Episode 7

Hiring for Culture Fit - A Critical Factor in Building Elite Sales Teams

Summary

Dr. Jim discusses the importance of hiring salespeople who align with the culture of the organization. He emphasizes that hiring productive individuals who do not fit well within the company's culture can have negative downstream impacts. To ensure effective sales hiring, Dr. Jim suggests starting with a clear understanding of the organization's mission, vision, and values. The hiring process should then focus on assessing how candidates demonstrate alignment with these foundational elements. By hiring individuals who fit well with the culture, organizations can minimize unnecessary drama, improve retention and turnover rates, and create a more engaged and high-performing team.

Take Aways

Hiring individuals who align with the organization's culture is crucial for success.

Assess candidates' alignment with the mission, vision, and values during the hiring process.

Hiring misaligned individuals can lead to negative impacts on performance, retention, and customer interactions.


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Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk


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Transcript
Dr. Jim: [:

And here's how that ties in.

One of the most important elements that you need to consider when you're hiring for sales. Is, how does the people that you're hiring align with the culture that you want to build? And that's why I made the, we don't hire productive a-holes conversation because that type of culture will have a lot of negative downstream impacts.

important that you get that [:

Everything has to start with getting rooted or grounded in your mission, vision, and values, and you're in entire question and hiring process. Should look at each candidate through that lens, how are they demonstrating alignment with your mission, vision, and values? And that way everybody's playing from the same playbook, obviously, after you hire somebody.

r. So that has to be applied [:

And then make sure that your process and questions are aligned and pulling out how each candidate. Syncs up with those critical foundational elements of your organization.

The next thing that you need to consider about the importance of culture fit is that you don't have time for unnecessary drama.

So this is again, where aligning on culture in your hiring process will actually lead to less friction in your environment, and that's gonna be a good way for you to make sure that the performance of the team is at the appropriate level and you have minimized distractions.

Another factor to consider when you're thinking about culture fit and its impact on the organization.

urnover. What happens if you [:

And then what do you have?

And that's why. You need to hire with a culture first mentality, a mission, vision, values alignment mentality, because that's gonna help you have the appropriate lens on where the organization is going and how people are supposed to interact internally.

It's not enough to have one high performing individual if they're making life unbearable for everybody else. The goal is to make sure everybody is operating at a high level, and one of the ways that you can better ensure that is making sure that you're culturally aligned.

hesive and aligned with your [:

So if you're hiring people, They're not aligned with the mission, vision, values. They're gonna just do what's necessary to get done and then leave for the day. That's not necessarily the best formula for success if you're looking to aggressively grow.

Deep alignment with culture shows up in how those sales hires interact with your customers.

stage of your development to [:

They might produce, but what if they're just leaving a trail of bodies along the way? Is it worth it? And that's the question that you have to ask. Is it worth it? Can you afford the damage to your reputation and your brand by hiring somebody that's misaligned? My argument, and it should be a pretty straight answer, is you can't, so while it might be tempting to hire the person that you've heard about who is a quote unquote rockstar, but is prickly, and I'm using that as an understatement.

Is it worth risking all the work that you've put in to build to where you are, to hire somebody that isn't a fit for your vision, your mission, your values, and your culture?

About the Podcast

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About your hosts

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Lucas Price

Lucas Price has nearly 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive leader. He started his career as a founder of Gravity Payments. Later, as a senior executive, he built the sales team that took Zipwhip from less than $1 million to over $100 million in ARR. He has shifted his focus to solving the waste and loss of failed sales hires.
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Dr. Jim Kanichirayil

Your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd is the producer and sometime co-host for Building Elite Sales Teams. He's spent his career in sales and has been typically in startup b2b HRTech and TA-Tech organizations.

He's built high-performance sales teams throughout his career and is passionate about all things employee life cycle and especially employee retention and turnover.