* Lack of Relevant Experience: It’s concerning if a candidate's resume lacks relevant sales experience or is not tailored in a way to showcase how their experience is relevant to the open role. Including a personalized cover letter or tailoring the summary/objective of the resume to highlight relevant skills and achievements is important to show alignment. * Inconsistent Job History: A history of short tenures at previous companies can raise concerns about a candidate's commitment and reliability. Aim to demonstrate stability and longevity in your roles, and be prepared to explain any job changes or gaps in employment during interviews. Additionally, always make sure that your resume aligns with the roles on your LinkedIn profile. It’s not a good sign when either the resume or LinkedIn is inaccurate. It’s surprising how often we see misalignment. * Not closing the interviewer: When it comes to a sales interview, not being prepared to ask for the next step in the process or get buy-in on their candidacy is a huge miss. As a sales professional in a sales interview, you are expected to close. It shows you investment in the role and your ability to move a conversation forward. * Skipping thank you notes: It may seem a bit old school, but the best reps I’ve ever hired have all written extremely thoughtful thank you messages during the interview process. Take the time to reiterate your interest in the role and thank the interviewer for their time and insights. It’s a sign of strong follow up and rapport building skills and can further set you apart from the candidate pool.

I think there’s a lot to be said about optimizing sales processes with AI. As software continues to improve this will allow AEs to be more productive, manage larger books of business, and deliver highly customized outbound messaging. That said, given the sheer volume of outreach prospects receive today, it’s more important than ever to differentiate yourself, build your network, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your space. If I were an AE starting today, I’d focus on what I want to specialize in and start building relationships—not just with prospects and customers but also with partners in the ecosystem.

Sales skills and perspectives can significantly benefit other departments within an organization. Here are key sales skills that can improve day-to-day work for non-sales teams: 1. Active Listening – Salespeople excel at understanding customer needs by listening carefully. Applying this skill internally improves communication, collaboration, and ensures all departments understand each other’s needs before making decisions. 2. Persuasion & Influence – Whether it’s pitching ideas in meetings or driving change, the ability to present a compelling case and influence others can enhance leadership and innovation in any role. 3. Problem-Solving Mindset – Sales reps are solution-focused, always trying to resolve customer pain points. This mindset can help other departments identify and solve internal challenges, creating a more proactive culture. 4. Customer-Centric Thinking – Sales teams know how to keep the customer at the center of everything. Instilling this perspective in departments like product, marketing, and support helps ensure all decisions improve the customer experience. 5. Resilience & Adaptability – Sales is full of ups and downs. Teaching resilience and adaptability can help teams stay focused during setbacks, learn from mistakes, and improve performance. 6. Goal-Oriented Focus – Sales reps work toward clear targets. Encouraging other teams to adopt this results-driven approach can improve efficiency and alignment across the organization, as everyone works toward measurable outcomes. 7. Time Management – Sales professionals must balance multiple tasks and prioritize their efforts to close deals. Teaching this discipline to others can improve productivity and ensure better handling of deadlines and workload. 8. Relationship Building – Building strong, trust-based relationships is crucial in sales, and it’s equally valuable in cross-departmental collaboration. Networking and fostering relationships internally leads to better teamwork and communication. 9. Negotiation Skills – Whether working with vendors, partners, or internally between teams, negotiation skills help ensure mutually beneficial agreements are reached, improving collaboration and outcomes. By adopting these sales skills and perspectives, teams across an organization can enhance communication, collaboration, and overall performance, driving more effective outcomes.

Be clear on your goals and show progress against those week over week. Use that to show the quality of work being done and then be specific on where you're running up against challenges in achieving that plan where more resources can help. Important to show you've thought threw alternative options particularly where there are resource constraints.

I alluded to this in an earlier question, there will also be those KPIs that come as "standard" to the sales job. How many calls did you have in a week, how many discovery calls vs demo calls, etc. However, what I pay most attention to is what KPIs do top sellers consistently hit? Do they do more in-person meetings? Do they leverage Executives more? How often do they expand into another business unit in an org? I map out KPIs based on top performers and hold reps accountable to that activity.

A challenging question and probably different across organizations. The one that I always find a challenge is the expected volume of outreach emails sent per week. This number could be huge and look great on a dashboard but if the quality is poor, then what good is the volume and what outcome will this achieve? Here we need to be looking at achieving the right balance of activity and being smarter about how we message clients in order to maintain quality. With all KPIs the data can only tell us so much and there will always be a need to delve deeper to truly understand how effective your sales team is.

KPIs drive the behavior you expect to see from your Sales team. Quota attainment is typically the primary focus for Sales teams, how you achieve those results can alter the direction of your business. Quota from New Logos vs Expansion customers, will impact your future revenue streams differently. Selling a core product vs cross-selling additional products can drive customer retention and ultimately impact churn down the road. Landing a monthly contract vs multi-year commitment allows you to invest more confidently for the future. Identify what's most important for your business and hold your sellers accountable to them. Revenue alone should not be the only KPI for your Sellers.

KPIs can certainly help to improve forecast accuracy. You can even build models to predict an outcome with a high accuracy. Deal velocity, pipeline coverage in different sales stages and forecast categories will help to predict the outcome. The more accurate data is available the better the models will become. This of course is on a pipeline level rather than on the deal level. No model can improve sales execution :-) This will become more difficult in unpredictable markets of course, however, still possible. Maybe with a higher range of accuracy.

The worst KPIs to commit to are the ones that: * Don’t drive to business outcomes (if we hit this KPI, does it bring us closer to our goals as an org?) * can’t be communicated easily (if it’s not understood, it won’t be adopted!) * aren’t tracked against a source of truth. (need a single view into how we’re performing against the KPI) Work towards the opposite of that list when validating the effectiveness of a KPI. Hope that helps!

If I were a sales rep trying to justify a raise, I would ensure I know: -Performance against quota -Percent to goal -MRR / ARR sold -If at a very early stage company, your contribution to the company's growth might be material, what % growth on the top line did you drive? -If larger, I'd be thinking about the KPI impact of strategic projects. I.e. if you developed a sales play that increased close rates of your peers from 20 to 30% - can you quantify that impact in revenue. It's a lot easier to ask for a raise when you can spell out that you drove $1 mil in incremental growth above and beyond your quota.