure sales role. Like, you didn't want to miss a quota. Nobody knew what would happen. if you missed quota. It just like wasn't an option. And we worked really hard. And after 3 years there, my boss pulled me in at our annual review. He said, you're doing an amazing job and we have to increase your quota next year. Quotas are going up. And just so you know, the commission structures that we are paying, the commissions are going down. I said, oh, that's interesting. So, my quota's going up and my commission's going down. And I just remember having this clear vision of looking into the future going, okay, well, I think I'm working really hard. I'm working from 6:00 AM to midnight, and I love it, but I'm working really hard, and I can't imagine working harder and making less. Mm-hmm. And it just wasn't a future that made sense to me. So, I, I'd been speaking with an old colleague and friend from Monster. He had left to actually become a VP of sales at another company, and I called him up and I said, look, I think there's an idea. I think there's a gap in the market. I know all the recruitment agencies, and there isn't a recruitment agency that specializes in helping companies hire their best salespeople. I think there's a missing, there's a little gap there that needs to be filled. I said, are you interested in starting a recruitment agency? I think we can do something great here. And so, we decided to do that, and we both quit our jobs. I went into my boss, and I said, I'm sorry, this isn't going to work for me, but I'm going to start a recruitment agency that specializes in helping companies hire great salespeople. And since I'm leaving, and I think I'm a great salesperson, would you be our first client? Would you be our first customer? And Hire us to replace me. And so I walked out the door with an order, actually. Wow. And that's how we started.
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