Why The Best Salespeople Stop Jumping (And It's Not the Money) with Sam Costello

0:10Welcome to Revenue Builders, hosted by John Kaplan and John McMahon. This podcast is brought to you by Force Management. Today, we have a segment from our episode with Sam Costello, CRO at Harness. Sam has scaled the platform from sub 1 million to 100 million ARR by ruthlessly recruiting elite talent, running a champion-first sales process, and building a culture of radical candor, all with his co-leader, Carlos. In this clip, Sam breaks down what actually keeps elite salespeople long-term when everyone else is chasing OTE. Let's dive in. I probably interview 400 people a year right now, so I've honed it a lot over the last couple years.

0:50I would say I was not a great interviewer a few years ago. what did you change what did you change it's separating the story from the facts yeah that's that's the biggest thing and then learning a pattern of right asking the right questions at the right time in the interview to to get what you're trying to suss out and then one that's a little bit uncomfortable but i've had to get better at is interrupting people i prepare them for it now because time's constrained and i need to figure out what i need to know to make a decision and so i i will like oftentimes you're they're in the middle of their story that's they've they practiced it they're trying to win a job right they know what they want to say and so kind of breaking the flow and getting in the questions you need to get in to make a decision that's super important but i think a lot of people are just sitting there listening and trying to parse through the kernels to see if they got what they wanted versus like kind of directing the dialogue and owning that discussion to make sure they're bottoming it out really qualifying is what you exactly exactly and what about the war on talent because you're in this tech stack and the war on talent.

1:50Johnny and I were just talking earlier today about certain companies that are sucking the life out of the industry with all their resources. And they're sucking the talent out. They're offering huge amounts of money with this war on talent. How is interviewing changing for you as it relates to how much you're qualifying an individual and how much you're actually developing a value proposition to draw them into your company? Has anything changed? What's the situation today? It's a great, I mean, I would not say on that front, nothing's changed. We're always selling until they're buying. Once they're buying, we qualify them.

2:24So we're in sell mode until we have a candidate that's leaning into what we're doing. And then we want to qualify that we're getting what we want out of it. What has happened today though? Yeah, it is a talent war. Like we had one a few years ago during ZERP when every VC was flush with cash and wanted to expand their sales team. This is different because it's OTEs and guaranteed compensation and things that we haven't seen in the industry before. and based on companies with crazy product market fit out of the gate with up to the right revenue curve. So that's an interesting situation we find ourselves in.

2:56I think that's when it's really important to have built something that gives them more than just money. I'm big on, if you're in sales and you're good at your job, you'll always make money. So is that the number one determining factor for how you're going to pick your career path going forward? For me, it's not. I'm motivated by things that are outside of money, although I do like to make it and I don't have enough of it yet. But the things that really drive me are, could I build a durable company? Something that's really exciting to me. Could I build something that would stand the test of time and that someday when we put our bag away, people would talk about the thing we built and they would do it with the way people talk about you guys.

3:39Could they do it with a measure of respect? like, wow, that was incredible. They accomplished that business is exceptional. Could we build an exceptional team and develop them so that in our industry, we'd be known for having the most elite go-to-market team? Like that's something I aspire to try to accomplish. And people that are motivated by those kinds of things, they want money, but they want to do something great. Could we build a leadership tree? Could we take people and develop them over time to be exceptional leaders that are well-qualified to go run their own company someday and build their own go-to-market teams?

4:07And would they be able to do that in their shop? And would they value that? in a way that would make them want to dedicate themselves to the career here. Small things like I talked about radical candor earlier, but that's a big deal. Like there's not many companies that talk openly with each other about what's going well and what's not going well and give each other honest feedback. You're doing great here, John. I really value what you're doing there. Or, hey, I see a gap. I think we need to close it. Here's how I think we need to close it. Are you up for doing it together? And doing that consistently.

4:35And like that's, so we're trying to build an ecosystem where the most elite people in the world are attracted to that because they can make money and, and, and. They get a bunch of things with it. At the next QBR, for people that are listening, I would prepare yourself if you're leading a team to be prepared to talk about why you're here. because what I would do is I'd just, I'd start to get, I'd tell people in the beginning, I'd get one person up and I would say, why are you here? And the first person's going to do it and they're going to stumble on their story a little bit, but they're going to find their way.

5:18And then you tell the next person. And by the time the QBR is over, you have people understanding that if I'm not excited to be here, why would anybody else be? And in this war on talent right now, if you don't have your value proposition down and you can't honestly say, like, why are you here? Like, what's so exciting about this place? You're not going to compete with the, because left to its own devices, where are you going to go? You're going to go to OTE. You're going to go to equity opportunity if there's no other comparatives. so I just highly highly recommend that I love that I mean you're right you you nailed that I should have had that in my answer but like knowing their why is like what motivates them and what are they trying to accomplish is super important to keeping not only attracting people to your business but keeping them in the business you know one of the things that I'm really passionate about is like can we can we can we stop moving people every two years across companies and can we actually stay somewhere and build something like building things is very hard it's very difficult to build a company and you know you're moving around every two years or so as a seller like what are you really accomplishing uh or what are they really learning to your point like because the money will come and go but the skill set and the knowledge that you gain over time that's going to propel you the highest yeah in in any organization but if you're just making money but you're skipping jobs every 18 months at 24 months, you're probably not going anywhere.

6:52You know, how funny is it that we're having this conversation? When we were growing up, they were, you know, if you moved around a lot, you were some type of an enigma. And then it went to if you stayed someplace too long, you were an enigma. And now we're back to if you, you know, if you move around a lot, you're an enigma. And I think that if you're offering the opportunity, what do I get to stay? Like, what do I get to be a part of this? Because I can go make money anywhere. That's it. And it's the company's responsibility. Yes. You know, I remember, Johnny, when you stood up at Blade Logic and you sat there and you talked about, you know, Johnny did an incredible job.

7:42He said, if I'm going to paraphrase it, but the purpose of their organization was to be the most dominating and feared sales organization in enterprise sales. Do you remember that, Johnny? Yeah, sure. That's every meeting I would lead with that. I put that slide up first. Okay, now we can go. Everybody that was in that room remembers that day and says, like when John McMahon got up and said that we are building the most elite enterprise software company on the planet. And they did. and so somebody coming and offering somebody$20 ,000 more of an OTE versus I was on the BladeLogic track that went to BMC that went to MongoDB or to AppDynamic or I mean that is what you're selling it is and it's it's special when you get the ingredients right like the thing that I've learned and you guys know this very well is like for every great company there's a trail of carcasses of ones that didn't make it.

8:45And the ingredients of great companies is actually pretty hard to find. And so when you get inside of a company where you've got a great founder, you've got a big market you're selling into, you've got differentiated technology, you've got a sales team that you're inspired by or leadership that you're inspired by, that ain't nothing. And that's hard to replicate. And so I feel excited to put my head down and build inside of a company like that, because I just think the ingredients to do it somewhere else are not that easy to find. And if you get it wrong, man, you waste two, three years of your life doing something you're bummed out about.

9:23Sam Costello: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate, and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.