Sahil Mansuri

Bravado

Bravado is the world's largest professional network for sales. 

450,000 Members trust Bravado as the place to level up their sales skills, grow their careers, and find their next role.

Seufferlein Sales Program (SSP) at CSU, Chico

Board Member

Collective

Collective is the first online back-office platform designed for self-employed people.

Investor

Accord

Accord is a customer-facing project management platform, built for B2B sales. It’s like Asana, Trello, or Atlassian, but uniquely client-facing, so that buyers & sellers can stay on the same page and close deals faster.

Investor + Advisor

regie.ai

Regie automatically writes sales + marketing copy that converts.

Atticus

Finding a trusted lawyer is impossible, as I learned when I was hit by a drunk driver and put into the hospital. Atticus solves this problem elegantly and builds trust between attorneys <> clients.

Eureka Investment

Eureka enables any individual, experienced or beginner, to be a successful real estate investor.

Raaka Chocolate

Expa

Helping Expa companies with fundraising, product design, and go to market / sales strategy.

Entrepreneur In Residence (2016), Advisor (2017 - present)

SalesPredict

Update: On July 11, 2016 - SalesPredict was acquired by eBay.

Responsibilities:
- Product vision and roadmap
- Go-to-market strategy, sales enablement, competitive analysis, thought leadership content, and product launches.
- Media relations, investor relations, and Product Advisory Committee
- Work cross-functionally with sales, engineering, data science, and marketing. 
- Engage stakeholders to align on clear, actionable product strategy and priorities

Vice President, Product Marketing

Join the largest community for sales professionals: bravado.co

You can't pour from an empty kettle. 🫖 

I hadn't taken more than 4 days off from Bravado since Dec 2022. And it was starting to wear on me.

My fuse was shorter.
I didn't find joy in the small things.
My view was short-term oriented.

9 days of sunshine, family, swimming in the ocean at sunrise, golf, hiking, and endless poke later, I feel like a new man.

No amount of therapy, drugs, self-help gurus, etc can compete with the clarity of jumping into the ocean for a few mornings in a row.

WFH vs. RTO - Here's what nobody seems to understand:

There is nothing (and I do mean, nothing) that can replicate the power and energy of working together in an office. I don't know any high performing Founders, Executive, Employee, etc. who actually thinks they are more productive sitting at home vs. being in an office with their colleagues. 

It's a lot more fun. 
It's a lot more energy.
It's more collaborative. 
Etc.

But that isn't the tradeoff anyone is making. The tradeoff you're making is around talent pool. 

Bravado's Executive Team lives in the following places:

- SF
- Austin
- Seattle
- San Diego
- NYC
- Tampa

Our exec team is ridiculously strong. There's no chance I would be able to replace them like-for-like if I tried to rehire all of these positions in SF. I would have to:

- Lower the bar
- Spend quarters recruiting
- Likely overpay 
- All of the above

THAT is the real advantage to WFH. Bravado gets a much higher quality exec team because we can literally recruit from everywhere. That in turn leads to higher quality decisions and better business outcomes. 

Is it enough to replace the energy / collab / joy of the office? Time will tell. But I feel confident we're making the right decision, even if it sucks that we only get to hang IRL a few times a year. 

Sales Recruiting Fails #2: Caring wayyyy too much about previous employers 🚩🚩

"Find me someone who has sold at Figma or Notion"

VCs, First time Founders and VPs of Recruiting always overindex on whether a candidate has sold at a successful company in the past. 

"We want someone who has seen greatness before at a company like Brex or Ramp"

There are a multitude of reasons why this makes no sense:

1. Your company isn't Figma or Notion. In fact, it's not even close. The delusions of grandeur (see yesterday's post) are misleading you into thinking you should hire from a multibillion dollar, once in a geveration startup. But even if you manage to convince those people to join, they will soon realize your company isn't even close to the same level of PMF and bounce. 

2. Selling Figma or Notion is wayyyyy easier than selling your RandomPOSaaS Co. Like 100000000x easier. The people who show up from these companies often (not always) lack the hustle, drive, creativity, and willpower to bring your company to an unwilling market. 

3. Salespeople do not get a company to PMF. They take a company with PMF and accelerate its revenue. Hiring from Brex and Ramp isn't gonna magically solve your revenue challenges because your real problem is often: your product and marketing suck.

==

Now, that isn't to say that previous experience carries no importance. There are some real advantages if your new rep or leader:

- Has sold a similar product 
- Sold to the same ICP 
- Sold a similar average deal size 
- Sold a similar complexity of product 

These types of factors shorten ramp, bring valuable experience and Rolodex to the table, and often leads to more success.

But thinking that hiring someone from an ultra successful company is going to make your own startup ultra successful is lazy and reductive. 

It also literally never works.

Tomorrow, we dive into #3: Job Hoppiness 🚩🚩🚩

Sales Recruiting Fails #3: Job Hoppiness 🚩🚩🚩

This is the 3rd rail of sales hiring, as both sides have deeply entrenched opinions:

Hiring Managers: If you have more than one <18 month stint, we are deeply suspicious / will not even consider you for a role. No job hoppers!

Candidates: There are a multitude of reasons why I might have short stints. Many of these have nothing to do with my own skill or performance. Examples: Layoffs, Mismanagement by exec team, lack of PMF, fraud, acquisition, changing GTM strategy, etc.

Hiring Managers: Yeah, but companies never let go of their top performers. So even if they changed strategy or had layoffs, they would have kept you if you were actually good.

Candidates: That's completely false. I don't waste my time at crappy companies led by crappy leaders building a crappy product. Don't punish me for my ambition.

HM: Nuh-uh! 🫡

C: Yeah-huh!😒

/scene

==

The reality is, as always, nuanced. 

I tend to agree that candidates with multiple job hops are typically average or below average. And that great performers often do stay at a company for a long time. We certainly do everything we can to hold onto those who are truly exceptional at Bravado.

But there are plenty of people with long stints who are terrible, right? And I know plenty of salespeople who had jumped until they found the right place, where they thrived.

So using any blanket rule like "no job hops" is often just reductive and lazy. Better is to dig into the why and give people a chance.

Over the past 3 months, we've helped 100+ companies hire for their sales team. 

Here are the 5 biggest mistakes candidates and companies are making in the recruiting process.

Sales Recruiting Fail #1: Delusions of Grandeur 🚩 

CEOs, VPs of Sales, and Recruiting leaders are often completely out of touch with the reality of how attractive (or rather, unattractive) their company is. They act like they are the LA Lakers ... when in reality they are the Washington Wizards.

Phrases like "anyone would be crazy not to join this rocketship!" or "if they aren't 100% sold on us after the first call, it's never gonna work out" get routinely thrown around. Candidates are expected to prostrate themselves in deference to how awe-inspiring your SaaS tool is.

And what ends up happening is: these companies struggle to hire seasoned, thoughtful ICs and leaders, being relegated into only recruiting from a pool of junior, unsavvy reps who lack the experience of having seen this charade before. 

Look, as a Founder myself I understand the power of reality distortion and how important it is to believe irrationally in your own success. But imposing that expectation onto a candidate is a recipe for disaster.

Come back tomorrow for Fail #2: Overindexing on previous employers

Who is a sales leader that made a massive difference in your career .... but never, ever posts on LinkedIn??

I wanna meet them. 

Tag in comments / explain why they are the best.

Here's a list of every golfer who has a chance to win the Masters.

Bet accordingly.

Who is the smartest / most-forward thinking VP Sales or CRO in Austin? 

I wanna invite them to a private tasting menu next week. Only 2 seats left. Tag / comment please.

Don't let "thought leaders" on LinkedIn sharing "post-ZIRP" metrics fool you.

There are entrepreneurs building insanely fast growing, successful businesses. These are the ones that are being funded today. 

Just because your company isn't showing explosive growth... doesn't mean your competitors aren't.

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