Hiring for Climate Tech sales executives - don't wing it!
Mark Crofton
Global VP & Head of Field Enablement @ SAP | ex-McKinsey | Conservation and Climate
My first comment when asked about hiring is probably not the most professional: “don’t wing it.” Admittedly, this is a very (North) American phrase. However, I start with this rather informal directive because I want to make an important point: have a plan, know what you’re hiring for, don’t just make it up as you go along.?
Hiring salespeople is hard. After all, you want someone that can sell. So, they are selling themselves. The cost of making a mistake is high: you will invest time in training and onboarding them. This is time you could spend doing other things. This is lost time – not selling to customers. Even with all that is at stake, most people wing it, don’t plan, and go with their gut.
Many of my learnings around hiring sales executives come from two professional experiences. The first lesson is the most basic and stated above: you really need to take a conscience, skills-based approach and you need a process for hiring. This I learned, perhaps mostly by not taking this approach initially, while a VP of Sales in Latin America. Not doing so proved costly both in terms of time and my managerial focus. It was not fair to the sales executives I hired into what was likely the “wrong” role for them.?
Later, while leading the Sales Academy at SAP, we interviewed thousands of candidates a year across 40 countries (mostly recent university graduates). We had very few spots in the Academy, and the candidates were impressive, well-educated and, for the most part, well prepared for the interviews. Our process had to scale AND we had to try and reduce any (unconscious) bias that might come into the process.?We had to pick the candidates that demonstrated high skill level in areas that we believed were most relevant to success in the roles we were hiring for.
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Who you need now: Define the traits or behaviors of your “Ideal Sales Executive”
Keep in mind, you are not looking for the ideal or perfect sales executive. You are looking for the ideal person for your company at this time. This is dependent on: your solution (and its maturity), your sales cycle, your customers, your company culture. This can and likely will change, especially if you’re an early-stage company and your direction, product and culture could be affected by market conditions, funding rounds, etc.?
I take a “skills-based” approach to these traits and behaviors. Think of the skills needed to perform the work or the tasks that need to be done. (Here’s an in-depth article on Skills-based https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/organizational-skill-based-hiring.html)
Examples of general sales-related skills to look for might include:
Skills related to a particular industry or domain might also be needed, e.g., time spent in the energy or utility sectors. You may want someone that has experience navigating large enterprises, versus someone with skills related to a higher volume of deals. Perhaps you need a particular language.?
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Once you’ve defined the skills, as above, you might try describing them in detail and agree to what “great” looks like for each trait or behavior. Inherent in this last clause is that you, and your teammates, co-founders, investors etc., should discuss and agree on what skills you are looking for in your sales hire. This might also lead to discussion of what you want this person to do, i.e., their goals. That’s a great discussion to have and one I’ll cover in a later piece. Lastly,? as you’re unlikely to find a candidate that has all the skills you want, I’d recommend trying to rank them in order of importance. That way you can prioritize candidates with the skills most important to the role.
The next step is to come up with specific questions or actions that check for these traits / behaviors. These can be questions, or you could be asking the candidate for examples, or even can be role playing. For example: “Can you tell me about a time in which you had to influence someone that didn’t work for you to do something you needed done in order to be successful?” Assign a question or questions to each skill to check for it.?
You will want to score each candidate on these behaviors. Ideally, you have defined what great looks like. Let’s say you use a 1-5 scale with 5 being “great.” Now try defining what a 1 looks like vs a 5. Ensure that all interviewers are on the same page on these definitions. You want to insure inter-rater reliability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability) - essentially that when you say 3 and I say 3, we mean the same thing. I have used a template or spreadsheet like the one below to keep track of the scores while interviewing. You can have different interviewers ask different questions around the same skill or you can have separate interviews and ask the same questions.??
The point is to stay focused on how the candidate meets the necessary skills of the job; skills that you and your colleagues agreed are what is needed. You may feel like it’s a bit too much process if you’re a small team, but I’d argue that you be deliberate and?
Hopefully, you can reduce some of your biases, limit recency and other effects. At the interview you may decide you like the candidate a lot, find that they have a lot of positive traits. However, they are not the ideal, or best, candidate for this role.?
In closing, be intentional, have a process, know what skills you need for a sales executive for your company where you are now, and will be in the near term.
I’m going to continue my series on sales processes for climate tech companies shortly. My focus is on processes that allow founders and companies to scale their sales, customer success and general Go To Market operations . I’m happy to hear ideas from companies and funds that would be helpful for me to cover.
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Stay safe!