Shownotes
After hiring hundreds of people across 20 years—from reversing a decade-long sales decline at the US Chamber of Commerce to leading executive turnarounds—here's the uncomfortable truth nobody admits: hiring isn't just science, it's feeling. Sure, use scorecards and screening processes to get to your final candidates, but when you're looking at five people who all score between 80-85, what separates the good from the absolute killers? This episode shares the real stories: the purple-haired sales guy HR said not to hire who became the top performer, the economics grad hired without a role who helped Moneyball a 45-year-old company, and the bar conversation that led to a hire so good it changed where the host lives today. Learn why gut decisions produce outliers and how to strengthen your hiring intuition.
//
Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
//
Follow Ray on:
Transcripts
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;19;28
Speaker 1
I've hired hundreds of people in my career, and most of the literature that I read or that I see is tells me that hiring like recruiting and hiring, is a science, and I disagree. I think, well, I think it's like it's half right, maybe half right. And, you know, just for context, I've, I've built teams for 20 years.
00;00;19;28 - 00;00;49;14
Speaker 1
I've built the sales team at the US Chamber of Commerce. We reversed a ten year decline of small business, membership and sales. And we we built a team that crushed it for not only bent the curve, like, changed the trajectory on declining membership for, for a decade, but then went on to hit our number for a decade, ten years in a row, through every candle of political fundraising, like through all the economic cycles, all the, you know, political cycles, like we just continued to crush it with increase in goals.
00;00;49;18 - 00;01;07;05
Speaker 1
I let a, an executive team, and I had actually essentially fire the entire executive team when I came in for, for this piggyback company. And it was a disaster. It was you know, cronyism. There was, you know, working with competitors, like, it was just it was just a complete should show and basically fired the entire team.
00;01;07;05 - 00;01;27;25
Speaker 1
I think we did a replacing 30 at a 35 people in, in the Home Office in the first year. And that business went on. We led the highest month of revenue in the company's 45 year history. Like after that, after that rebuild. And then, you know, I built a sales team that turned around a sales division. We went from 598,000 a month to a million a month.
00;01;27;25 - 00;01;44;17
Speaker 1
We did that in like 90 days. I share that just for for context, like I've done a lot of hiring, I've done a lot of research on hiring. And I believe there is a science to to screening candidates like to getting down to your final, you know, five candidates, ten candidates, something like that. I think there is a science for that.
00;01;44;17 - 00;02;07;06
Speaker 1
Like we internally we use something called like a vision for the position. It's a you know, it's in some ways it's a it's a job description. Like it kind of, you know, highlights like the traditional stuff that you see in a job description. Outlines like what the, the key responsibilities are and like very tactically. Right, like on a, on a week to day to day basis, week to week basis outlines like what are the success outcomes?
00;02;07;06 - 00;02;27;09
Speaker 1
What does success look like in the role. Not just like what are you doing each day, but what's the what's the result? What does success look like? Clarify the experience that we're looking for. We we look at the, you know, the characteristics beyond experience. Like if you're hiring somebody for a remote role, yeah, they have to have the experience for the job, but they also have to have some other characteristics.
00;02;27;09 - 00;02;46;00
Speaker 1
They've got to be far more proactive. Ability to work autonomously and, you know, without as much supervision. And you like so you want a screen for that. To that extent there is a science. And sitting down and saying, this is what we need. This is what we're looking for. This is what success looks like. This is what somebody needs to have to get going.
00;02;46;00 - 00;03;04;13
Speaker 1
But then you're going to get down to your final candidate. So you're you're going to run these second interviews. You're going to be like, Like they're they're pretty good. And you know, if you build some scorecards to go along that with that screening process is talking about, you'll be able to look at it, you'll go, okay, like there's some some people have a higher score and we have a lower score.
00;03;04;16 - 00;03;24;02
Speaker 1
But when you're looking at five candidates that have, you know, say they all sit between, you know, 80 and an 85 on your scorecard and you look at and you go, okay, do I pick the one that's 85 instead of the one that's 81? And I think, like once you get down to that point, like it is, people won't say this out loud, but it's based on feeling.
00;03;24;05 - 00;03;41;12
Speaker 1
Right? Like there's an emotional aspect to hiring. There's a gut aspect to hiring people. I want to tell you that and see, I feel it's odd for somebody I have autism and somebody it's odd for somebody with autism to say like, hey, this is this is a feelings based decision at this point in the game. But I really believe that it is.
00;03;41;17 - 00;03;59;22
Speaker 1
And my so if I, if I look back on 20 years of hiring my best hires to a team, all of the outliers, all of the people that absolutely fucking crushed it, and I would say, like the top quartile of people that I've hired were all gut decisions. You know, I had a sales guy when we were at the chamber.
00;03;59;22 - 00;04;19;25
Speaker 1
He came from, you know, a local chamber, and he came in, he had purple hair. You know, my boss at the time was like, yeah, that's not happening. I mean, like, rewind the clock, like, this is this is far more progressive than, than usual. And in a very traditional organization and comes out with purple hair. We go through the process and he's like, by the way, you're not going to be able to to get references on me.
00;04;19;25 - 00;04;34;03
Speaker 1
And I said, okay. He said, this is like, this is what happened at the last organization. This is what happens a lot. And before that, like, I'm just telling you, if you call them, they're, they're gonna they're not going to say nice things. This is what it is. So I get to the point. I'm like, I like this guy.
00;04;34;05 - 00;04;52;03
Speaker 1
Like my gut says. I mean, he hit all of the check boxes, but I, like my gut, said, this is my dude. Like, I like this guy. H.R. says, like they said, hey, we can't verify references. We're not moving forward. We have a process here that says we can't move forward. They said, no, we strongly recommend that you you don't move forward.
00;04;52;03 - 00;05;15;09
Speaker 1
And it's a wait. So you recommend that I don't move forward like you're not. You're not saying that I can't. No, we're not saying you can't. But this and it's not a good idea. Like if we can't do this, I hired him. He ended up leading the chamber in, new business, sales. Within a few years, one of our most consistent performers built out a new cloud member acquisition channel for us.
00;05;15;09 - 00;05;38;28
Speaker 1
I ended up where I left the chamber. He ended up coming with me, to my to my next role. The CEO role. He was a killer. He was badass. And it was. It was my gut. There was, another person that got introduced to me named Greg, and, you know, from from business school, and like, I, one of my business school buddies and investor p guy, said, hey, I got this this guy, he went to our he went to our school.
00;05;38;28 - 00;05;55;18
Speaker 1
I don't know if you've got a role for him, this and that. And I said, okay, like I said, look, there's resumé. He's got like a background in economics, you know, incredibly young, not a ton of like real world experience. And so we are like, yeah, I'll go, I'll meet him for lunch or something. So I went and I met him for lunch and I left that lunch.
00;05;55;18 - 00;06;14;01
Speaker 1
And he was he was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He was incredibly well-spoken. He was so humble. He was just he was kind. He was like. And I like, I left that lunch and I was like, I don't have a job for you, but I'm. I'm going to hire you. Like, I don't even know what I'm going to do with an economics degree or somebody.
00;06;14;07 - 00;06;38;04
Speaker 1
Your level of, of IQ and, but also the EQ, like the ability to communicate. It was just so rare to me. And my gut said, get him on. Your team ended up hiring him and I, we, we basically we Moneyball balled a 45 year old company. Like we went into something that was, you know, using, you know, paper invoices and post post-it notes, which if I, if I was if this was a YouTube video, I'd show you them the CRM.
00;06;38;04 - 00;06;57;02
Speaker 1
I took pictures of this post-it notes were basically their CRM, and if they had anything that was tech base for CRM, they were using, Microsoft Access like they've been using it for for decades. And it was it was a pile of garbage. Anyway, we installed Salesforce, we put analytics in place, we got forecasts in place, we got iPads into the sales team's hands.
00;06;57;02 - 00;07;22;22
Speaker 1
We knew, like we could we just start to track real activity. We had real production numbers. Like we took the company forward decades within within several months. It was because I sat down and met the dude and I'm like, you can help me. And I didn't know how, but I knew that I belong on the team. I had a blast was the last one, but I, I hired one of my top salespeople who I've taken to three places now because he's just he's just a killer is badass.
00;07;22;22 - 00;07;42;03
Speaker 1
I heard him in a bar, you know, like we were. We were sitting down. We were bullshitting. We had conversation, and we got to talking. He had done sales, started screening, and I was like, do I think you could do this? And sent him an email. The next day we we brought him in, hired, you know, H.R. was like, and where did you get this guy again?
00;07;42;03 - 00;08;02;21
Speaker 1
Like, do you even have a job posting now? I don't, and where did you get we get are we. We met through some mutual acquaintances in places, you know, and I was like. And he again, he he killed it. In fact, that hire was the reason. Like my we live in Cabo today, you know, like we hired him.
00;08;02;24 - 00;08;22;07
Speaker 1
He was he was so good at his job. Like, at one point he was like, hey, I'm, I'm moving to Baja. And I said, oh, okay. And he was, you know, running a national sales team for me. He was doing and, he was he had the national sales team, and then he had, you know, another sales team that was building, like a new division for me.
00;08;22;14 - 00;08;42;03
Speaker 1
Technically, it was at home, and I was like, okay, like, maybe, you know, this is a seven years ago, I don't know, and so. Okay, like, maybe let's just not tell everyone like that you're on a beach like that because it's time. It seemed abstract to me. And I'm like, but go like, cool. Go. And we ended up coming down to, to do a meeting, and we became friends.
00;08;42;03 - 00;09;02;01
Speaker 1
And, I visited him in Baja and my wife and I said, yeah, we're going to do this. So that hire actually changed the trajectory of even our personal life. But the the point is, these are gut decisions, and these are like the people that absolutely killed it. And I think that this is especially true if you have any kind of like deliberate culture.
00;09;02;05 - 00;09;20;21
Speaker 1
Right? Like we're all every organization I've walked into, whether it's the 45 year old company I'm talking about, we have I put in place, principles document, three page principles, doctorate that outlined who we are, how we operate, what we're looking for, how we're going to work together as a team. At the chamber, I installed core values, and we lived by them like we hired by them.
00;09;20;21 - 00;09;44;02
Speaker 1
We fired by them. It did not matter how how good you were. Like we in terms of numbers, like you had to adhere to the to the core values when you had. And in my own business, we have something called the 3D. It's the direction DNA drumbeat that outlines much the same stuff. What I do in the hiring process is I'll share these documents, I'll share these things that we've got, and the person that comes in that says, hey, I read that.
00;09;44;05 - 00;09;57;29
Speaker 1
That's badass. I want to be part of that. Like, I love the values. Like I really related to this and this and this, and you know, I the principles reached out to me because of this. And I don't like I don't I'm not going to ask them like, hey, tell me like I mean I might as part of the process.
00;09;57;29 - 00;10;17;07
Speaker 1
But the person that says do I saw the 3D, I think that is so incredible. Like the part about batteries included like that, they tell you like themselves, they are the right person. And so again, at that point, it's a feelings based thing. There's intuition that's involved. And our job is to listen to it. Our job is yes, of course.
00;10;17;07 - 00;10;33;23
Speaker 1
Put the filters in place, put the screens place, put the scorecards in place. Like put the things that you need in place to get down to your final, you know, ten candidates or whatever. But when you get to that point and you're trying to decide between a handful of people and they've all got a similar scorecard, they all meet the the required experience.
00;10;33;23 - 00;10;54;07
Speaker 1
What else are you going to use? And it's it is your intuition. And the cool part is that that gut feeling, that intuition, the more you use it, the stronger it gets and the better it gets. So, that's our that's kind of how I look at this. Like, sure, there's a science to it, but very much an emotional feelings based thing.
00;10;54;10 - 00;10;59;19
Speaker 1
And think about that the next time that you're hiring. Maybe listen to your gut or else.
