Hey, it's Jordana

At the end of 2019, I was stuck in a sales job I hated. The recruiter who placed me had painted this perfect picture of the company and the leadership. I bought in. I dismissed every red flag. And I spent months feeling sick, tired, and frustrated before I figured out what went wrong.

Have you ever hired a salesperson who quit within 90 days because the role was nothing like the interview? Hit reply and I'll share the one question I now ask every candidate to prevent it.

In this week's edition:

Here is something most hiring managers miss. The strongest salespeople on the market are trapped in roles that were misrepresented to them. They are employed, capable, and completely misaligned.

I know because I lived it. At the end of 2019, I was working for a startup I felt completely disconnected from. The COO who brought me in was a data and analytics fanatic and I was not. Every single day I walked into the office, we spent the first hour pouring over Excel sheets and then I spent another hour or more with the analyst.

There were so many issues with the product, pricing, and culture that I did not even know where to start fixing things. The recruiter and the agency that placed me there had presented this utopian workplace and leaders that I bought into and dismissed all of the flags that came up.

I felt sick. And tired. And frustrated. And when I started to apply for everything and anything I saw online, I heard nothing back. So then, I got depressed.

This is your talent pool right now. Experienced, capable salespeople sitting in roles that looked right on paper but feel wrong every day. They have stopped looking. They have stopped scrolling job boards. They are quietly stuck.

If your hiring process is slow, generic, or oversells the role, you will miss them completely. They have already been burned once by a process that skipped the hard truths.

If you are a hiring leader: be radically transparent about the role. Talk about what is hard. Talk about what is broken. The candidates worth hiring will lean in when you tell the truth, because they are desperate for someone who will.

Your sales turnover problem starts with your tech stack
Reps leave at 35% annually and most quit before hitting peak performance at 18 months. New data shows the gap between high and low turnover teams comes down to tooling above all else.

Canada added 18K jobs in June as unemployment dipped to 6.5%
Manufacturing shed 17K roles while services kept hiring. Wages rose 3.3% year over year. If you are planning a sales hire in Q3, this is your market backdrop.

Auvik Networks is a cloud-based network management company growing fast enough to win the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 and Fast 500. When they needed to rapidly expand their sales division with top-tier Account Executives, their HR Manager and VP of Sales came to us.

The challenge was specific: they needed AEs with specialized skills and knowledge from competitive industries, sourced from both Canada and the US, all working remotely.

We cast a wide net. 550 qualified candidates contacted. 367 rigorously screened. The pool narrowed to the top 50. We fully managed the intake process, presented the strongest candidates with detailed debriefing notes, facilitated interviews, and supported salary and contract negotiation through close.

The results:

• 50+ top candidates surfaced in 6 to 8 months
• 100% retention of every hire after one year
• A structured process the Auvik team could repeat

The right candidates existed. They just needed a process designed to find and close them.

Thanks for reading!

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