An Assessment Based on Experience

Many B2B tech founders struggle to successfully make their first sales hire. The Right Five automatically delivers the right five candidates for interview, thereby, saving time and getting the right person into the market quickly.

Certainly for founders with a non-Sales background, making that first Sales hire is likely to be the hardest they’ll ever make and one which can prove disastrous if unsuccessful. Why is it such a difficult hire? It’s part:

• not knowing what the role of that first Sales hire really is – a Pathfinder who needs to develop a predictable, repeatable, scalable, profitable sales process (a Playbook) for others to follow
• not knowing the unique characteristics of that Pathfinder salesperson as distinct from other Sales types
• not being able to identify and qualify those characteristics through the hiring process

It’s hardly surprising then that some tech founders admit to being onto their 7th “first Sales hire” and are only surviving through their own ability to sell and the strength of their product.

So what gives The Right Five the legitimacy to solve this problem for B2B tech founders? And why are we always specific about B2B, not B2C?

Well, legitimacy comes from the experience and knowledge of our founding team coupled with an intimate knowledge of current marketing and sales best practices and trends. All of that experience and knowledge is B2B not B2C, hence our focus on B2B.

Our experience comes from decades earning our B2B tech Sales chops with both large and startup organisations enabling us to identify the unique characteristics of the Pathfinder salesperson coupled with the knowledge of how to assess for those characteristics.

Those characteristics cover ‘deep skills’ such as source of motivation and curiosity together with ‘vocational skills’ which are role specific such as an understanding of target marketing. Note that we steer clear of the terms ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills which carry a strong, yet mistaken, prioritisation towards the ‘hard’.

In addition to assessing for and scoring the ‘deep’ and ‘vocational’ skills required to be considered a Pathfinder, it’s important to understand those that are specific to the Pathfinder and distinct from other Sales types. For example, positivity is a characteristic of a Pathfinder that we assess for, but it’s a characteristic every salesperson should possess. On the other hand, dealing with ambiguity is essential for a Pathfinder but not for other Sales types such as a Playbook salesperson. Indeed a need and ability to deal with ambiguity is likely to be detrimental to someone in a Playbook role.

Our own experience and knowledge was then rigorously tested against research and industry interviews to cement the Pathfinder characteristics and an assessment tool was developed to identify and score them. That tool was then tested against a large control group of known entities – some Pathfinders, some not – to ensure it accurately identified the Pathfinders.

It did and here we are. We’ve de-risked the first Sales hire for B2B tech founders and simultaneously taken away the time-consuming task of working through potentially hundreds of resumés looking for a needle in a haystack (assuming you know it’s a needle you’re looking for). We deliver you the right five so you can select the right one.