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Finding the Right People is not an Accident

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For Jeremy Ruch at Bandalier, finding the right people is a process. The best sales people have opposing skillsets: They need to be both stubborn and coachable. How do you find those people?  Jeremy shares ideas and inisghts.

And, if you find yourself struggling to fill out your sales roster, it might be time to give Hamish a call. 

What you'll learn:

  • What are the right traits for remote-only sales people.
  • How to structure your interview process.
  • How you can link the interview process to performance reviews - and why you would want to.
  • Why some people thrive in a busy office - and why others don't.
  • Why you should not spend 80% of your time on 20% of the people.
  • Why a culture of celebration is important in sales.

Resources:

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120 Finding the right people is not an accident, with Jeremy Ruch of Bandalier

Importance of being coachable and finding the right individuals for sales. Bandelier's guest discusses analytical interview process, trust in remote work, personal growth, and resilience in successful salespeople.

2023, Hamish Knox
Full Funnel Freedom

Copyright 2023, Hamish Knox, Production assistance by Clawson Solutions Group. Find them on the web at csolgroup.com

Generated Shownotes

Chapters

0:00:00 Coachability: The Balance of Stubbornness and Resilience
0:00:30 Introduction to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast
0:00:48 Introduction to Jeremy Rook and Bandelier
0:02:19 The Need for On-Demand Sales Teams
0:04:02 Remote Teams and Supporting Upward Mobility
0:07:43 Special Offer: Get Your Free White Paper Now!
0:08:13 The Marriage of Hiring Data and Performance Data
0:09:36 Using Airtable to Connect Hiring and Performance Data
0:11:25 The Importance of Trust for Productivity
0:13:08 Balancing Trust and Accountability in Remote Work
0:14:28 Focusing on Supporting Top Performers in Sales Organizations
0:17:02 Building a Cohesive Team Culture in Remote Work Environments
0:19:05 Cultivating a Culture of Celebration and Transparency
0:21:06 Coaching Younger Self: Taking Bigger Swings and Embracing Learning
0:25:06 Exploring AI roleplay tools for sales interactions
0:26:25 Building unique sales teams and upcoming product offerings
0:29:30 Support and Connect with the Full Funnel of Freedom Podcast

Long Summary

In this episode of the podcast, the main speaker begins by discussing the importance of being coachable and the ability to take feedback well. They explain that although being coachable can sometimes clash with stubbornness, it is a crucial quality for success in sales. The focus then shifts to the guest, Jeremy Rook from Bandelier, who shares the story of how he started the company. Bandelier connects fast-growing companies with inside sales and customer-facing teams, addressing the hiring and training challenges in these roles. Jeremy discusses the opportunity to bridge the gap between job opportunities in tech hubs and talent pools in other areas, primarily serving venture-backed companies in communities with limited job opportunities. The main speaker and Jeremy emphasize the significance of finding the right individuals for sales roles, assessing for potential rather than prior experience.

The podcast then delves into the interview process at Bandelier, where an analytical approach is taken to evaluate candidates. The company employs specific rubrics to assess candidates, and multiple interviewers converge to debate and score final interviews. Data from the interview process is correlated with the performance of hired candidates, with traits such as resilience, coachability, and communication skills identified as predictive of success. The process is continuously refined and updated.

The use of Airtable is highlighted as a custom tool to connect hiring data with performance data, storing information about team members from application to performance scores. The transparency and feedback culture at Bandelier are discussed, with team members having access to their own performance data. Trust is emphasized as a key aspect of the organization, enabling a productive and positive work environment. The transition from in-person to remote work is also explored, with trust identified as crucial during this shift.

The speaker then shares Bandelier's philosophy on remote work versus working in the office, prioritizing trust and allowing individuals to work in the environment that suits them best. Different personas have been hired for remote work compared to in-office work, and violations of trust are addressed promptly. The focus is on optimizing the work environment for top performers rather than designing rules for untrustworthy individuals. Additionally, supporting top performers and providing coaching and attention is a priority, while still giving all team members the opportunity to improve and become top performers.

The importance of values and company culture is highlighted, with Bandelier focusing on continuous improvement through Kaizen and having a shared understanding of the company's purpose. Celebrating and recognizing team members' contributions is essential, even in a fully remote work environment. Transparency and feedback sessions are provided, with call reviews and formal spaces dedicated to this purpose. Small wins are celebrated to encourage progress and high-level performance. The speaker expresses interest and alignment with the guest's coaching advice of taking risks and not being afraid, understanding that setbacks are part of the journey.

In terms of personal development resources, the speaker recommends books such as "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz and "Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight, as well as John Barrow's sales classes and the CoachPX platform for AI in sales. They emphasize the importance of continuous improvement and mention Mark Roberge's book on building sales teams. The speaker invites those interested in sales career development or building customer-facing organizations to connect with them.

The episode concludes with a discussion on the role of interview and performance data in supporting team members in the long term. The speaker emphasizes the significance of resilience and coachability in successful sales individuals and expresses gratitude to the podcast host. They encourage listeners to leave reviews and share the episode with sales leaders in their network, offering to connect through LinkedIn or scheduled calls. The episode ends with a reminder to create "full funnel freedom" together.

Brief Summary

In this episode, we discuss the importance of being coachable and finding the right individuals for sales roles. Our guest from Bandelier shares insights on their analytical interview process and the role of trust in a remote work environment. We emphasize continuous improvement, values, and company culture. Personal development resources and opportunities for connection are also mentioned. The episode concludes with a focus on resilience and coachability in successful sales individuals.

Tags

coachable, sales roles, Bandelier, analytical interview process, trust, remote work environment, continuous improvement, values, company culture, personal development, connection, resilience, successful sales individuals

Transcript

Coachability: The Balance of Stubbornness and Resilience


[0:00] Another one, which interestingly is very often at odds with the first is coachability, right? So the ability to take feedback well.
And I say at odds because very often the kinds of people who are super coachable are not particularly stubborn.
So you need this weird kind of middle part of the Venn diagram of like people who are both stubborn enough to keep making those calls and resilient enough to keep making those calls, but also are able to take feedback really well and implement it.

[0:25] Music.

Introduction to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast


[0:30] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue.
Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your.

[0:43] Music.

[0:43] Funnels consistently reliably full.

Introduction to Jeremy Rook and Bandelier


[0:48] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host Hamish Knox.
Today I am delighted to have Jeremy Rook from Bandelier as a guest on the podcast.
Jeremy is the founder of Bandelier, which connects fast-growing companies with, vetted, trained inside sales and customer-facing teams.
Since launching in 2017, Bandelier has hired over 400 people and worked with hundreds of innovative companies.
Prior to that, Jeremy managed an inside sales team for Bond Street, a venture-backed startup.

[1:20] Jeremy, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom. Great to be here, Hamish. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I really enjoyed our last conversation and I'm excited to share your insights and wisdom with our audience of sales leaders today.
So Jeremy, I've given the audience the high level, the 30,000-foot view of who you are.
Take us down, tell us the story of Jeremy Bandelier, how you got to where you are today and who are you serving right now?
Sounds great. Yeah. The story of Jeremy might be a little ambitious, so I'll focus this portion on Bandelier.
But the abbreviated version of our story is, prior to this, as you mentioned, I was managing an inside sales team for a fintech company based here in New York City.
And that was really my first exposure to what an absolute freaking nightmare it is to hire folks in entry-level inside sales and really customer-facing roles more broadly.
And I think there are a couple of different reasons for that that sort of specifically.

The Need for On-Demand Sales Teams


[2:19] Pertain... based in places like New York City and San Francisco, which is they're moving extremely quickly.
They don't necessarily know what their needs are going to be six months down the road, two weeks down the road in some cases.
And in many cases, they haven't necessarily built out the infrastructure for recruiting and training these kinds of large teams that you really need in order to make these kinds of teams successful.
So at the time, I started looking for a vendor to help me solve that problem, like a company that could just provide vetted, trained inside sales team members basically on demand.
And in short, I was just totally disappointed by the array of options I found.
It felt like a lot of sort of legacy call centers that might be great fits for giant cable companies, but aren't necessarily in tune with the needs of fast-growing, technology companies. And I think it was really...
Having that experience, sort of experiencing that pain point as a consumer, paired with sort of this broader societal issue, which is that these jobs, particularly back when we were first thinking about this 2016-2017.

[3:18] Were in abundance in places like New York City and San Francisco.
But if you go to the middle part of the country, jobs as SDRs with tech companies weren't necessarily something that was on the docket for a lot of folks.
So I felt like there was a real opportunity to sort of bridge these two worlds, creating upward mobility for people looking for these kinds of roles while also solving a really salient pain point for VPs of sales, CROs and other decision makers at tech companies.
Very cool. And so what I heard from that is you might be servicing a lot of companies who are that New York, San Francisco kind of tech hub.
However, your teams are coming from that middle America where maybe there's not as many of these opportunities and you're supporting those individuals in upward mobility. Is that accurate?

Remote Teams and Supporting Upward Mobility


[4:02] I think that's 100% right. Our team is incredibly diverse.
I mean, it comes from over a dozen states and, you know, towns to big cities.
But I would say when we first got started, we set up shop up in a place called Binghamton, New York, which is about a three hour drive away from here in New York City.
And we picked it largely because it is a college town with lots of talent, but not a hell of a lot of companies hiring for for these kinds of roles, especially back then.
And back then, we had a fully in person model that has evolved.
So now we are actually fully remote.
But I would say the model really hasn't changed in the sense that we target those kinds of communities. And I would say our clients largely, indeed, are fast-growing venture-backed companies.

[4:45] Primarily based in tech hubs.
Very cool. So what I'm curious to explore with you is some of those learnings that you've had as you've built out these teams. Because you're 110% right.
When you are moving quickly, you probably don't have the infrastructure.
That's something that I work with a lot on the founders that I support is they would usually want to abdicate sales entirely. It's like, no, you're just going to set people up for failure.
Because all you're saying to them is, hey, go sell stuff. And it's like, that's a recipe for disaster.
So what are some of the things, number one, that you've learned about finding the right type of person who has the mindset to succeed in this SDR, BDR, inside sales type role?
Yeah, so this is really the bread and butter of our business is, you know, what are the right questions to ask to find folks who are predisposed to success in these roles?
And it's a really interesting problem because we are generally hiring folks who don't have experience doing these roles. It's not like a traditional hire where you say, tell me about the last role you did exactly like this, where you were selling exactly this kind of thing.
We kind of have to assess, really have to assess for potential.

[5:48] And so we've taken a very analytical approach, where we've built out an interview process that literally from day one, was graded according to a very specific rubric from the time.
I was in every single interview, grading it out, having two interviewers sit in on each final interview, grading it out separately and then coming together to, you know, debate the different scores.
We have a very, very specific way we ask questions and a very specific methodology we use to assess those, the responses to those questions. And then what we've been able to do over time is take all that data from our interview process because of course we didn't get it.
Fully right on day one, we still don't have it fully right. And then connect it actually to the performance state on the other side.
So say which questions are actually turning out to be predictive of which traits exhibited in the actual performance of the roles.
And there's a couple of different traits we have found to be sort of most predictive of overall success in these kinds of roles.
So some examples are, I mean, this one won't surprise you, but resilience is a big one.
So it takes a very specific kind of person to make 99 cold calls, get rejected each time, and then actually still have the same level of energy and enthusiasm to make the hundredth call.
Most people in the population are not wired that way.
We need the people that are. Another one, which interestingly is very often at odds with the first, is coachability. It's the ability to take feedback well.
And I say at odds because very often the kinds of people who are super coachable are not particularly stubborn.

[7:16] True. So you need this weird kind of middle part of the Venn diagram of like people who are both stubborn enough to keep making those calls and resilient enough to keep making those calls, but also are able to take feedback really well and implement it.
And then some baseline tests of communication skills, most of which we can teach, but there is a sort of bottom limit to you need to come in with a certain set of just basic communication skills.

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[7:43] Free offer for listeners of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast, go to www.fullfunnelfreedom.com, slash scale to get your white paper, Eight Fundamentals of Building a Scalable Sales Model.
If you're listening to Full Funnel Freedom, you are wanting your funnel to be consistently reliably full and sustainably scalable.
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The Marriage of Hiring Data and Performance Data


[8:13] Now.

[8:13] Back to the show.
I love the idea of the fact that you got data, right? Like that's with hiring.
It's kind of like, oh, my tummy feels like Jeremy's going to be a good fit.
It's like, well, my tummy is not a very good judge of character or talent or anything like that.
So, and to hear that you are evolving it over time and it's still not perfect. No hiring process is.
But marrying it. So tell me about the marriage of this hiring data and the performance data, because that's a bridge that I don't feel a lot of clients or companies make between, hey, we have this rubric over here, and we have this rubric over here, and never the two shall meet. It's really challenging, actually.
And it's sort of surprising to me, to be honest, that there haven't been more solutions built in the space, offer solutions of connecting the two.
There's a lot of performance data solutions, right, like performance management solutions, and there are a lot of recruiting solutions.
But indeed, there isn't a ton of great options for connecting them.
The way we've gone about it is we sort of have a custom build where we had a consultant build us an Airtable infrastructure.
So everything, for the most part, that we do here is in Airtable.
So we've got the rubrics based in Airtable.
And then we also have the performance management process framework in Airtable.
What's unique about Airtable in this respect, really, any of these kinds of tools is that we can create a team member object where we kind of house all of the data about them from the time literally they submitted the application.

Using Airtable to Connect Hiring and Performance Data


[9:36] You know, system were they using to submit it? What was their writing sample?

[9:40] You know, what job were they interested in? All the way through to what was their performance score on this particular trade on their last performance review?
And it's really that connective tissue that allows us to run that analysis. That's very cool.
Now, I'm curious how much of this data is available to each individual team member? Like, I'm a member of your team.
How much of this am I actually able to access?
Yeah, great question. We've actually had this debate a lot internally.
There's two sides to it, right? One is we are big believers in transparency.
Transparent feedback, delivering folks constant feedback on how they're doing.
People should know where they stand so that they can get better, right?
And we ask them for that same feedback that bandoliers and organization.
There is also a way in which we don't want things to feel like this big brother monitoring every single little thing we do, because we know from psychology that people do their best work when they're not scared, constantly fearful that every single little thing they do is watched.
And we afford our team members, even those who work from home, quite a bit of leniency as a result of that.

[10:43] But the short answer to your question is our performance reviews are fully transparent, right? So we're showing them the scores they get on everything and we're telling them the reason they got those scores.
The interview process, if folks ask to see how they did in the interview after they come in, we of course tell them.
So pretty much all of it is accessible to them or shared with them at some point or another.
Very cool. And you just were to use the word that I, uh, leniency with your team to me, that, that is code for the word trust.
And you shared earlier that you went from fully in person to fully remote.
Would you talk a little bit about trust as it relates to your team members and what you experienced because for a lot of organizations these days, there is a lack of trust, or there feels like there's a lack of trust.

The Importance of Trust for Productivity


[11:25] And that can be really detrimental for productivity.

[11:27] Yeah, it's a great question. And obviously, a hotly debated topic right now.
I think there's a lot of different approaches you can take on this one.
Our philosophy on it is indeed that we believe in creating a culture where people are trusted.
We think it makes this a more pleasant place to work for our top performers, which is really the cohort that we we are most focused on the contention around sort of work from home and work from office.
I think there's a few different considerations in there, only one of which is trust, right? Because even before you get there, there's this question of the environments in which people are most productive, irrespective of whether or not you trust them.
It's just which environment you place them in. Are they going to do their best work?
Certainly, we found that there was a good chunk of our team that we hired to work in the office.
And when we moved to fully remote, they were no longer great fits for that model.
We tended to hire a lot of folks who thrived in loud, high-energy environments.

[12:21] Where there was a gong ringing every five seconds.
And it was fun. I love that environment. I love being in it.
We also had team members who actually hated that environment.
And we knew who they were because they were constantly complaining about the noise. It's too loud. I can't focus on my calls.
They tend to be very process-oriented people, not the traditional extrovert.

[12:40] Sales-type personality you would expect, but actually very effective salespeople.
They're very process-focused and constantly focused on sort of tweaking the process and testing it.
And so we did find we had to hire a different persona, for sure, at home, or focus on a different persona than we did in the office.
And then second to that, obviously, it is true that when you're in an office, you can look over someone's shoulder, you can see what they're working on.

[13:03] The perspective we've arrived at is basically to give people a lot of leniency

Balancing Trust and Accountability in Remote Work


[13:08] and trust, but also to be very quick to take that back when we have a reason to.
So what I mean by that is, I would say on balance, we probably give people more leniency from day one on the job.
We sort of start from the default that you can be trusted, but we are also probably quicker to make cuts when we find that trust is being violated than a lot of other organizations might be. Our viewpoint is that we should be optimizing for, again, what is the...
Most comfortable and most productive work environment for people who are performing the best, not focused on designing rules and regulations for the 10% or 20% of people who cannot be trusted, right?
So it all depends on the stance you take, but that's our viewpoint.
I love it. And I am actually one of those people back in a previous career, casual Fridays got implemented.
And I came in on the first day like jeans and a logo polo.
I was still professional and I sat at my desk, I'm like, I'm going to be on Facebook for eight hours because I don't feel like I'm at work. Same thing with home.

[14:12] If it's work from home, it's like I got 70 things to be distracted by.
I love that you identified the fact that you do have two different types of individuals and you're there to support both of them.
Something else that you shared is you are focused on your top performers.

Focusing on Supporting Top Performers in Sales Organizations


[14:28] Tell us more about that because too often we get sales leaders who are like, I got to bring the bottom up. It's like, no, they're there by choice.
Tell us more about why you focus on your top performers and supporting them as opposed to the other way around.
Yes. What I really mean in this context is and maybe top performance is a misnomer.
It's really that I think there are a lot of sales organizations that spend a lot of organizations generally and probably spend 80 or 90 percent of their time focused on the 10 or 20 percent of their problem children.
That's really the mentality, I think, that is dangerous for a sales leader, because it sucks up a huge amount of time, huge amount of emotional energy.

[15:10] And one of my colleagues has done a really good job of articulating this internally, like, you are actually not doing right by the other team members that deserve your attention, just as much as people who are not performing, your top performers deserve your attention, deserve your coaching, and in general, deserve the the same level of care as everybody else.
So I think it's probably less a emphasis on like, spend all your time on the top 10 or 20% and more.

[15:36] Make sure that your attention is divided, even if organizations generally have probably spent 80 or 90% of their time focused on the 10 or 20% of their probable children.
And when I talk about policies and rules and regulations, I think a big part of it is when you design those things around and you assume the best in people, And I think there's a quote to this effect that, you know, you should treat people as how you hope they would be, and they will become that way, right?
And I think it's a lot of that. It's focusing on creating an environment where people are treated as though they are top performers, or they are capable of becoming top performers.
Because in general, we find our team members enjoy working in that environment more than they would in an environment where everybody is treated as though they can't be trusted. But.
Yeah, absolutely. For the leaders that we're working with, we say, coach your A's because otherwise the A's feel like they're getting taken for granted, they're going to leave. Let the C's go.
Give them the insights into how they can move up. And if they're so new, onboard them effectively.
And then help the B's understand what it takes to become an A.
And then the ones who self-select, awesome, they can go be more successful elsewhere.
That's That's absolutely okay in my opinion.
So Jeremy, something else that I'm curious about is building this really cohesive team culture because again, you went from fully in-person to fully remote and.

Building a Cohesive Team Culture in Remote Work Environments


[17:02] You are looking for people who probably don't have a lot of experience.
They get told no way more often than they get told yes.
What are some of the things that you and your fellow leaders have done to really create a cohesive team at Bandelier?
I would say the first and probably the most important thing we did is we created a culture that was really center.

[17:24] We, I think, made it clear that our values as an organization were front and center.
And the way we do that is we have centered actually our entire company culture around this idea of Kaizen or the principle of continuous improvement.
Actually, it's a principle that originates in manufacturing.
And we try to wrap that into everything we do.
So literally from day one, one of the first meetings, I just did one of these earlier this week, that new hires attend is a meeting with me where I talk about exactly how we arrived at that as our core value and how we put it into practice, or how we try to put it into practice every day at Bandolier.
And I emphasize that because I think a lot of organizations, and it always kills me, you know, they'll have these like, 10 letter acronyms of what their values are, it's meant to like spell something or something like that. And you find half the team members.
Can't remember it. Six months. I always ask team members like, can you tell me what the values were at your last organization?
And you sort of get this like laundry list of trite or this laundry list of sort of cliches.

[18:28] And so we really want people to understand like Kaizen is something that we are willing to sacrifice for in a way another company might not be.
What does that mean? It means that when we look at who to promote, we're not just looking at who's delivering the most output, we're actually looking at who's improved the most and who's helped the team around them improve the most, right?
Who has that sort of focus on on the bigger picture?

[18:51] Um, so that's that's one. I think it's really important to kind of have everyone have a common understanding of the reason your company exists.
Like, why are we here in the world? Why are we coming to work every day?
But then, like, what is our constitution as a company? Like, what is what guides the decision making here?

Cultivating a Culture of Celebration and Transparency


[19:05] And then within sales, obviously, there's a whole bunch of little things culturally that I think are really important. So creating, particularly remotely, a culture of celebration, I think, has been hugely important for us.
Like we try to do that in Slack, we try to do it in daily stand ups and end of week meetings that the whole company attends where people are giving each other shout outs.
And I think one of the interesting things you learn psychologically when you've been doing this for a while is how important that type of recognition actually is.
Yeah, I think it gets taken for granted a lot. And there's a huge emphasis on commission plans, which makes sense.
I mean, obviously, how people get compensated is important. But actually, we found that like having people feel valued in their work is maybe as important as commission plans.
So I think that culture is really important.
And then a culture of just transparency and feedback is critical, especially in a real environment, right? Because people aren't.
Necessarily getting that informal feedback that they might have in the office where someone's next to them saying, hey, I heard you do that on a call.
You really need to create space, formal time for call reviews, formal time for people to get that feedback.
Love it. There's a format that I wrote about years ago called the best meeting of the week. And best is an acronym. And the B is brag.

[20:20] You can brag on anybody. And especially when we're going through times of change, we need to celebrate those small wins.
Because after a while, we just give up because it seems too overwhelming.
And there's plenty of data out there about studies done with like rats and how long they'll swim before they finally just give up and drown.
And there's some other horrible examples in these studies for some reason.
But ultimately it's about if you're encouraged, right? If you continue to get celebrated, if you continue to recognize that you are making progress, that you will continue to deliver it at a high level.
So I love the fact that at Bandelier you take the time to celebrate.
And that's actually one of my foundational values is celebration.
So, absolutely aligned with you on that.
Jeremy, we could talk for hours on this stuff. I absolutely am digging what you're sharing with us today.

Coaching Younger Self: Taking Bigger Swings and Embracing Learning


[21:06] I am curious if you could go back and coach your younger self.
You've had a great career already.
You've probably got some scar tissue and some bumps and bruises.

[21:15] And if you don't, you're a unicorn. Well, because otherwise you're a unicorn and I haven't met one of those yet.
And so, you go back and coach younger Jeremy. Go back as far as you like and go, hey, younger Jeremy, you're going to have this great company. It's called Bandolier.
You're going to have done all these amazing things. You're also going to have a lot of scar tissue and bumps and bruises.
What do you coach younger Jeremy to say or do differently to get to the same place but with fewer bumps and bruises?
Oh, interesting. Because the first part of your question I knew was coming about how would you coach yourself.
But with less bumps and bruises is an interesting caveat.
I think though the answer is probably the same.
Which is honestly, I think I would have coached myself to just be less afraid in general and probably to take bigger swings.
Which is an ironic answer to the question, how do you arrive with less bumps and bruises?
But I think part of the reason for that is what you find after a while running a business is that if you do things too conservatively, you wind up with the same bumps and bruises you would have otherwise.
There's just more of them over a more extended period of time than if you had taken marginally more risk earlier on.
But I also mean that in a broader sense. And.
From a career standpoint. I think people tend to enter their careers, I certainly did, with a very specific linear path of how they think things are going to progress and what title they should have by what age.

[22:36] And one of the things I think you learn after doing this for a while is that stuff actually pales in importance to how much you are learning at each of those stages, which sounds like a cliche.
I think the key point is that, you know, when you take bigger risks in your career, that might set you back, run the risk of taking you down on that career ladder, a peg or whatever the case might be, you actually wind up learning more.
And that learning helps you accelerate your curve in the long term.
So, you know, if I look back, taking on different roles at work, even if I wouldn't necessarily have had the same level of seniority, trying out different paths.
I think those kinds of things, especially early on in your career, are really important rather than paying attention to the rat race of how quickly and how far am I advancing on this specific path.
Fair enough. Love that answer. And speaking of learning and one of your values being Kaizen, continuous improvement, what have you watched, listened to, read, whether it's recently or something that's stuck with you forever that you'd like the audience to check out for their own development?
Depends a little bit on what topic you're interested in when it comes to entrepreneurship and building businesses.

[23:49] I think some of the best books I've read on entrepreneurship that Ben Horowitz books, specifically hard thing about hard things, I think is terrific.
Yes. And I wish I'd actually read it more times.
As I was building a business, the journey Phil Knight took, which has become a Nike, which has become popularized through the movie, but I definitely encourage you to see the movie to go read the book, uh, shoot dog about his entire journey, because I think the thing that really gets reinforced there is the level of persistence it takes to build something like that.
And the understanding that five, six, seven years in, he wasn't that far along, right? Like it really, really took a while.

[24:31] And I remember talking to a friend about it, and he's like, this is a startup that took 12 years to get anywhere? Like, what in the world?
So I think that book's really important for entrepreneurs reinforcing that.
When it comes to sales skills, at Bandelier, we've always been big fans of John Barrow's sales classes.
And really, I think the approach he takes to sales, viewing sales as the best profession when it's done right, as he says, and the worst profession when it's done wrong is something we've always really, really admired.
These days, obviously, a big area of focus for us is AI in sales.

Exploring AI roleplay tools for sales interactions


[25:06] We just got introduced through a cold email, actually, I still respond to those sometimes, to a platform called CoachPX, which I'm really digging.
It gives you a virtual roleplay tool where you can actually basically build an AI, conversational AI to interact with your team members and act as a really difficult customer, act as a really difficult prospect.
We're having a lot of fun playing around with that.
And there's a lot of great content, probably on AI and sales.
I know Jake Dunlap's done a lot of really good stuff there.
And so, yeah, there's so much great content, but that's just some of the pieces that stand out to me.
Very cool. We'll certainly put links to all those in the show notes.
I'm actually involved in doing AI avatar because I love role play.
I could do role play all day long.
It's absolutely incredible. So, Jeremy, last question for you.
Closing thought, bit of wisdom, something to plug. The floor is yours.
Yes. Before I do that, apologies.
There's one other thing I really should mention, which is Mark Roberge's book on how they built the sales team at HubSpot has been a big inspiration to us as we built out our interview framework.
A lot of our ideas around how to build that are borrowed from him.
So to the extent the interview and analysis piece of this are interesting, we definitely recommend checking out his book.

[26:21] In terms of a plug, I mean, And of course, I hope that if folks are interested.

Building unique sales teams and upcoming product offerings


[26:25] In building an inside sales or customer-facing organization that they will reach out to us, reach out to me. I'm at jeremy at bandolier.co.
We build teams that I think are pretty unique in the sense that they really act like extensions of your in-house organization.

[26:42] And we're planning to release a few new product offerings over the course of the next three to six months, more of the sales ops variety that we're really excited about. So stay tuned for that.
And if you're interested in building your career in sales or just want to have a chat with please don't hesitate to reach out. We're pretty much always hiring.
Love it. Awesome. Jeremy, I have learned a ton from you today.
I look forward to connecting with you offline again.
Thanks for being a guest on Full Funnel Freedom. Thank you, Hamish. Great being here.
Sales leaders, what an amazing conversation with Jeremy today.
I learned a ton. I love his energy.
Several takeaways for me. The number one thing that stood out, something he said early on, is this idea of finding individuals who are both resilient and coachable, which sounds like a complete dichotomy.
However, from my experience, those are the most successful people in our revenue generating teams, especially those who are at the top of the funnel because they're gonna hear no way more than they hear yes.
And they need to be able to make those 99 calls, get the no, and then make that 100th call and get a, yeah, I'll have a conversation with you.
I also really loved his idea of marrying interview data with performance data.
And it sounds like you had to go find a custom solution to make that work and that ultimately...
Feeds into how do we support our team members on a long-term, ongoing basis.

[28:03] I know that through my work with the clients that I support, we also bring into their diagnostics, their personality profiles, their behavioral assessments, things like that.
We can make sure that we have a holistic view of this person and how we can take them from, hi, nice to meet you, let's interview for this position to, hey, you've been on the team for X number of years and you've continually grown and progressed and we're looking and to continue supporting you for as long as you wanna be here.
And the last thing that I wanna share as part of this summary is the default to trust. Jim Collins says, lead with trust.
I love that idea. Unfortunately, it's got my heart broken a couple of times or more than a couple.
However, when we default with trust to our team members, we are theoretically inspiring them to be that vision of themselves that we believe in.
And it's a bit of a test case, because if we default to trust and our team member breaks that trust, it doesn't mean that they're gonna be out on the street again.
However, by defaulting to trust, we give them the chance to prove themselves in either direction, whether that's not a good fit or a good fit.
And either way, the ones that we really want on our team long-term are going to stick around long-term.
Let me know what your big takeaways were in the comments and until we connect on the next episode, go create Full Funnel of Freedom.

Support and Connect with the Full Funnel of Freedom Podcast


[29:30] Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Full Funnel of Freedom podcast.
You can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating, sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about.
I'd love to connect with you. I'm easy to find, Hamish Knox on LinkedIn.
Also, if you'd like a free 15-minute call with me, go to www.hamish.sandler.com, forward, slash, howtosandler. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[30:02] Music.