E487 | Gia Scinto, The Cole Group: Building GTM Teams [Path to Market – Seedcamp Series]

27:15Like you can get into some of those things in a way. I think you should be getting somewhat personal with this person you're going to hire because it's like a marriage. You're getting married. And so like a little bit of both is good to like, that's those two ways to uncover. Like, do you think you're going to assimilate in well and fit in well? And no one's the same, right? No one's the same. And so we're all different and just want to make sure that it's not a bad hire. So yeah, I don't think there's like, there's the back channel references, but I'm trying to think, has there ever gone wrong?

27:54Like, was there ever any postmortem of a search where you hired someone? I just thought of one. And we found out that this person that was placed in this role as the VP of sales was fired within three months that he relished in firing people. Like he loved it. And it kind of like, it came out after the fact, after he got into the company and just started wreaking havoc. And I think that's like something that all that's like scar tissue that I have, because you should have some level of empathy when you have to make really tough decisions and having to terminate employees. But Yeah, maybe that's a good one to ask is how did you handle those types of conflicts?

28:39You know, the things that are really tough. I think that'd be a good way to back into like, are they going to be a good fit? I haven't met many people who relish in having to look at people. It's scary. Yeah. Thank God they pulled the bandaid off pretty quickly. To your point that there's obviously a culture of an organization, but obviously every role comes with slightly different, you know, behaviors and expectations. Your earlier point, right? Like anyone coming into go to market type roles generally is, you know, there's a commercial element that's linked to their expectations in terms of what they expect from the company, but also what the company expects from them.

29:19And to that point, when, you know, especially when you're an early stage startup and you've got a great more senior candidate in your pipeline, how do you pitch to them? that they should come and join your early stage business, you know, that doesn't have the numbers that they might be used to? What guidance could you give? You know, what do candidates want to hear and how can founders best represent themselves and their business in those instances? I've always had this saying that I've said many times that everything sounds like Mad Libs. And so how are you differentiating? Like, oh, series A, series B, you've got this round of funding, insert top tier VC name here, famous board member name here.

30:03Everybody's got it. Like, so why are you any better and different? Like you really have to work hard around the pitch. But to your question about, I believe that majority of go-to-market leaders in no ranking order, they care about product differentiation. And I like to lead with that. And really, because if it's a crowded market and this is a way better product and you can really approve that, that you have massive product differentiation. If I were a sales leader, well, that makes my life so much easier that I have something better to sell. And then even what if it's not a crowded space and you're displacing a manual process?

30:45Oh my God, that would lead with that. That's like so exciting. Right. And hyper disruptive. So again, product differentiation. I can't say enough. And, you know, I assume you have some use cases. So I feel like every sales leader wants to understand about the customer, you know, just use cases and customers that you have and why they bought the software in the first place. I think it's really important to talk about segmentation. I know there are some startups that go straight to the enterprise, but I rarely hear about those. So we are at the lower end of the market. And why is that important just because like, if you are very much square in the mid market and the definition of that is like 1 ,000 to 5 ,000 employees, I don't know, it's segmentation is like squishy, then do not hire, you know, a hardcore top-down enterprise seven-figure sales leader.

31:36It's not going to solve what you need to solve. So segmentation is really important, but I also want to say if there's opportunity to move up market, then let's also talk about that. And maybe there are product features and things that you're rolling out in the next year that are going to add to a more holistic solution and increase the LTV. And there is opportunity to move up market. What does that look like? And that's important to someone in sales. So just really, I think obviously TAM, I always get the TAM and there's really good and bad answers around the TAM. I think just take care about pricing, where you've landed.

32:12Now, ACV could be all over the place. That's okay. But there's probably some, you don't want to sell below this or maybe you don't care. You want this person to figure it out. I do think, like you said about, they don't have all these SaaS metrics and maybe at an early stage around NDR, GRR, like that might not really exist just yet, but it's going to. So they do care about win rate. Just tell me about what's the percentage of deals you're winning and losing. and like, do they see opportunity there that they can help increase? And these are things that they want to hear. So if you have some SaaS metrics that are impressive, you should share them.

32:50And then all the obvious, like from 2022 to 2023, things change drastically. I think everyone cares about, do you have a healthy balance sheet? You know, do you have enough cash in the bank to afford them this person's salary and the people that they're going to hire? They just, I think sort of you get into that at the end of the process or maybe even midway with the candidates want to know that they're not going to run out of capital in nine months of joining a company so yeah building on that very relevant last point how have you seen the kind of or have you seen an increase in demand for go-to-market leaders in this kind of more recent climate where the focus is so much more on revenue generation actual path to commercialization versus just growth Yeah.

33:40And I am focused on all of go-to-market. So I have to say in 2022 and 2023, I saw influx of sales leadership searches at all stages, more than I've ever seen in 10 years. And I still don't have the answers as to exactly why that is, because I think we're going to wait and find out maybe in the next year. So always high demand on the sales side of sales leaders at all stages. And we saw massive influx of marketing searches happen around the February timeframe of this year, where it was a little slower and just a massive influx of the market that I hate to say this to all the product marketers out there, but not every search, but like 80 % are want all like revenue pipeline demand gen marketers right now that's in vogue where everybody was talking about category creation and all that.

34:31And that kind of fell in like product marketing was in vogue. And I'm just seen the pendulum swing this way. Now, again, at different stages, you need a different type of marketers. So I'm not saying it's a blanket statement for every company, but definitely a high demand with marketing and sales searches right now. And I have to say we do revenue ops and we're seeing a lot happen in the rev ops side too, where it's strategy and rev ops. And it's really like a big, big role. And sometimes I'm seeing it reporting into the CEO, which is really different. I don't know if there's a trend there, but anyway, yeah.

35:07So that's really interesting. And then going back to the processes and, you know, at the end of most recruiting processes, it's common that a founder will ask a task or a homework assignment. This can be, you know, what would your 30, 60, 90 day plan be, et cetera. What's your best advice around when and what can be asked of candidates? Because, you know, people can be unrealistic. What's a realistic ask of someone in the final stages? Yeah. And great. I will harp on what I said in the beginning is if you've been running, run a really tight process and you've got your MET and your priorities. So the task could vary on what you want them to do.

35:50And what I see a lot of, everyone's heard about the 30, 60, 90. I'm not a huge fan of that anymore, but I do think sales leaders have it. it's still good to have. And here's why. So that's one thing I feel like most sales leaders are going to weave in the 30, 60, 90 day plan without even the founder asked that was not the task, but they're going to weave it into whatever they're presenting anyway. So that's fine. I think that's a great opportunity to make sure expectations are aligned, right? Because maybe something that the sales leader was going to do in the third month was something that you actually want them to do in the first month.

36:25So that's, it's still good to do. I've seen things like, okay, we're at 1 million, 2 million, 3 million. How do we get to 10 million? Just present how we get to 10 million from who you're going to hire, what the cost is going to be just soup to nuts, how we're going to get to 10 million or 20 million, whatever the number is at that. If you're asking that for that task, you have to supply the candidate with a lot of detail. And maybe if you have an AE, they should, I would want to meet with the AE throughout the interview process that like they need to really get under the hood and look probably sign an NDA get into your systems whatever infrastructure you have they're just going to look at the pipeline they're going to hopefully come to the table with a really detailed presentation and by the way there should be a whiteboarding session like it should be interactive and brainstorming and I think you can also invite other people in the room that maybe haven't met this candidate yet, or, you know, it's kind of up to you and how you want to run that presentation.

37:23I've also seen, I wouldn't call it a manifesto, but I've seen founders ask, write a paragraph about what do you like about my company and what would you come in and change? And it's really interesting what comes out of that because like they're regurgitating what they learned throughout the interview process. You're hearing things that maybe you didn't know that they want to come in. There's just another opportunity for alignment and to dig into like that. When I've seen that ask, I've seen people write manifestos and I've seen people write like one page and said there's no right or wrong answer, but anything else?

38:02I mean, I have seen a lot of preparation go into these tasks from both sides, really supplying the candidate with as much information as possible. And then, and not, And by the way, I'm not to talk about marketing, but like marketing, you know, I always think you can be really creative with presentations for marketers, right? And tell, how would you change our website? I mean, that's really tactical, but like kind of getting their opinion. And I've seen like amazing presentations around just that one simple ask. It really gets into the person's thought process and their approach. And hopefully everybody's learning something in that final presentation.

38:41And you want to get married. at all call. This is such a great range of ideas for getting a sense of how somebody works. I really like the idea of a whiteboarding session because you are simulating what the job will be. If the candidate takes the role, you will be in conference rooms whiteboarding together. So you are in effect doing the job and it's some good practice to see what it's actually like. So you mentioned backchanneling. For backchanneling and go-to-market candidates, when do you do it? How do you do it? Who should do it? You obviously don't want to kill somebody and let their boss know that they're interviewing.

39:17So what's the graceful way to do this? Yeah. As I said, beginning, middle and end. And I have to say though, in this new climate that we're in, given what has changed 2022 and 2023 with good and bad things happening, we are back telling more, it's not to say it's become more difficult what's become more difficult is like the truth you know was it the company was it the person was it both of them and why there was not a successful outcome here um whatever it is you're back channeling it's really making sure that you're aware of the climate and what was going on at that time and the source of the back channel like Like, man, the source, is that a credible source?

40:07Because like I've seen back channels come from someone and the back channel on that someone was worse than the back channel they gave on the candidate. It's good to do like a 360, a direct report, a peer, a manager, right? But we are going like more and more levels deeper with back channeling. And who should do it? I think the founder should do it. Your investor should help you do it. I think if you have a recruiter on the scene that they should be helpful. And I have a tip though around, be careful when you back channel because like that could be a formal, formal front door reference for the candidate.

40:42And so that's, if they're any good as well, if the candidate's any good, they're going to hear about the back channels, right? From their network, whether it was a formal reference that you mistakenly called as a back channel. So I ask for the formal references first, and then I triangulate on who are all the other people at X, Y, and Z companies. And then in this way, we're not like stepping over ourselves and stepping on toes. But like you said, I want to make sure that the person's employed, you know, they can't get back to their current employer. That should be obvious, but we still see some bad behavior in this world, unfortunately.

41:17And then any other, I have a doc that I can send you guys on just all my favorite back channel questions. But in the end, I, my best advice is like, everybody wants to know where this person is not strong. and everybody wants to look for the bad. I just like, how are we going to augment this person to be successful, right? No one's perfect. And so it's easy. If you're looking for the bad, you will find it. But how do you weigh that towards hiring for strengths and not lack of weakness, right? So yeah, it's tricky right now with back channeling. I like that attitude though, that the purpose of the reference calls is to figure out how to set somebody up for success rather than only seeking for the bad.

42:04So let's say all the back channels, great. The founder has sold the go-to-market leader on joining the company. The go-to-market leader joins. Now, how do you ensure a high stick rate? What are some good onboarding best practices to set them up for success? It's a great question because I do feel we just kick people to the curb the second they join, it's like, go. And no one's accountable for making that person successful. but probably part of that final presentation and the priorities that I mentioned if they can have a quick win with whatever the task was that you had there was probably like a preference to accomplish one thing first before another but the goal is to get them a quick win and the candidate should know should have a really good feeling about what they're walking into and you have agreed before they've even started that they're going to focus on this first.

42:59And they have that quick win in the first month to three months. It just feels good for everyone. And I think there's the obvious, like making sure that they have access to all the data and all the information, maybe even there's some onboarding happening before they even start working. And there's always like a more internal process. I think that some companies have that are more sophisticated than others, you know, just on how they set up meetings for the person in the first week and this and that. That to me is more table stakes. I'm thinking about just like, what is going to increase the stick rate?

43:32And in my opinion, it is focusing on getting a quick win. By the way, quick win could also just be building a strong relationship with the engineering team. Has taken everyone to coffee by the end of the first 90 days. Yeah. It doesn't have to actually, it can get off of the priority thing. By the way, the other thing is it does take time it takes three to six months to turn the crank and so i think there's some level of impatience in this executive hire that you have all these expectations that are going to come in and make the world pretty but it takes time so if those are small wins then there's big wins i think that just makes everyone feel great i think that expectation point is so key and where you know i definitely see this go wrong so much of the time on that when you think about where, you know, the expectations perhaps on both sides have been misaligned and people don't work out.

44:26What percentage of these people aren't working out? Like what percentage of first sales hires get fired and why and how could it have been avoided? I wish I had the exact data. I'm going to guess it's somewhat high, but I wouldn't say it's 50%. I would say it's at least 25%. Maybe it's more, I feel comfortable saying that. What and why? Like why? Well, it's because we skipped all kinds of steps. All the things that I talked about, all of these steps were skipped. And there's a level of diligence that maybe the candidate didn't do and maybe, you know, the company didn't do. In a situation where both parties did do a tremendous amount of diligence and had a really tight process, I had found that either there was something we overlooked from a cultural mismatch or back to the expectations, I feel like the founder was sort of forced into hiring this person, whether it was a head of sales or, oh, you're going to run everything, go to market.

45:21But what I feel like is when a founder hasn't really done the work around where they begin and end and where this person coming in is going to be empowered to do their job. And maybe they would just push, maybe their board told them that they have to hire this person, whatever it was and they ran the really tight process and everybody did all the right things but then they got in and they maybe that the role that you hired them for you really wanted them to just do this and that's not what this person signed up for so unfortunately where that seems like maybe a bad hire that's like such a huge disconnect I mean I have seen it happen where the founder hasn't really emotionally done the work and it's not because they're a bad person They just thought they were doing the right thing.

46:04They just hadn't done that emotional work around like, I am hiring this person. I am going to empower them. And I do want them to do all these things. And then maybe on the opposite side of that, the candidate felt like they couldn't do their job without the founder. It wasn't willing to let things go, but no one's to blame here. It's just, it's unfortunate when that happens because it sets you back six months at a minimum when, when it doesn't work out. and it goes back to like the expectations not being realistic and it could be the founder's expectation could be the candidate's expectation yeah try to avoid those at all costs they are costly although you know as people generally say it's better to get ahead of these things and realize when someone is in a fit sooner rather than later right yeah and I feel like actually to your question if someone is like shopping but not buying like I'll know it when I see it or you've met 20 candidates and you still don't need a hire i mean that's like those are there's flags with that as well and where you finally make a hire out of fatigue or desperation and then it doesn't work out or you know like you want to avoid those things too um you don't want to be in a place where you're just shopping and not fine because then that means there probably isn't a level of pain that you have i know it when i see it well i mean then you're just sitting back from a remote control standpoint maybe there isn't enough things that are happening in the club things meaning things that need to be fixed or built or rebuilt.

47:29If you don't have that level of pain, then you never make a hire or you might make the wrong hire. I want to shift gears ever so slightly and just touch briefly on all things systems, right? They're more important than ever when we think about company building and especially as we see the proliferation of AI across all aspects of how we grow companies and the fact that as a result, people are looking to save costs and often have smaller businesses. How can you describe like the go-to-market systems you'd recommend for building out your internal growth engine? So talking team members, automation contracts, et cetera.

48:06And then how does that scale? So what does that look like from the kind of zero to 1 million mark? And then how is that evolving for the 1 to 10 million? On the zero to one, I think, you know, the founder is leading sales. I do think that you You probably need to hire a couple of reps and sell and get customers. And then in the system around what are the customers saying and feeding that back into the product and edge or just everyone because the company is not that big yet. So from a system perspective, we need a couple of sellers. The founder needs to continue to sell. And I just think that so obviously from a go-to-market standpoint, it's so important to understand how the customers are using the product and why are they using it and getting very clear on your ICP.

48:48and the value that the product is giving to customers, the more you can expose there. And I think then there's more opportunity to like, okay, I see this level of excitement in founders that like they would want to, now they want to invest more and go to market. Okay, so if we're going to invest and go to market, then we're thinking about pre-sales. We're thinking about, depending on the product, right? If it's a technical product, then you need to invest in maybe solution architects. We think about post-sales a little bit later in the process. And sometimes I'm seeing SEs do post-sales work, but let's say now we're at that, like further along in the revenue cycle and that we're going to hire a head of.

49:30I would say you have to think about building. We want to make this repeatable and scalable. And so obviously do we have the right tools for our people to use and measure? How are we forecasting? Is it good enough for the board? We started thinking about recording and metrics more at this stage where it becomes so important at all levels to identify where the gaps are. I do think earlier on, if you have a biz ops rep, biz ops person, that person is like jack of all traits, master of none, but really analytical and helping you run the rhythm of the business. Like there's a cadence and it's probably somewhat chaotic.

50:11And so the more of a cadence that you can bring into the business through some of these other hires that are tied to go to market versus the product side, it feels like you want to make sure that you're bending the arc in a way that it is efficient and it's not too costly to the business. So I think we overhired, right? We were throwing bodies at the things at all costs. And I just think, I think we're back to the basics right now. So in getting to profitability or just not having a high burn and being really thoughtful with like, whether it's hiring or the infrastructure, or there's also, I'm seeing companies pull in advisors, but we want to be careful with that and not have 10 advisors for 10 different things.

50:56That's costly as well. but I think that at some point you might need someone focused on growth and that's a very specific thing. I love this view that early on it's slightly more art and voice of the customer is so important to the whole organization and then later in the journey it's more science and you need to have forecasting dialed and all those systems. I think that's a great description of brawl, walk, run for a company. You've been very generous with your time. One last question before So we've been talking a lot about founders and company building, but you, while are in the service of founders, you also help a lot of go-to-market leaders figure out their next step in their career.

51:36So what should a go-to-market candidate be thinking about as they look for their next role? Yes. Well, I say be picky. Be picky. They probably worked in hopefully with other startups and other founders. And I think they need to be self-aware around what cultures they thrived in the most and to remember the qualities in not just the founder, but just the culture that the company that they were at prior, wherever they had the most success, like try to just find those similar attributes. My best advice is also like, I get a lot of questions around de-risking the opportunities and everybody sort of associates de-risking with a letter or a number.

52:16And honestly, it goes back to what I said earlier about, do they have enough capital in the bank for the next couple of years to afford you and your salary and the team that you're going to hire? Even if it's a small team, I'm just saying, you're not feeling this massive empire at an early stage, but like that is the only way to de-risk. So I think with sales leaders, they want to know that you have product market fit. There's ways of figuring that out. And I just, I think that's important, but I feel like sales leaders also help companies figure out product market fit. What else would they be looking for?

52:45Is there someone else at the table like you? And what I mean by that, is there any other leader in the company that has some experience that is going to help you grow the company? And I mean, that's not very fair to say to an early stage Series A company that might have two founders that have no operating experience or limited operating experience that everybody else is an engineer. Of course, you're not going to have a peer immediately marketing, but maybe there is a head of engineering. I do think like that's a prerogative, but I've seen that be a priority for some go-to-market leaders. And the other advice is like, remember we're doing this for equity and I know compensation is important, but understanding maybe what is your minimum compensation threshold so that going into this process and losing the candidate to compensation, in my opinion, is silly.

53:39And it's both sides that are at fault when that happens. And it's because like a, again, unrealistic expectation. So I actually advise a lot of go to market people. And this is the comp at this stage. This is the comp at that stage. And like, you should have an upside around your variable, but you'd be surprised like how some people thought it was like drastically lower. They didn't realize that it was actually something that they could afford to live off of and their family could, you know, so there's just a lot of misconceptions around comp. And I think that's important to make sure you feel like the risk is worth it.

54:13and you're not going to have to reach into your savings to pay your electricity bill. It shouldn't be that way, right? And yeah, we talked about culture and all those things are important. Ultimately, it is doing that level of diligence to make sure you're set up for success too. And I've seen in this market candidates going much, much deeper than prior, where they joined a company for the wrong reasons, because it was a unicorn or someone famous was working there. And I think the reasons why we joined a company is that you got to make sure that it really aligns with your motivations and objectives and that you're going to be set up for success.

54:56That's great advice. And this has been a wealth of good advice for go-to-market leaders, for founders, for everyone in the ecosystem. So thanks so much for sharing all this. Thank you, guys. Good questions. I appreciate it. And I hope to see you again. Thank you, Gia. Thanks, Gia.