In this functional episode, Jorge Chavez, President of Topaz Sales Consulting, shares how stage 3 founders can successfully hire and scale their first salespeople. If you struggle with inconsistent sales, bad hires, or feeling like no one sells the way you do, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- How to use a specialized sales hiring process that screens for real sales competencies

- What to do after hiring so you inspect what you expect instead of fully handing off

- Why hiring salespeople the same way as everyone else leads to expensive mistakes

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 3 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Jorge Chavez is the President and Co-Founder of Topaz Sales Consulting in Austin, Texas. With over 30 years of sales expertise, he developed the Buyer Facilitator Philosophy and Process, empowering CEOs, founders, and sales leaders to build teams that deliver revenue through trust, clarity, and mutual fit. Through targeted sales training, executive coaching, and proven hiring systems, Jorge and his team enable organizations to scale effective sales cultures. He is also a keynote speaker and mentor committed to transforming how companies approach sales and leadership.

Want to learn more about Jorge Chavez's work at Topaz Sales Consulting? Check out his website at https://www.topazsalesconsulting.com/

Connect with Jorge through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrchavez/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello, and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a

founder. I'm your host, Scott Rettheimer, and today we're

tackling one of the most expensive mistakes that

relatively new founders make on the way up, and that is hiring

salespeople the same way you hire everyone else, especially

those who are in the reluctant manager stage and are the sales

team themselves and are looking desperately for help to shoulder

the burden, and you don't want to hear me talk about this,

because I'll probably just jump on a soapbox for 30 minutes. So,

instead, we have with us today Jorge Chavez, who is the

president and co-founder of Topaz Sales Consulting in

Austin, Texas. With over 30 years of sales expertise, he

developed the buyer facilitator philosophy and process,

empowering CEOs, founders, and sales leaders to build teams

that deliver revenue through trust, clarity, and mutual fit,

through targeted sales training, executive coaching, and proven

hiring systems. Jorge and his team enables organizations to

scale effective sales cultures. He's also a keynote speaker and

mentor committed to transforming how companies approach sales and

leadership. He's here with us today. Jorge, welcome to the

show. Very excited to have you on. We were chatting for a

couple of minutes here ahead of time, and I was telling you

literally how excited I'm to be able to cover this topic this

way, because our reluctant managers, those folks in stage

three, have heard us talk about this transition to sales before,

but we've never really talked about arguably the biggest

problem of them all in this stage, which is hiring those

salespeople. How do you pick winners? How do you find the

right ones, and then what do you do with them once you've got

them? So, let's start there. How do you hire salespeople, and is

it different from the way you'll hire the rest of your team at

this stage?

Yes, 100% different. And how do you do it?

That's a great question. It's so why would the way we hire

salespeople be different than the way we hire everybody else?

Any one of us who have hired a salesperson before, or as we

think about salespeople, they're really good at telling us what

we want to hear, and their best sales job is selling an

unsuspecting, ill-equipped owner on that they can sell, but then

we hire them, and then we find out they can't sell. So that's

it's a big challenge, and the reason that they're different is

because a lot of folks don't know how to interview sales

people, because sales people, so there's the here's really the

magic question, or the magic answer, if you will. I have to

get to this right away, which is this: people oftentimes it's not

a, it's not that they're hiring bad people. They don't know what

to fix. A lot of people, when they hire salespeople, they'll

either use a recruiter and say, "Oh, they hire salespeople, and

then they trust the recruiter screening process, or they hire

internally using the same hiring process they use for everybody

else, and it doesn't lead to the right results. The issue is that

they have a hiring process problem, and so the way we want

to hire salespeople, you want to use a different process.

Traditional or normal methods of hiring don't really screen for

sales competencies, and so, for instance, a lot of people, when

they interview somebody, they may start talking to them and

both contributing to the interview conversation, and

because now I'll put myself in the shoes of the owner who's

doing the selling and needs a salesperson. We're in a lot of

pain, and so we start telling them about what we're looking

for and what we need, and then we start painting a vision of

how great the opportunity is here, and how if they really

work hard, all the upside, and how much money they're going to

make, and here's what's happening. We're telling, and

we're giving them all of the things we want them to do, and

we're not learning anything about them. What we need to do

as owners, as we're looking for those sales people, is get our

questions answered before answering their questions, and

we actually, and this is very counterintuitive and difficult

for many people, we have to treat the whole process like a

cold call, so that we can screen for sales competencies. So, what

does that look like, Scott? If I called your office, who would

answer. Answer the phone,

it would be me.

Okay, if you had an EA and I called your office,

who would answer your phone?

My EA,

Exactly. That's fair. And maybe a lot of us

don't have EAs, but let's say someone else answers the phone.

But to highlight the importance of what does that mean, hiring,

and treat it like a cold call. So, if I called you, Scott, and

you had an EA, and she answered the phone, and I'd say, 'Yes, is

Scott there? And she'd be like, 'Can I ask who this is? And then

I'd give her my name, and she'd say, 'Can I ask what this is

regarding? And I'd say, 'Well, I'd given a thing, is he

expecting your call? And she's cool, or he's cool, whoever your

EA is they're cool, they're curious, and they're trying to

see if this person is a good use of their time. Well, that's how

we want our interviews to be. We want to force them to bond and

rapport with us, we want to force them to ask us questions,

we want to force them to have pressure and resistance

immediately to see how they deal with it. That's a good

interview. That's what I mean by the sales hiring process has to

be a unique, more uniquely tailored to uncover sales

competencies, and a lot of people don't even realize they

have a sales hiring process issue, so they're not screening

correctly, and they're not learning the things they need in

order to make the right hire.

Yeah, there's so much to unpack in there,

because so many founders would be like, "I don't even know what

sales competencies are, I just pick up the phone and hope that

they close, you know? Yeah, I want to, I want to address

another challenge that I think comes into the sales hiring,

especially at this stage, and, and it is very different than

how you hire other folks, and that is when to hire, right?

When can you afford to hire a sales rep? Because if you're

looking at when can I afford to hire an admin assistant, or you

know, hire somebody for production, it's kind of like

when you have the cash flow to do it, or you already have the

work to do it, but hiring in another sales rep brings in that

work, and so how do you help folks figure out the timing on

this hiring decision?

That's a great question. The it really comes

down to if so, as an owner, and I'm looking to decide, should I

hire another salesperson. Owners have to decide, well, what is

the greatest use of their skills? They should do what they

do best, enjoy most, that brings the greatest value to their

company. If they just want to be a salesperson, then they

shouldn't necessarily be a business owner, they should sell

and maybe hire a business owner, you know, or a CEO, or a

president, or something like that, because that's their

greatest passion, and that's really what they want to do.

They don't really want to hire or manage a salesperson or have

a sales team, because that's a whole different set of skills,

but if you start, if as an owner, when you start realizing

I don't have enough time to do other very important things in

my business, I need to delegate some of my work. Well, what is

the work that you can delegate? Maybe hiring a salesperson is

the last you can, you delegate. So, we have a lot of clients

that are these people we're talking about right now, and

it's the complete gamut. Some have no sales background, but

they need sales, and others have a sales background, and they

love it, and they don't want to let it go. So, they figure out

and hire every other position they can, eas technical people,

proposal writers, all these other roles, because they really

like selling, they get to 10 plus million, and they're the

sales engine, and they're running the company, but when

they just, they start realizing, like, I need help supporting all

these clients, and then they start to see an opportunity to

mentor someone along, they hire somebody they can teach, and

they can start delegating some of the work as they build up

skills, so maybe over time they can take stuff off their plate.

So I think a great time is when you can't get all the other work

that's essential to running your business done, and you have to

start delegating and hiring somebody if you want to run a

business. Then you just decide which one do you enjoy least, or

you bring no incremental value, replace those things first, and

at some point it's going to be a salesperson.

Yes, yes. Let me tell you what I think is a

mistake, and correct me if I'm wrong, because you know a lot

more about this than I do, but one of the things that I think

is a mistake that that a number of sales reps that are on the

side of that spectrum of saying, hey, I'd like to get out of

sales. The founders who say, I want to get out of sales. I'm

not a salesperson. I have dreams about this. I want to invent

that. I want to do the actual work, whatever it might be. And

they hire somebody, and immediately they say, like, here

you go sell, and it's like, here's the leads, here's the,

you know, everyone, here's all of it, sell. Because you're a

salesperson, I'm not. Is that a mistake? And if so, what's a

better way?

It's a huge mistake. A lot of times people,

and we're talking, you and I right now, about like, let's say

we're hiring that first one and we want to hand off the keys.

I've seen this play out also, and sometimes we don't get

involved until after this mistake is made, and then if we

are involved, we can try to prevent it. A lot of times,

people will hire a sales manager, they get a few sales

people, but they don't want to manage. That's the coaching, the

motivating, the training, the holding people accountable,

pipeline management. They don't want to do any of that kind of

stuff, so they hire a title, a VP. Oh, you've been a VP, you

must, and ran a sales team, you must be good. So, there's very

little screening. They hire someone with a title, they pay

them a lot of money, and then they want to hand it off. Huge

mistake. You have to inspect what you expect. So, once you

make that hire, you have to make sure they're executing all the

things that you need done and done to the expectation of that,

what the business needs, you can't let it go. You got to

inspect what you expect. So that means that you're having

meetings with them, you're reviewing their, their

pipelines, their activities, their results, and you're

digging into and making sure that business and sales are

happening, cash flow is happening, clients are

satisfied. You can't let that go, that would be a huge

mistake.

Yeah, it's so interesting because it's so like

other areas of the business, but so different at the same time,

and it's easy to think of managing sales as just managing

another aspect of operations, or administration, or development,

or whatever it might be, but it is such a distinct part of the

business, and really does require a different skill set.

They do well, sales, you know, in some

respects it's different. Sales people tend to think

differently, but I would actually say we have some really

great sales professionals that aren't sales-minded, like sales,

like what we think about sales people. Let me give an example.

There's a gentleman I know who is a project manager and got

promoted his way up to a branch manager, so he had operations

initially and then got into overseeing operations and sales,

and was ran the P and L. Well, they had to go through sales

training and sales leadership training in their role, and they

ended up being really effective at sales and closing a lot of

sales, and they got to this place where they said, I don't

know what all you, I don't see what's so hard about sales. I

don't see what the problem is. All you got to do is follow the

process, and so let me share what I mean by that. There's a

lot of questions that we have to ask in sales, so the skills that

you want to look for are listening skills, infinite

curiosity, questioning skills, being present, caring about

people, being trustworthy, having humility, being

coachable. Those are hard to find in a hiring process, but

the hiring process has to allow you to learn how to look for

those. So, so you look for those. Some of the tough

questions are, you know, hey, do you have a budget? People are

afraid to ask questions because they want to get a yes, and

they're afraid if I ask how much money they have, they might give

me an answer that might lead me to no, I don't have enough

money, and now I'm going to lose a sale. Well, so a lot of

questions don't get asked because sales people are wired,

I got to make money, I got to go sell stuff, they read all those

sales books that I, by the way, you said that this has to be for

no, no worse than a five year old, like five years, so I won't

even tell you how I feel about most of those sales books. Is

toxic appropriate? Okay, that's what they are. They just poison

the mind of sales people, and they don't help, they get them

to operate from a place they're outcome-based, they're not about

building trust, they're not about building relationship,

they're not truth seekers, they just want what they want, and

and so sales people tend to struggle to ask some hard

questions, they're hard because they're trying to get a yes, but

if you don't have all that garbage in your head, which, by

the way, our training, we get rid of that garbage, and then

put good. We just clean out your mind and have open, honest

conversations with people. Then sales isn't so hard, and just

follow the process. You don't, you're not afraid to ask those

questions, because they make sense, and you want to know, and

you don't want to waste your time. So, you don't have to be

so great and be all salesy. You just have to be coachable, have

a passion to help people learn a process and execute it

consistently, and you can do wonderful things.

Yeah, that's excellent. That's so, so very

good. Jorge, there's a question that I have for you, and I think

you've alluded to it a little bit earlier, but the question

that I want to ask is this: What. Is the biggest secret you

wish wasn't a secret at all? What's that one thing you wish

every founder watching or listening today knew?

I would love people to know, and I kind of

gave a little bit of this early, and I said I was going to jump

ahead. It's the fact that the problem they're having is they

have a sales hiring process problem. If I were going to hire

somebody, and I've never hired a salesperson before I would get

equipped on help on what are the sales competencies that I need

to look for, and I'd equip myself on a process on how to

find them, and that's absent that you're gonna fly blind, and

if you can afford the long learning curve to figure it out,

to hire the fire. If you have runway, it's expensive. Then I

wish everybody knew they have a hiring process problem, and they

should get skilled up and learn, get a process and learn what

they don't know they don't know before making that next hire.

And I would encourage people. Here's let me add a second part

to it. Don't wait till you run out of time and you run out of

money. Be proactive while you still have time and you still

have money. The ounce of prevention of equipping yourself

will save you a fortune on the back end, because that money,

there's no budget for the bad hire, the cost of a bada hire.

So true, so true, so true. Jorge, this has

been amazing. I know there's some folks who'd love to hear

more. They want to connect with you and find out more about the

work you all do. Where can they connect with you? Where can they

reach out to find out more?

Yeah, truly, our website is got a lot of great

information, hiring resources, videos on on many of the things

that we, they're just good tips and techniques, and even

prospecting guides. Just go to our website, it's a Topaz Sales

consulting.com and from there, if you want to have a

conversation, just go on our contact form, and fill it out,

and we'll reach out to you within 24 hours, and set up time

to talk and learn.

Excellent, that's excellent. Excellent,

Jorge. Thank you so much for being on the show. It really was

a privilege and honor. I loved this conversation. I love the

way that you approach hiring sales folks, and it is

different. We have to approach it differently, and I think

you've helped a lot of folks today, so thanks so much for

being here. For those of you watching and listening, you know

your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as

much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait

to see you next time. Take care.