Prioritizing a candidate's skills ('capacity') over their fit with the team ('chemistry') is a mistake. To scale culture successfully, focus on hiring people who will get along with their colleagues. The ability to collaborate and integrate is more critical for long-term success than a perfect resume.

Moving from transactional to value-led sales is an HR challenge before it's a sales one. It demands hiring new profiles who can translate tech into business language. For existing teams, it's not just about training; it requires a deep assessment of whether current employees have the right skills and are in the right roles for the future.

When a company consistently misses sales goals, the root cause may not be the sales strategy but a failure in the hiring pipeline. A high employee churn rate combined with an inefficient screening process starves the sales team of the necessary manpower to hit its targets.

In a collaborative sales environment, a candidate's ability to be a good teammate is more valuable than their contact list. A difficult personality with a great rolodex can harm team productivity, whereas a collaborative person can be supported in building their own network.

In environments flush with venture capital, sales leaders developed a habit of 'throwing people at the problem' rather than strategically recruiting. This laziness led to hiring mediocre talent ('Cs and Ds'), burning through capital, and creating inefficient sales organizations that struggled when the market tightened.

Where the SDR/BDR team reports has significant cultural and career-pathing consequences. When Snowflake moved SDRs under marketing, they began aspiring to be marketers, not salespeople. This created a hiring bottleneck for the sales organization, which needed that talent pipeline to fuel its growth.

When evaluating sales leaders, prioritize their track record in recruiting above all else. Exceptional leaders are talent magnets who build scalable teams through strong hiring and enablement. Their ability to attract A-players is the foundation of a predictable revenue machine.

When a sales leader consistently fails to attract A-players, it's a vote of no confidence from the talent market. Top performers are signaling they don't believe that leader can advance their careers, which is a major red flag about the leader's own capabilities and future success.

A sales leader's success is determined less by personal sales ability and more by their capacity to attract a core team of proven performers who trust them. Failing to ask a leadership candidate 'who are you going to bring?' is a major oversight that leads to slow ramps, high recruiting costs, and organizational inefficiency.