Salespeople have a lot in common with the New York Knicks: they usually have more losses than wins.
The Knicks, who haven’t won a title in nearly five decades and have only secured a single playoff-round victory in the past 22 years, have earned a reputation of often leaving fans disappointed. In fact, the NY Daily News ranked Knicks fans as the tri-state area’s most miserable sports fan base in 2022.
Yet, despite a history of loss, fans continue to show up and support their team.
Salespeople, too, must possess the resilience to persist through repeated losses and continue to focus their best efforts on securing rarer wins. Simply put, it is not a career for the easily discouraged.
“Sales is tough. The crazy thing is even the best salespeople only win a small percentage of the time,” Molly McElgunn, director of sales development at Tropic, explained. “You’ve gotta be willing to show up every single day playing at the most elite level knowing you’re gonna take a lot of ‘L’s’ along the way.”
McElgunn is one of the three sales leaders Built In NYC interviewed to get perspective on what makes a great salesperson. As these three companies grow their sales teams, they share what skills a candidate should have and how they set up new hires for success.
Monday.com is a work operating system that businesses use to manage workflows, align team members and boost productivity.
What is the number one skill you think new hires need to be successful on your team, and why?
Clear communication is the number one skill new hires need to succeed on our team. Effective communication requires new hires to listen closely to what the customers say, respond appropriately to build rapport, and eventually close the sale. New hires will need to understand how to explain a complex product in simple terms that customers can understand. They’ll need to be creative, use problem-solving skills to analyze the situation, and come up with the best options to fit the customer’s needs.
How can sales candidates demonstrate that skill in a job interview?
The candidate would need to explain how they used their skills in current or past roles and how those skills they outlined fit into the position they are interviewing for. They provided tangible examples of how they used those skills to overcome obstacles, overcome objections, solve problems, and collaborate with others to achieve an outcome.
New hires will go through an entire month of onboarding, but we all agree that we never truly stop learning.”
What kind of training do you offer sales team new hires to set them up for success?
New hires will go through an entire month of onboarding, but we all agree that we never truly stop learning. We give in-depth training on monday.com at a high level, what they will be doing in their role, and how we celebrate success. We also assign each new hire a companion to join the account executive’s calls, review the day-day, and answer any questions the new hire may have. Once they are out of the initial training phase, we schedule weekly one-on-one sessions to continue emphasizing what they’ve learned. We also have regular team meetings when relevant to ensure that information and updates are regularly shared with the team. Our learning process also includes lesson updates in our system for the team to complete to ensure we all stay informed of any changes.
Companies of all sizes use Tropic to discover, buy and manage SaaS, enabling them to save money and manage contracts with ease.
What is the number one skill you think new hires need to be successful on your team, and why?
Grit. Sales is tough. The crazy thing is even the best salespeople only win a small percentage of the time. You’ve gotta be someone who wants the big wins so badly and is willing to show up every single day playing at the most elite level knowing you’re gonna take a lot of “L’s” along the way. But people who have that grit and mental toughness become stars— every time.
How can sales candidates demonstrate that skill in a job interview?
They can tell me about a time that they were faced with multiple roadblocks and overcame them. How did they do it? What made them keep going when it seemed like the task at hand was almost impossible?
Elite enterprise sales is like playing sports at the highest level. Excellent training and development is a requirement.”
What kind of training do you offer sales team new hires to set them up for success?
Elite enterprise sales is like playing sports at the highest level. Excellent training and development are a requirement.
We start on day one with a clearly defined 90-day onboarding plan linked to fine-tuned training modules, example call recordings, sample emails, and practice scenarios. Additionally, we do two weekly team training sessions on an ongoing basis and weekly one-on-one call coaching sessions with your manager. We use purpose-defined slack channels for discussion of specific sales skills, book clubs, group call reviews, and extensive systems to drive peer feedback and collaboration.
Software company Smartling’s cloud-based translation technology allows its users to create content that reaches audiences worldwide in their respective languages.
What is the number one skill you think new hires need to be successful on your team, and why?
We don’t have one skill that we look for. We look for three key traits: intellectual curiosity, self-activation, and coachability.
How can sales candidates demonstrate that skill in a job interview?
These traits traverse both work and our everyday life. It’s very easy to ask questions around these three examples, irrespective of work experience. This approach makes it easy to onboard business development representatives who may not have SaaS work experience. Of course, an answer that centers around work is a plus.
We focus a lot on immersion in the job and take a lean approach, where the best learnings come from doing the role.”
What kind of training do you offer sales team new hires to set them up for success?
We focus a lot on immersion in the job and take a lean approach, where the best learnings come from doing the role. Some people call it on-the-job training (OJT), but we have a strong coaching aspect to it. We also leverage technology like Gong for new hires to listen to the actual prospects and customer interaction.
