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.
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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
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Transcripts
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 disagreed. I think. Well, I think it's like it's half right, maybe half right. And just for context, I've, I've built teams for 20 years.
I've built the sales team at the US Chamber of Commerce. We reversed a 10 year decline of small business membership and sales and we, we built a team that cross 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, 10 years in a row through, if we can develop political fundraising like through all the economic cycles, all the, you know, political cycles, like we just continued to crush it with increasing goals.
I led a, an executive team and I had actually essentially fired the entire executive team when I came in for, for this PE back company and it was a disaster.
There was you know, cronyism, there was, you know, working with competitors like it was just, it was just a complete shit show and basically fired the entire team. I think we ended up replacing 30 out of 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 598,000amonth to a million a month. 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, 10 candidates, something like that. I think there is a science for that.
Like we, internally we use something called like a vision of the position. It's a, you know, it's in, 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? 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. 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 to screen for that to that extent. There is a science in sitting down and saying this is what we need to, this is what we're looking for. This is what success looks like.
This is what somebody needs to have to get going. But then you're going to get down to, you know, your final candidates and you're, you're going to run these second interviews.
You're going to be like, huh, 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, some people have a lower score.
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 it like once you get down to that point, like it is, people won't say this out loud, but it's based on feeling, right?
Like there's an emotional aspect to hiring, there's a gut aspect to hiring. People don't want to tell you that.
And it's even 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.
And my, so if I, if I look back on 20 years of hiring my best hires to a T, all of the outliers, all of the people that absolutely crushed it. And I would say like the top quartile of people that I've hired were all gut decisions. You know, I hired a sales guy when we were at the chamber.
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 in 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. And I said, okay.
He said, this is like, this is what happened at the last organization. This is what happened to Lawn before that. Like, I'm just telling you, if you call them, they're. They're gonna, they're not gonna say nice things.
This is what it is. So I get to the point, I'm like, I like this guy.
Like, my gut says, I mean, he hit all of the, the check boxes, but I, like, my gut said, this is my dude. Like, I, I like this guy. HR says, like, they said, hey, we can't verify references. We're not moving forward.
We have a process here that says, so we can't move forward. They said, no, we strongly recommend that you. You don't move forward. And I said, 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, 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 client member acquisition channel for us.
I ended up, when 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, one of my business school buddies, an investor, PE guy, said, hey, I got this. This guy. He went to our, he went to our school.
I don't know if you've got a role for him, this and that. And I, I said, okay. I looked at his resume. He's got, like, a background in economics.
He, you know, incredibly young, not a ton of, like, real world experience. And so we. I was like, yeah, I'll, you know, I'll meet him for lunch or something. So I went and I met him for lunch and I left that lunch. 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 gonna hire you. Like, I, I don't even know what I'm gonna do with an economics degree or somebody.
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 them on your team. Ended up hiring them and we, we basically we moneyballed a 45 year old company.
Like we went into something that was, you know, using you know, paper invoices and post. Post it notes. Like if I, if I, if this was a YouTube video, I'd show you the, the CRM.
I took pictures of this post it notes were basically their CRM and if they had anything that was tech based 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, iPads into the sales team's hands.
We knew like we could, we just start to track real activity. We had real production numbers like it. We took the company forward.
Decades within, within several months it was because I sat down, I met the dude and I'm like, you can help me. And I didn't know how, but I knew that he belonged on the team.
I heard the last, last one, but I, I heard one of my top sales people who I've taken to three places now because he's just, he's just a killer. He's badass. I hired him at 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, dude, I. I think you could do this. And sent him an email the next day. We, we brought him in, hired him. You know, HR was like, and where did you get this guy again?
Like, or do you even have a job posting? No. Oh, I don't. And where did you get him again? Ah, we, we met through some mutual acquaintances and places. You know, it was like any.
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. 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, you know, and he was, he had the national sales team and then he had, he had another sales team that he was building like a new division for me. Technically it was at home. And I was like, okay, like maybe, you know, this is 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, 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 and I visited him in Baja and my wife and I said, yeah, we're gonna 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, 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 document 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, we fired by them. It did not matter how, how good you were.
Like we. In terms of numbers, like we. 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 drum beat that outlines much of 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, 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 really stood 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, but the person that says, dude, I saw the 3D, I think that is so incredible.
Like the part about batteries included, like 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, put the filters in place, put the screens in place, put the scorecards in place, like put the things that you need in place to get down to your final, you know, 10 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 and they all meet the required experience, 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.
And think about that the next time that you're hiring. Maybe listen to your gut audios.
