Growthential"I have hired and managed 46+ salespeople across multiple countries. The pattern is clear: hire for traits not just experience, onboard with structure, coach consistently, and make the hard calls early."
Why Most Sales Teams Underperform
Most sales teams fail to deliver. In my experience, it almost always traces back to one of three root causes:
- The wrong hiring criteria. Companies hire reps based on CV credentials and interview charisma rather than the traits that actually predict sales success.
- No structured ramp-up. New hires are thrown into the deep end with a laptop, a CRM login, and a target. Then leadership is surprised when they struggle.
- Inconsistent management. Sales leaders get pulled into deals, internal meetings, and reporting, and coaching falls to the bottom of the priority list.
Every one of these is fixable.
Phase 1: Your First Hire
Your first sales hire sets the tone for everything that follows. Get this right and you build momentum. Get it wrong and you set yourself back 6-12 months.
What to Look For
Forget the polished CV from a big-name company. For early-stage sales hires, these traits matter more than pedigree:
Curiosity. The best salespeople are deeply curious about their clients' businesses. In interviews, I look for candidates who ask more questions than they answer. If someone spends the entire interview talking about their achievements without asking about our business, challenges, or clients, that is a red flag.
Resilience. B2B sales involves constant rejection. Your first hire will face more of it than anyone who comes after them, because the playbook is not yet proven. Ask candidates about specific times they failed, what they learned, and what they did differently. The answers reveal everything.
Process orientation. This surprises people, but the best salespeople are methodical. They follow a process, track their activities, and iterate based on data. The "lone wolf" myth is exactly that: a myth. In a team environment, undisciplined sellers create chaos.
Commercial acumen. Can this person understand a P&L? Can they articulate the business value of your product in financial terms? The ability to speak the language of business, not just the language of features, is what separates good reps from great ones. This commercial acumen is core to any effective B2B sales strategy.
What to Avoid
- The "rainmaker" who cannot explain their process. If someone's success was built entirely on personal relationships at a specific company, that success probably will not transfer.
- Candidates who only talk about quota attainment. Hitting quota matters, but I want to understand how they did it. What was the territory? The average deal size? The competitive landscape? Context matters.
- Culture mismatch. Skills can be developed. Values and work style are much harder to change. If someone does not fit the way your team operates, no amount of talent will compensate.
Phase 2: Structured Onboarding (The First 90 Days)
The first 90 days determine whether a new hire becomes a high performer or a costly mistake. This is the framework I use:
Week 1-2: Foundation
- Product and market deep dive. The rep should understand your product, your market, your competitive landscape, and your ideal customer profile inside and out. This is classroom time: structured learning, not "figure it out."
- CRM and tools training. Do not assume new hires know your systems. Invest time in showing them exactly how you want the CRM used, what data needs to be captured, and how the pipeline should be managed.
- Client immersion. Have new hires listen to recorded client calls, read case studies, and sit in on existing client meetings. They need to hear the language your clients use to describe their challenges.
Week 3-4: Shadowing and Practice
- Ride-alongs. New hires should observe experienced sellers (or you, if they are your first hire) in live client interactions. There is no substitute for seeing how a deal actually progresses.
- Role-play. I know sales reps hate role-play. Do it anyway. Practise discovery calls, objection handling, and product demonstrations in a safe environment before putting someone in front of a real prospect.
- First outreach. By the end of week 4, your new hire should be making their first prospecting calls. Not expecting to close deals, just starting to build pipeline and develop muscle memory.
Month 2-3: Guided Selling
- Weekly 1:1 coaching sessions. Not pipeline reviews. Coaching. There is a difference. Pipeline reviews focus on the numbers. Coaching focuses on the skills and behaviours that drive the numbers.
- Deal strategy sessions. Work through active opportunities together. Help the rep think through stakeholder mapping, competitive positioning, and next steps.
- Gradual independence. By month 3, the rep should be running their own discovery calls with you observing occasionally, not leading. The goal is confident independence, not permanent hand-holding.
Phase 3: Scaling the Team
Once you have proven the model with one or two hires, scaling brings new challenges.
Hiring at Scale
When you are hiring multiple reps, consistency matters more than ever:
- Standardise your interview process. Use the same questions, the same evaluation criteria, and ideally the same interviewers for every candidate. This reduces bias and makes comparison easier.
- Involve your existing team. Your current reps are your best ambassadors and your best filters. A candidate who impresses leadership but rubs the existing team the wrong way will create friction.
- Hire in cohorts when possible. Bringing on 2-3 people at once creates healthy competition, shared learning, and more efficient onboarding. Solo hires can feel isolated.
The Team Structure Question
One of the most common questions I get is: when do you split the team into specialised roles (SDRs, AEs, CSMs)?
My answer: later than you think. In the early stages, having full-cycle reps who prospect, close, and manage accounts gives you several advantages:
- Reps understand the entire client journey
- You avoid the handoff problems that plague SDR-to-AE models
- It is more cost-effective
Once you consistently have more qualified opportunities than your AEs can handle, that is the signal to bring in dedicated SDRs. Not before.
Span of Control
Recent data from Gallup shows that the average manager's span of control has grown from 10.9 direct reports in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, with frontline sales spans frequently reaching 12-15 (Gallup, 2025). This is a problem I unpack further in the megamanager problem. In my experience, 6-8 direct reports is the maximum a sales manager can effectively coach. Beyond that, coaching quality degrades and you start managing by spreadsheet rather than by development.
If you are growing the team beyond 8 reps, hire another manager before you hire more reps.
Phase 4: Coaching and Development
This is where most sales leaders fall down, not because they do not care, but because they run out of time. If you are not spending at least 40% of your time coaching, you are managing, not leading.
What Effective Coaching Looks Like
It is specific. "You need to be more assertive" is not coaching. "When the prospect raised the budget concern at the 15-minute mark, here is how you could have reframed the conversation..." That is coaching.
It is regular. Weekly 1:1 sessions, minimum 30 minutes, focused on skill development. Not pipeline reviews. Not admin updates. Coaching.
It is data-informed. Use conversation intelligence tools to identify patterns. Which reps are talking too much on discovery calls? Who consistently fails to multi-thread in accounts? Data turns coaching from subjective opinion into objective development.
It is forward-looking. Effective coaching focuses on the next conversation, not the last one. What is the rep going to do differently? What specific skill are they working on this week?
The Sales Coaching Gap
The data here is stark: only 34% of sales leaders have ever received coaching training. Only 1 in 5 sales leaders has their own coach. We are asking people to develop others without ever developing them. I explore this problem in depth in the sales coaching gap.
If you are a sales leader, invest in your own coaching ability. It is the highest-impact activity you can do.
Making Hard Decisions
No guide to building a sales team would be complete without addressing this: sometimes you need to let people go. After 46+ hires, I have made mistakes, and the biggest mistake has always been waiting too long.
When to Cut
- Performance. If a rep has been through structured onboarding, received consistent coaching, and still is not performing after 6 months, the role is probably not right for them. Extending the timeline rarely changes the outcome.
- Attitude. A rep who hits their number but undermines the team culture is more damaging than a rep who misses their number but lifts everyone around them. I have seen one toxic high-performer destroy team morale faster than any other factor.
- Fit. Sometimes a good person simply is not right for a specific role, market, or stage of company. Recognise this early and help them find the right next step.
How to Do It Well
Be direct, be respectful, and be human. Provide clear feedback, offer support, and treat people with dignity. How you handle exits defines your team culture as much as how you handle wins.
The Compound Effect
Building a high-performing sales team is a compound exercise. Every good hire makes the next hire easier. Every coaching conversation builds capability. Every process improvement reduces friction. If you are doing this in a new geography, I share specific lessons from building sales teams across APAC markets that may be useful.
The teams that outperform do not have a secret, they just do the basics well, over a long period of time. There is no shortcut, but there is a playbook. And it starts with the first hire.
If you are building a sales team and want to discuss the approach, reach out. I offer sales team leadership and coaching and have been through this process more times than I can count.