Will Your First Sales Hire Have 3D Night Vision Skills?

Stargazing can be amongst the most stimulating and peaceful of pursuits. Hours can drift by in seemingly a blink such is the enchantment of the constellations. The sheer scale of our own Milky Way galaxy, let alone the wider universe, is mind boggling beyond comprehension. The distances are vast: more than 200 billion stars and a diameter of ~200,000 light years. And we are just one galaxy out of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the observable universe!  

Remarkably though, everything that we observe, when we look skywards to the heavens, is in 2D (two dimensional) perspective only. Notwithstanding some of the greatest accomplishments by humankind, such as Voyagers I & II, The Hubble Telescope, and the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), all we could ever aspire to see are 2D images. Broadly speaking, the images will be flat-pane manifestations that, to a greater or lesser degree, lack depth perspective.

Recent stargazing had me likening curiosity to explore 3D visualizations of constellations with the essential, inherent 3D skills of a Pathfinder; skills necessary to fundamentally engage and research prospective clients in multiple dimensions to yield a repeatable, predictable, scalable, profitable sales process for a nascent tech proposition. These are the very qualities that a Founder needs to unearth amongst the many candidates that will apply for that crucial first sales hire position. A daunting challenge.

Expanding the analogy, two dimensions could represent the vocational or acquired skillsets that are easier and more obvious to observe, whereas the third dimension could represent the deep skillsets that differentiates Pathfinder selling from conventional Playbook selling.  

To illustrate further, let’s return to the stargazing theme once more by considering a popular constellation: Orion “The Hunter”. This is the familiar 2D aspect of how every sentient being that has ever lived on Earth has viewed Orion:

Orion “The Hunter” seen from Earth (“12 o’clock”)

Magnificent, especially the Red Giant star in the upper left corner in the latter stage of its existence, Betelgeuse. Embarking on a hypothetical clockwise journey around this star cluster (a theoretical ‘journey’ of some 5,800 light years incidentally), starting from Earth at the ’12 o’clock’ position.  

At the ‘3 o’clock’ position we might expect to see:

Constellation of Orion theoretically at the 90 degrees position from Earth (“3 o’clock”)

At the 6 ‘clock’ and ‘9 o’clock’ positions respectively we might expect to see:

Constellation of Orion theoretically at the 180 degrees position from Earth (“6 o’clock”) [Earth is approximately 1,846 light years distant from this vista point]

Constellation of Orion theoretically at the 270 degrees position from Earth (“9 o’clock”)

Extraordinary how the same stellar objects can appear so differently depending upon perspective, and dare I say it, so alien to an untrained eye; the contrast of what you might expect a Pathfinder to be capable of unearthing and deciphering.

The point is, skilled Pathfinders will look at startup business challenges from multiple perspectives, seeking out diverse, objective, and holistic insights including: target market(s); target organizations; within your own organization and technical value propositions; prospective partners; potential eco-systems.

For us at The Right Five, this third-dimension insight, as touched on earlier, is unearthing those deeper qualities and talents that define and separate out Pathfinders from the pack, those far less tangible, harder-to-see deep skills. Skills such as: curiosity; dealing with ambiguity; managing adversity; motivation to build something of great value; serving a purpose of ‘why’ more than ‘what’; a drive to coalesce all stakeholders around shared vision and values.

At The Right Five we have invested years researching into this field and within our own Founder ranks have both the vocational knowledge-ware and technical expertise for uncovering such attributes among the candidates who will apply.  

Using our automated, cloud-based tool suite you will have the means at your disposal to derive the optimal five (or more or fewer, your call) Pathfinder candidates for next stage interviews. You will be able to see how the conclusions were reached, backed up with evidence-based data at your fingertips via your personalized, secure dashboard.

Will you be able to find your Pathfinder replete with 3D ‘night vision’ skills?