The Right Five – Overview and Demo

Overview and Demo Video:-

Transcript:-

Many B2B tech founders struggle to successfully make their first sales hire. This is largely because of a mismatch between what they think they need and what they actually need to get them from startup to scale-up.

As an example, founders often lean towards salespeople with the best rolodex, or who are the most extroverted, neither of which are characteristics required for this role.

So, what does “Right” look like as the first Sales hire for a B2B tech startup?

It starts with understanding what the role of this hire is. It is not to maximise revenue by closing deals that are a poor fit for the business. It is to create a predictable, repeatable, scalable, profitable sales process, or playbook, that others can follow.

The creation of the playbook requires a Pathfinder salesperson who can find their way to the most optimal sales process. Not only does the Pathfinder require broader sales and marketing skills than a more typical salesperson, they are unique in their mindset and their approach to work.

Those founders who are aware that they need a Pathfinder salesperson are then often unaware of the skill sets unique to the Pathfinder.

This is then all compounded by the challenges of dealing with a pile of resumés and, without knowing what makes a Pathfinder, many great candidates are cast aside without interview.

That’s why we have developed The Right Five.

We have defined the must-have vocational and deep ‘mindset’ skills that are part of every successful Pathfinder and have developed an assessment that qualifies candidates as Pathfinders or Non-Pathfinders.

Automating the assessment process saves you time and money by ensuring you only have to deal with those candidates who qualify as Pathfinders, ultimately increasing your speed to market.

So what does this look like?

The process starts when a client signs up. Note how we ask for a logo and the title of the role you are hiring for. We do this to ensure brand continuity for your candidates.

Once you sign up, you will receive a unique assessment url for your candidates that you can share in your job posting.

The candidate signup page then carries your brand. Note that every field is mandatory including the requirement to upload a resumé.

The assessment itself comprises 13 sections covering the skills that define a Pathfinder, with each employing a range of question types to ultimately determine if a candidate is a Pathfinder or not.

As soon as a candidate completes the assessment, their results appear in that client’s private dashboard area. Here you can see candidates classified as Pathfinders and Non-Pathfinders. The Right Five simply being the five highest scoring Pathfinder candidates.

It’s important to note that any of the Pathfinders can do the job and it shouldn’t just be overall score that determines who you interview. More on that in a moment.

First of all, let’s talk about scoring and rules generally. I mentioned earlier that there are some “must-pass” components to the assessment, meaning that there are skills and characteristics that a candidate must have in order to be classified as a Pathfinder. And, to be considered a Pathfinder, a candidate must have “all” of these skills.

By way of example, look at the candidate Terri Alcock. She has a higher overall score than some of the Pathfinders yet she’s classified as a Non-Pathfinder. Let’s check out why that might be.

She scores really well across the board but you can see she misses big time on a section called Thrives on Ambiguity. This is a “must-pass” component for a Pathfinder. The first Sales hire in a B2B tech startup is, by definition, going to have to deal with masses of ambiguity in figuring out how to create your ultimate sales process. Remember there is no playbook yet, the role of the Pathfinder is to figure one out.

So how can you use the dashboard to decide which Pathfinders to interview? There are several tools available, but I’ll just illustrate a few.

Remembering that any of the Pathfinders can do the job, you can simply compare two Pathfinders to see how their skills stack up.

That’s interesting, Diane seems stronger across the board but her digital marketing skills are particularly weak. But what if her weakness happens to be in an area where you already have strengths within the business? Dovetailing existing skills with those of a Pathfinder might enable you to interview her based on her much broader strengths and not exclude her based on this one weakness.

This also illustrates that not every skill is “must-pass”.

You also have the opportunity to review candidates resumés.

And then location may be a factor.

Simply favouring those Pathfinders geographically relevant to you might also help decide which of them to interview.

So, to recap, this is a super efficient process to get you down from potentially hundreds of applications to the five or so Pathfinders to interview. But it’s even better.

We also know that people that are not hired today might be employees or customers of tomorrow. All too often, people that apply to an organization are ghosted, damaging a company’s brand. All candidates who are classified as Non-Pathfinders will automatically receive an email letting them know that you won’t be proceeding with their application. Pathfinders are told that “you” will follow up with them directly.

All “you” have to do is communicate with the Pathfinders. Let them know if you’ll be interviewing them or not, and then communicate with interviewees as normal until you select the right one.

We are The Right Five. We help you get the right one.