🇫🇷 SaaS Startup Sales Team Leader - I help tech entrepreneurs find clients IRL (in-real-life) 🌍 | Follow me to turn fans into valuable clients👇

👋 I’m Jeremie, looks like you’re curious to know more about me?

My story in a nutshell:

- Hi-tech and science is what drives me since childhood and I believe it can make the world a better place (am I naive ☮️ ✌🏾?)
- I learnt a lot about innovation & new business development through  10 years in strategy consulting, and innovation centres of multinationals 🌎
- But I realised i still knew nothing when I founded my own startup, Cyclopus back in 2018. Building an innovative and successful product is tough ! 🔨🤯
- Since then, I decided to focus on Sales & Business development to help hi-tech startups reach product/market fit and grow their client portfolio

📈 since 2019, as a Senior Account Executive at Linkurious (50p fintech), I played a pivotal role in the company's transformation. From 2021, I was Sales Team Leader to launch the outbound channel and transform direct sales.

End of 2023 I've had hit pause on my career ⏸️ for a few months to deal with a personal event. Today I look for the next opportunity to help tech startups (pre series A/B) grow their business in France / UK / Spain (EMEA). 
In the meantime I give a hand to entrepreneurs who need a hand signing their first deals ✍🏽

What you’ll get by following me: 
🚀 Actionable tips to grow a profitable SaaS business

🔥 Clear and practical guidance, no fluff

💼 Exclusive updates on B2B SaaS companies

I’ll be posting B2B growth tips and tricks - so click my “Follow” button!


keywords: startup, innovation, sales development, account executive, outbound sales, growth, b2b sales

Jeremie Abou

Building Winning Sales Team By Recruiting Top Sales Talent

🚀 I’ve spent the last 5+ years obsessed with one thing: helping companies build sales teams that actually win through specialized sales recruiting.

🔥 Before founding Jayce Grayye Consulting & Recruiting, I was in the trenches leading sales teams, hiring closers, and learning firsthand how expensive the wrong hire really is. I built my sales recruiting firm to take that pain off your plate and make sure every new hire is a revenue driver, not a liability.

🏢 Today my team and I have placed more than 1,000 sales professionals across SaaS, tech, and high-growth startups, with an average fill time of 21 days or less. We deliver killers who ramp fast, close hard, and stick.

We work with growth-stage and enterprise companies who understand that A-players pay for themselves. If you’re looking for a sales recruiting agency that moves fast and delivers, you’re in the right place.

📋 Recent wins:
✅ Placed a COO in under 3 weeks
✅ Built an SDR team of 4 in one shot
✅ Delivered multiple VPs of Sales and Account Executives for scaling SaaS companies

⚡ What makes us different is simple. We don’t push paper. We don’t sling resumes. We build revenue machines by finding the right sales talent, fast. Data-driven recruiting + relentless focus on results = teams that dominate.

🔥 If you’re scaling and need closers who bring the fire, this is where you come to win. Let’s talk:

👉 buildawinningsalesteam.com

Jayce Grayye

The difference between a $400k rep and a $1M rep isn’t skill.

It’s not territory, the product, or even luck.

Here’s what actually separates them.

The $400k rep works the pipeline they have.
The $1M rep obsesses over the pipeline they’re building.

The $400k rep follows up twice, then moves on.
The $1M rep follows up until they get a yes or a definitive no, and they’re fine with either.

The $400k rep knows their pitch cold.
The $1M rep knows their prospect’s business well enough to write the pitch for them.

The $400k rep treats a closed deal like a finish line.
The $1M rep treats it like an opening, who else in that org needs this?

The $400k rep goes home when they hit quota.
The $1M rep goes home when they’ve maxed the day.

None of this is talent.

It’s standard.

The standard you set for yourself when no one’s watching.
The calls you make when you’re already at 100%.
The follow-through that happens after every other rep has clocked out.

The gap between good and great in sales isn’t a skill gap.
It’s a standard gap.

And you can’t train someone to raise their standard.
They either have it or they’re building it.

I Build Winning Sales Teams By Recruiting Million-Dollar Producers in 21 Days or Less | Featured On Forbes | Follow for No-BS Sales Hiring Advice

Stop hiring for these things.

They don’t predict sales performance.

Years of experience:

I’ve placed reps with 2 years of experience who outperformed 15-year veterans. Experience tells you what someone has done. It tells you nothing about what they’ll do for you.

Prestigious company names on the resume.
Big companies give reps big territories, big brand recognition, and big support teams. Take all of that away and see what happens. Plenty don’t survive the transition.

“Polished” interview presence:

Some of the best closers I know are awkward in interviews. They’re not performing for you, they perform for prospects. Stop confusing interview polish with sales ability.

Industry experience:

“They need to know our space.” No. They need to know how to sell. Product knowledge takes 30 days. Hunger takes a lifetime to build.

A great LinkedIn profile:

I don’t care how well they brand themselves online. I care how they handle a prospect who’s gone cold for 45 days with $80k on the table.

Here’s what actually predicts performance:

What they do when a deal falls apart.

How they talk about the rep who outsold them.

Whether they ask better questions at the end of the interview than you asked at the beginning.

Stop screening for signals that feel safe.

Start screening for signals that are real.

"We can't afford a top sales rep right now."

You just raised a seed round.

Sit down.

Same founder with the same excuse. 

Same empty pipeline six months later.

Let me translate that sentence:

"We'd rather stay broke than invest in the person who stops us from being broke."

Here's the math nobody wants to do:

A mediocre rep at $60k who closes nothing costs you $60k.

A killer rep at $120k who closes $800k in new revenue costs you $120k.

One of those is an expense.

The other is a money printer.

The founders who can't afford top talent are usually the same founders who:

→ Spend $40k on a rebrand nobody asked for.
→ Fly business class to a conference with zero pipeline.
→ Hire three junior reps instead of one senior one.

You don't have a budget problem.

You have a priority problem.

Revenue fixes everything. 

But only if you hire someone who can actually create it.

The best investment a founder can make isn't software.

It isn't marketing.

It's the person who can walk into any room and come out with a signed deal.

The best reps don't cost you money.

They print it.

Start acting like you know the difference.

Founders, what's the hire that changed everything for you?

A founder called me last week, ready to hire.

We got on the phone. Energy was good. They had a budget. They were serious.

Then we got to compensation.

I told him the truth: mid-market account executives right now are running 130 to 150k base.

He lost it.

Got defensive. Got rude. Hung up.

And honestly? Best outcome possible.

Here’s what that call actually was:

A test.
A test of whether I’d lower my standards to land a client.

Whether I’d pretend the market was something different than what it actually is.

Whether I’d compromise who I work with to make a number happen.

I didn’t.

And here’s the thing nobody says out loud in recruiting:

The clients you turn away are just as important as the ones you take.

The ones who get upset when you tell them the truth about the market?

They’re the same ones who’ll blame you when they can’t attract talent at penny-on-the-dollar pricing.

They’re the ones who’ll demand you do the impossible because they refused to do what’s realistic.

I could’ve softened it. 
Could’ve said “let me see what I can find.” 
Could’ve strung him along hoping he’d come around.

Instead I just told him what the market actually pays.

And he chose to hang up rather than adjust.
That’s not my problem to solve.

Your standards aren’t negotiable just because someone gets upset about them.

The right clients? They respect you more for having them.

The wrong ones? They were never going to work anyway.

You just found out faster.

💬 When’s the last time you turned down a client or opportunity because it didn’t align with your standards?

Building Winning Sales Teams By Recruiting Million-Dollar Producers | Featured On Forbes

Your sales rep isn’t the bottleneck.

You are.

I know that’s hard to hear.

But I’ve seen this pattern in enough companies to say it out loud:

The founder is so involved in the sales process that the rep can’t actually do their job.

Every proposal needs your approval.
Every pricing conversation needs your input.
Every deal above a certain size needs you on the call.

You’re not supporting your rep.

You’re replacing them.

And then you wonder why they’re not performing.

They’re not performing because every time they build momentum, they hit a wall called “waiting on the founder.”

Prospects lose interest.
Deals go cold.
Reps get frustrated.

Here’s what I’ve seen work instead:

Set the guardrails once. Then get out of the way.

Define the pricing boundaries. Define the personas they can close without you. Define the scenarios that actually require escalation.

Then trust the person you hired to do the job you hired them to do.

The founders who scale fastest aren’t the best salespeople in the room.
They’re the ones who built a sales process that runs without them.

That’s the goal.

💬 At what point did you stop being the bottleneck in your own sales process?

Some people grind seven days a week.

I used to be one of them.

Turns out the business didn’t fall apart without me for a few hours.

It never does.

Sundays belong to me now.

Just the range, some fresh air, and a swing I’m still figuring out.

People think the ones who win are the ones who never stop.

Those people are exhausted.

The best thing I do for my business every week isn’t a strategy session.

It’s this.

Step away, clear your head and come back ready.

Rest isn’t laziness.

It’s the move nobody talks about.

Happy Sunday everyone. ⛳

No alternative text description for this image

“Fired my SDRs. Replaced them with AI. Revenue up 40%.”

I keep seeing this same post recycled every week now.

Founders celebrating, reps are panicking.

And a few people in the comments calling B.S.

Those last ones are onto something.

Here’s the truth nobody’s saying out loud:

Companies aren’t replacing their sales teams with AI.

They’re using AI as an excuse to stop hiring average ones.

Fewer reps.
Higher bar.

Bigger paychecks for the ones who make the cut.

The SDR who just dials and pitches a script?

That role is dying. Slowly but surely.

The SDR who thinks, builds relationships, and uses AI to do it faster?

That person just became the most valuable hire in the building.

And here’s the part that should end half these conversations immediately:

The FTC banned AI and robotic outbound calling.
So before you fire your team and hand the phones to a bot you might want to google that first.

And the real kicker?

Every company out here posting about replacing humans with AI?

Currently hiring sales reps.
Every. Single. One.

Because nobody at the enterprise level is closing a six figure deal with a robot.

They want a human, you know someone they will like, know and trust. 

Someone who listens. Adjusts. Gives a damn.

You can’t automate that.

AI didn’t kill the SDR.

It just made mediocre ones impossible to hide.

💬 Are the companies pushing “AI replaces SDRs” the same ones quietly posting sales job listings? Go check. I’ll wait.

A founder almost left $700k on the table.

Because a candidate was 26.

I heard it in July.

"She's 26. I need someone with more experience."

I pushed back.

"Tell me one thing about her track record that concerns you."

He paused.

"Nothing. The numbers are great. She just seems… young."

She'd been a top-5 rep at her last company for two consecutive years.

Average deal size $40k.

Promoted to lead a pod of three at 24.

Young + Ambitous.

I said: "Give me one reason her age affects her ability to close your deals."

He couldn't.

We moved forward.

She's been in seat for eight months.

$700k closed.

Highest average deal size on the team.

Two of her clients have expanded into new product lines.

Last month, the founder called me.

"I can't believe I almost passed on her."

I know.

Here's what that story is really about:

Bias in hiring doesn't always look like bias.

Sometimes it looks like "I just think we need someone more seasoned."

Sometimes it looks like "I'd feel better with someone who's been in the industry longer."

Sometimes it looks like a gut feeling that's actually just pattern-matching on the wrong things.

The best hire for your next stage of growth might not look like what you expect.

That's kind of the point.

What assumption almost made you pass on a great hire?

A mentor told me something I didn’t want to hear.

“You’re playing small.”

I’d just walked her through everything I was building.

The clients. The placements. The momentum.

I thought she’d be impressed.

She wasn’t.

“You’re solving problems for people who already found you. You’re not going after the ones who need you most.”

I sat with that for a week.

Because she was right.

I was comfortable.

Comfortable with the clients I had.
Comfortable with the referrals coming in.
Comfortable with the version of the business that didn’t require me to push.

And comfortable was making me average.

The version of my business I was building in my head, the one that actually makes a dent, required me to do things that felt uncomfortable.

Cold outreach to founders I admired.
Saying no to clients who weren’t the right fit.
Charging what my work was actually worth.

I did all three within a month of that conversation.

Business changed immediately.

Not because I got smarter.
Because I got honest about where I was holding back.

The most expensive thing in your business might not be a bad hire.
It might be your own comfort zone.

💬 What’s the uncomfortable move you’ve been avoiding that you already know you need to make?

It’s Sunday.

I am not thinking about pipelines.

I am not thinking about comp plans.

I am not thinking about the founder who hung up on me last week.

(Okay maybe a little bit about that one.)

But mostly?

I’m doing absolutely nothing that requires a calendar invite.

And I’m calling that a win.

To every recruiter, founder, and sales rep reading this on their day off:

Put the phone down.

The deals will still be there Monday.

The pipeline will still need filling Monday.

The inbox will absolutely not have fixed itself by Monday.

But you’ll be sharper for having ignored all of it today.

Rest is a strategy too.

A wildly underrated one.

Happy Sunday.

I Build Winning Sales Teams By Recruiting Million-Dollar Producers in 21 Days or Less | Featured On Forbes | Book a Call Below

Your resume got you the interview.

These six things will get you the job.

And most candidates don’t have them.

I’ve placed people with half the experience who outperformed 15-year veterans.

Same six traits every single time:

1. Confidence

Not arrogance. The ability to walk into a room and know you belong there.

Employers want someone who doesn’t apologize for existing.

2. Discipline

The person who does the boring thing every single day.

When nobody’s watching. When it’s hard.
That’s the hire.

3. Coachable

You can teach someone skills, but you can’t teach them to listen, to adjust, or to admit when they’re wrong.

If they can’t do that, experience doesn’t matter.
	
4. Stress Tolerance

The deal falls apart. The client goes silent. The quarter is half over and the pipeline is dry.

Some people fold. Some people lock in.
Employers want the second one.

5. Patience

Not passivity. The ability to work a deal, work a relationship, work the process without panicking.
Most people quit right before it opens.

6. Emotional Intelligence

Reading the room. Understanding what someone needs before they say it. Knowing when to push and when to back off.

This is what separates okay hires from great ones.

Here’s what a hiring manager is actually looking for:

All six of these in one person.

The candidate with half your experience who has them all?

They’re getting hired.

The candidate with 15 years who has none?

They’re a problem waiting to happen.

Experience is a line on paper.

These six traits are a career.

Stop competing on years.

Start building on traits.

Follow for No-BS Sales Hiring Tips That Actually Work

Which of these six traits do you think is the hardest to find in a candidate?

Four bad hires in two years.

He came to me after the fourth.

Not angry. Not frantic.

Just tired.

The kind of tired that comes from doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” he said.

I asked him to walk me through his last hire.

He posted the role. Got 200 applications. Picked the one with the best resume.
Did three rounds of interviews. Checked references. Hired.

Textbook process.
Textbook result.

Mediocre rep. No pipeline. Gone in seven months.

Here’s what I told him:

“You’ve been hiring the resume. We need to hire the person.”

We spent two hours building the actual profile.

Not the job description. The person.

What they’ve overcome. How they handle rejection. What they do when a deal goes cold for 60 days and the commission check is nowhere in sight.

We found that person in 18 days.

She’s been in the seat for five months.

Closed $520k.

Pipeline sitting at $1.4M.

And she’s just getting started.

Same founder. Same business. Same market.

Different hire.

That’s the whole game.

💬 How many hires did it take before you found the one that actually changed things?

My first sales job paid me $11 an hour.

A list of names and a phone.

Cold calling past customers with no script.

Working at a car dealership.

Six days a week.

Fourteen hour shifts.

All commission.

They sent me back to the wolves on day one.

“You’re gonna learn from the wolves,” they said.

Told HR manager:

“If they send me to the wolves, I’ll come back leading the pack.”

I was young. Hothead. And absolutely certain nobody was going to outwork me.

I spoke two languages.
Most reps saw that and were intimidated.

I saw it as a way to solve problems for more people.

That’s all I cared about.

Solving the problem.

Within thirty days I closed fifteen cars.

Thirteen new with two used.

Then I didn’t stop.

I dominated it.

But here’s what got me recognized by the general manager wasn’t the numbers.

It was how I treated the customer’s time.

There was this brother and sister who came in looking for a car for their dad’s Christmas gift.

Every other rep passed. Walked away.

Too much work. Not enough commission.

I spent four to five hours with them.

Made calls. Fought with finance. Kept pushing until they got approved.

They drove off the lot in a car their dad didn’t even know was coming.

That’s the job, it’s not about the close, but the actual giving a f**k.

That job paid me $11 an hour.

It gave me something worth infinitely more:

The ability to sit in discomfort and not quit.

The willingness to do the work nobody else would do.

The refusal to take shortcuts with people.

Every rep I’ve placed who’s gone on to do serious numbers?

They have that same thing.

It’s not charisma.

It’s not a perfect pitch.

It’s not natural talent.

It’s showing up when it’s hard.

Staying when others leave.

Caring when caring costs you time.

That’s still the whole job.

What’s the first sales job that taught you something you still use every single day?

Your best rep has already decided to leave.

They just haven’t told you yet.

Most founders find out too late.

These three signals show up weeks before the resignation letter.

1. They stopped volunteering information.
Your best rep used to come to you with ideas, updates, wins they were excited about.

Now they answer what you ask and nothing more.

That shift from proactive to reactive is a red flag.

It means they’ve mentally started interviewing elsewhere.

2. They’re hitting quota but nothing more.
Top performers don’t coast. They compete with themselves.

When a high achiever suddenly becomes “exactly average,” something changed.

Either the work stopped challenging them.

Or the comp plan stopped rewarding them past a certain point.

Either way they’ve made a decision you don’t know about yet.

3. They’re asking questions about career progression. Not because they want to grow with you. Because they’re benchmarking what you offer against what someone else already has.

When a rep starts asking where this role leads in 12 months, it usually means they already have a conversation happening somewhere else.

The best reps don’t leave without signals.

They leave because nobody read the signals.

Follow for No-BS Sales Hiring Tips That Actually Work.

Managers, what sign did you miss before a great rep walked?

The perfect sales hire doesn't exist.

And the six months you spent waiting for them just cost you $500k.

I've been in recruiting long enough to know this:

The candidate with every box ticked, every industry checked, every tool mastered.

Available immediately, willing to work for what you're offering?

They're a unicorn.
And unicorns aren't real.

But here's what's real:

6 months of an empty seat.
6 months of pipeline not moving.
6 months of leads going cold.
6 months of deals your competitor closed because you were still deliberating.

At an average deal size of $40k, that's not a hiring problem.
That's a $500k decision you made by not deciding.

Here's what you actually need:

Someone hungry.
Someone coachable.
Someone with a track record of finding a way to win.

That person will outperform your perfect candidate every single time.
Because production isn't about perfection.
It's about drive.

Stop waiting for the resume that checks every box.

Start looking for the fire that no resume can capture.

The perfect hire isn't the one who looks best on paper.

It's the one who refuses to lose.

And they've been out there this whole time.

While you were waiting for someone better.

How much did your last empty seat actually cost you when you added it all up?

Most founders don't know the difference until it costs them $280,000.

Charisma gets you hired.

Closing skills get you paid.

I had a client in the software space who spent six months trying to fill a sales role.

They hired three charismatic reps.

Great in the interview. Said all the right things. 
Lit up every room they walked into.

90 days later?

$1.1 to $1.3 million in the pipeline.

Zero closed.

All three had to go.

Here's what we did differently when they came to us:

First we built a customized scorecard.

Not a job description. 

A blueprint of exactly what this person needed to bring to the table.

Then in the second round, we went deep.

KPIs. Sales cycles. Deal sizes. Every scenario they'd face in the role.

If they couldn't handle it in the interview, they weren't going to handle it in the field.

Then came the role play.

This is where charisma dies and closing skills live.

You can't fake a role play.

Either you know how to handle the objection or you don't.

Either you can move a deal forward or you can't.

We placed three candidates.

Six months later they generated $3.3 million in the pipeline.

Same company. Same product. Same market.

Different hires.

Charisma fills seats.

Closing skills fill pipelines.

Know the difference before you write the offer letter.

Follow for No-BS Sales Hiring Tips That Actually Work

Have you ever hired someone who interviewed great and produced nothing? What did you miss?

The most powerful man at McDonald's just proved one thing:


You can run a billion-dollar company and still have no idea how to sell it.

By now you've seen the video.

Brand new burger.

Tiniest bite you've ever seen in your life.

Then looks dead into the camera and goes:

"That's a big bite for a Big Arch."

Buddy.

That was not a bite.

That was a kiss on the cheek.

And then, AND THEN, he called it a "product."

Not a burger or a lunch, but a product.

Burger King didn't even wait 24 hours.

Posted their president eating a Whopper with sauce all over his face like a normal person who has eaten food before.

No apron or hesitation.

The internet did what the internet does.

But here's what I keep thinking about:

Your team knows when you don't believe in what you're building.

Your candidates know when a founder is overselling a role they know isn't ready.

Your clients know when you're pushing a placement you're not confident in.

You cannot perform conviction.

It doesn't work on camera.

It doesn't work on a sales call.

It doesn't work in an interview room.

The moment you call your own burger a product, everybody already knows.

Lead with honesty or don't lead at all.

Also, please just eat the burger. 😂

💬 What's the most unconvincing "sell" you've ever watched someone try to pull off?

The meeting where your best rep decided to leave?

You weren’t even in the room.

Nobody quits out of nowhere.

They quit after the fourth time you did one of these things.

1. Moving the target mid-quarter:

Nothing kills momentum like grinding toward a number and having it shifted.

Top performers plan their effort around a goal. Change the goal and you change their trust. Change their trust and you change their commitment.

2. Praising activity over output:

“You made 80 calls this week, great job.”
Meanwhile the rep with 30 calls closed three deals and got nothing.

You train what you reward. Reward the right things.

3. Handling the escalations themselves instead of coaching through them:

Every time a manager jumps in to rescue a deal, they send a message: “I don’t think you can handle this.”

Coach through it, stay on the call, but let them lead.

4. Only showing up when something’s wrong:

If your reps only hear from you when there’s a problem, your presence becomes a bad sign.

Show up when things are good. Celebrate the wins loudly for everyone to notice. And let the coaching happen consistently, not just in crisis.

Your best reps don’t need the best territory.

They need a manager who actually deserves them.

Which of these have you seen most, or been guilty of yourself?

The best candidate I ever interviewed never once tried to impress me.

They didn’t have to.

One came in ready to sell me on why the role mattered to them.

That’s a different person entirely.

And that’s when I realized something.

Everyone says they want a “hungry” candidate.

Nobody can define what hungry looks like in an interview.

Let me fix that.

Hungry doesn’t look like energy.

Plenty of people are high energy and produce nothing.

Hungry doesn’t look like confidence.

Confidence is easy to perform for 45 minutes.

Here’s what hungry actually looks like:

They did research you didn’t ask for.

They know your product, your market, your competitors. Not because it was required. 

Because they couldn’t help themselves.

They talk about losses without being asked.

Comfortable reps talk about wins. 

Hungry reps talk about the deal they lost and what they’d do differently.

They ask about expectations, not perks.

First question about comp structure? Fine. 

But if their first three questions are about quota, territory, and what success looks like in 90 days? 

That’s someone who came to work.

They follow up before you ask them to.

A thank you email within the hour. A note with something specific from the conversation. Small move that equals big signal.

Hunger isn’t loud.

It’s deliberate.

It’s in the preparation.

The questions.

The follow-through.

You’ll know it when you see it.

If you’ve never seen it?

You’re not interviewing the wrong candidates.

You’re asking the wrong questions.

Not every sales rep can sell everything

And hiring like they can is a costly mistake.

Founders and sales leaders constantly pull reps from car sales, solar, or roofing and drop them into B2B environments. 

Then wonder why it fails.

The issue isn't the rep's ability. 

It's the fit.

Before hiring across industries, always check for overlap in these 3 areas:

→ Sales cycle length → Target market → Deal size

Strong overlap? Make the hire. 

Weak overlap? You're setting that rep.

And your pipeline up to fail. 

I've seen it happen too many times where the rep just ends up quitting.

Here's proof the right fit works:

We placed an enterprise SaaS rep into a fintech startup with a 2-month sales cycle. 

By month six, they were at 180% of quota.

The framework is simple. The execution is everything.

taplio

The Battle

Jeremie Abou

Jayce Grayye

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJayce Grayye's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Jeremie Abou

Jayce Grayye

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Jayce Grayye's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJayce Grayye's LinkedIn Performance