It took a lot more than drive for Neil Armstrong to walk on the moon. With years of training, support from NASA and a little competition from the Soviet Union, a few steps changed history forever.
While salespeople might have more earthly goals, in order to succeed in their roles, they too require more than just a healthy dose of ambition. From hiring to onboarding to climbing the sales ladder, salespeople require support from leadership, in-depth training and incentives beyond commission in order to be successful.
We talked to leaders at six Austin companies who are growing their sales teams. They offered up tips for building out a happy, productive sales organization. Hint: it involves core values, providing ongoing training and maintaining a positive (yet competitive) culture.
When you work in the legal industry, there are a lot of files to review (sometimes terabytes of data for a single case). DISCO created an intuitive platform enhanced with AI predictive coding to speed up the review process, letting lawyers optimize their time.
Vice President of Lead Generation and Inside Sales Tim Alvarez said that sticking to DISCO’s core values (think continuous learning and collaboration) when hiring enhances their company culture.
What’s your blueprint for building a sales team? How did you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
Finding the right people is key. We evaluate candidates not only on their skills and potential, but also on their eagerness to learn, collaborate and help ramp up future hires. You want to build a team that is proud to work together. If a person has a damaging effect on the rest of the team, they’re not a good hire.
Once the right people are in place, it is important to start everyone on the same page, ensuring each employee receives the training and development needed to help them reach their full potential.
...you must stay focused on your core hiring values...”
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place? Put another way, how do you scale your training and hiring processes and your culture alongside your team?
Listen to your people. Stay close to your team and pay extra attention to what the senior members tell you is key for consistency. As you scale, you must stay focused on your core hiring values and continue to bring in the right people, as they will be your future leaders.
At DISCO, bringing in great hires enhances our culture of learning and collaboration. Together, we celebrate our successes and challenge each other to even greater achievements, benefitting both the professional development of the individual and the growth of our business.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm that specializes in cloud-based endpoint protection. Jack Hyer, director of corporate sales, said supporting new hires in their training helps his team stay aligned with the company vision.
What’s your blueprint for building a sales teams? How do you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
Building a high-performing sales team starts with outlining the vision you have for the team and then providing the tools and support needed for them to succeed. Another important element is culture. Purposefully fostering your culture around the behaviors and values your organization finds important gives you the framework to determine who is the best team fit and how they can best work together. For me, this means finding people who are courageous, curious and creative.
After hiring the right people, I like to lead by example and support new hires through active participation in their early sales calls, shadowing and consistent one-to-one feedback.
We also take great care in maintaining a positive culture...”
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place?
Our sales leadership team believes it is better to hire the right person a little late than the wrong person too early. To ensure a positive culture that supports the industrious, entrepreneurial people we are trying to find and grow, we make sure we’re being thoughtful about our hiring decisions and that we aren’t moving too quickly. We also take great care in maintaining a positive culture and fostering our “one team, one fight” mentality.
We do that through team building, support, office events, prospecting projects and group outings to help us build a cohesive team working toward the same goals. In seeing CrowdStrike’s Austin team grow from 26 to 90+ employees, I think we’ve struck the right balance as our team is stronger and better than ever. And we have a lot of fun, too.
MVF Global’s platform helps 120 companies make sales by delivering new customers through cross-channel marketing. Charlie Parkin, head of sales, America, told us that developing The Sales Academy, a three-month training program for new hires, gives employees the confidence and tools they need for success.
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place?
We’ve hired passionate people ever since we launched the U.S. office with the landing team and it’s something we haven’t compromised on since. We’re able to maintain a culture of success — a team who is here to build something, not just take a paycheck.
Naturally, we’ve had to build more process into hiring and training as we’ve grown. We’ve developed a comprehensive three-month training program for new starters called The Sales Academy. It combines experiential, relationship training and research-based learning, along with post-graduation weekly learning sessions for the broader team.
All team members help each other toward a common goal: team and individual success.”
What’s your blueprint for building a sales team? How did you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
The first key to success is to inspire. We are pushing the team to do more than they thought possible, while inspiring a culture of “more than just quota” This focus on building something as a team instead of defining people by their numbers has helped us achieve pretty epic growth.
We also believe in teaching. We don’t hire for outright skill, but potential. All team members help each other toward a common goal: team and individual success.
We learned that what gets measured gets done. We give the team the tools to measure their own success easily and set clear initiatives. We’re a data-driven organization, and our ability to visualize and understand sales trends has helped both our retention and individuals’ performance.
From bartending to real estate, 360training.com provides training for over 4 million customers so they can get the jobs they want. Vice President of Sales Kevin Schoch said one of the most critical components to building a successful sales team is cultivating an atmosphere of trust.
What’s your blueprint for building a sales team? How did you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
I’ve been a part of many teams, from small startups to companies in the Fortune 500. The best ones always have a foundation of trust. You have to trust that your manager supports you, that your team will help you and that you have a voice.
I like to build teams with diverse backgrounds to bring new ideas and perspectives that will make the team better and ultimately, help us deliver better solutions for our customers. As a sales leader, I also love competition. I want to surround myself with people who want to win and who hold themselves accountable as much as the business does.
To uncover these skills, you really need to dig into what people have done before. Why did they choose their past roles? How did they succeed compared to others? What did they learn along the way? Where are they looking to go next in their careers? At the end of the day, I want to create an environment that allows people to accomplish more than they ever thought possible.
We want our employees to know that they have a voice...”
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place?
I’m looking for people who want to scale their careers. That doesn’t happen unless the business grows. If you hire people with that outlook, it’s easier to scale things like training and process along the way.
Everyone should focus on the way we run our business today while also keeping an eye on where we want to be in the future and how to get there. If something is preventing you from getting to that next stage, speak up so we can add training or adjust processes.
We ask everyone to speak up if they see a problem. It’s one of our core values. We want our employees to know that they have a voice and encourage them to use it to impact positive change and growth for the business.
AlertMedia’s emergency communications platform helps its customers monitor potential threats and streamline employee safely. Chief Revenue Officer Brett Andrew described the company as one that puts its customers first. That means hiring a sales team aligned with their company values.
What’s your blueprint for building a sales team? How did you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
AlertMedia puts our customers first, so we hire people and build processes that reflect who we want to be on every interaction: responsive, thoughtful, conversational, prescriptive and a trusted resource to the organizations that need our help communicating during emergency events. This requires our sales team to focus beyond the science of selling and embrace the art needed to skillfully assist thousands of prospects during their evaluations of our software.
Our customer-centric approach has governed the blueprint for building every team in our company. This has resulted in the development of a sales team that’s fully aligned with our other departments, company goals and overall culture.
...we never quit leading by example...”
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place?
AlertMedia has successfully doubled its business every year because growth to us doesn’t mean simply putting new people in more chairs. Rather, it’s about empowering new contributors to reach or achieve the success of those before them.
We’ve accomplished that type of growth because we never quit leading by example. All tenured employees contribute to a culture focused on rolling up our sleeves to show how things are done. We encourage new leaders to step forward, while we invest heavily in the processes and support required to onboard and elevate new members of the sales team.
We also work hard to keep everything simple, avoiding the common trap of overcomplication that often arrives with success. And we commit to transparency.
For online merchants, ShipStation compiles all shipping errands in an easy-to-use web interface, making the process efficient and less stressful. Director of Sales Cody DeArmond said that creating thorough documents for onboarding helps new hires feel as informed as he did when he was a rookie.
What’s your blueprint for building a sales team? How did you identify these keys and how have they made an impact as you build a team?
We consistently look for individuals that can raise the average of our team. When you are going through periods of hyper-growth and need six new reps ASAP, it can be tempting to lower your hiring standards. By holding out for candidates with the empathy to relate to our users on a personal level, we've been able to grow our team while constantly improving our user experience from the first interaction with ShipStation, which in turn drives increased sales.
We consistently look for individuals that can raise the average of our team.”
When scaling, how do you ensure your team doesn’t lose the elements that made it so successful in the first place?
When I started at ShipStation, ramp was easy because any time I had a question, the person on either side of me was an expert and had been here since the beginning. As we've grown, ShipStation has invested heavily in documenting our processes in a way that's easily digestible for new hires so we can maintain that tribal knowledge without depending on physical proximity.
