The short version. “Can you refer me to any good salespeople?” sounds efficient, but it is rarely a hiring strategy. More often it is urgency, wishful thinking and the hope that a ready-made unicorn will walk in and save the day. In this episode of Lead to Grow, Tommy Sim unpacks what leaders get wrong when hiring salespeople, why the experienced industry hire is not always the asset they appear to be, and the more sustainable alternative: defining the role properly, selecting for transferable behaviours, and building your own internal pipeline of sales talent.
Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. Episode runs 21 minutes.
“Can you refer me to any good salespeople in your network?” It is a question business leaders ask all the time, and it is easy to see why. It sounds efficient, practical, a shortcut to growth. The thinking goes: if I can just get someone proven from the industry, someone who knows the acronyms, the players, the objections and the customers, then they can hit the ground running and solve my problem quickly.
Sometimes that works. But most of the time it is not a sustainable way to build a strong sales team, because what often sits underneath the question is not a hiring strategy at all.
“It’s urgency. It’s wishful thinking. It’s hoping that there’s this ready-made answer walking around in the market who can come in and save the day. All of our problems will be solved once we get this unicorn.” Tommy Sim
The first myth is that an experienced salesperson will bring a heap of leads from their existing contacts. To see why that rarely holds, flip it around. Imagine you have a supplier your team knows how to work with, your systems are built around their process, and your customers know what to expect. Now the salesperson from that supplier leaves for a competitor. Are you really going to overhaul your operations, retrain your people and take on the risk of switching, just because Bob moved?
Usually, no. You might take Bob’s call. You might even hear him out. But you are unlikely to blow up a working relationship for one familiar face. The idea that a salesperson simply brings the customers with them is overstated.
It only really works where the service is mostly the person, highly personal and relationship-led, like a physiotherapist, a psychologist or a finance broker in some contexts. When the customer is buying from a business with a broader offer, systems, delivery capability, brand and pricing, they are far less likely to follow one individual across. There can also be contractual issues around client ownership and data that get forgotten in the excitement.
Even when people insist someone is genuinely a gun, it is worth asking what they actually mean. Very often they saw one thing that looked impressive. Tommy describes assessing a candidate everyone insisted was a sure thing. When his team at Inject asked the simple question, “what is it exactly that has you so convinced this person is good?”, it came down to a single well-delivered product presentation.
Presenting well matters in sales, sometimes a lot. But sales is usually much more than presenting: prospecting, qualifying, building trust, uncovering needs, navigating objections, asking for commitment, following through, resilience, and doing the boring but valuable activities that create pipeline. Someone who can present a familiar product nicely after ten years of repetition is not the same as someone who is broadly excellent at sales.
“If they were salesperson of the year and hit target, that’s enough for me.” Not quite, because targets mislead when stripped of context.
“A result without context can create false certainty, which leads to a decision that is convenient in the moment only.” Tommy Sim
Were they a true hunter generating new business from scratch, or a farmer growing inherited accounts? Did they have the strongest support team and the most recognised brand? Were they riding a rising market where everyone was winning? Did one unusually large deal blow their number out, masking a weaker year? And if they came from a well-known brand, were customers taking meetings because of the badge on the shirt rather than the person wearing it? Move that same person to a lesser-known business and you finally see whether they can really sell.
The point is not to avoid experienced industry hires, some are genuinely excellent. It is to avoid confusing familiarity, favourable context and borrowed credibility with genuine, transferable sales capability.
Because everyone else has the same idea, this person will be fielding multiple offers, which manufactures a sense of urgency: if other people want them, they must be good. Make that your only strategy and you put yourself in a weak position, dependent on finding ready-made talent externally. You are more likely to overpay, harder pressed to admit a wrong call, and more likely to tolerate bad behaviour because you are scared to lose them, while hearing “that’s not how we did it at ABC Limited” on repeat.
Split the problem into two parts. Recruitment is how you attract the right people into your opportunity. Selection is how you work out who is actually right for you. Start with selection, because until you know what “right” looks like, your recruitment will be vague.
People say they need “a salesperson” as if that is one generic thing. It is not. Some roles are pure hunters creating new opportunities from a blank page. Others are farmers growing existing accounts, deepening relationships and expanding value over time. Many are hybrids. Some are highly transactional and high-volume; others are slow, consultative and complex, demanding strong negotiation or deep discovery. Sometimes the person you most need to sell to is not even the end customer but a key influencer.
So define what success actually looks like in the seat. Picture a strong performer: what do they do each week, the key conversations they handle, the resistance they face, the customers they deal with, and the part of the sales cycle that matters most. Then analyse your existing team and look at who is genuinely succeeding and why, based on what they actually do in practice, not what you assume they do. If there is no team yet, you need to be that role model.
“If you cannot describe the transferable behaviours required in the role, then you’re likely to hire based on convenience, and convenience in hiring often becomes pain later on.” Tommy Sim
People hire off the resume and qualifications, but fire off attitude, aptitude and behaviours. Sales is the clearest example: the resume can look fantastic, big names, good titles, strong numbers, and tell you very little. Be careful, too, with a consistent 18 to 24 month tenure pattern, which can mean the same cycle repeating: a strong first impression, a slow realisation that the substance is not there, pressure, then a move on.
Use valid and reliable tools. Ask behavioural questions, “tell me about one of your most successful sales experiences,” or “give an example of when you prospected and saw it through to closure,” and use the CAR or STAR method to learn what they actually did. If they describe the biggest deal in the company’s history, do not be impressed by the result; probe how they got it. Often the biggest deal was a customer who wanted to buy anyway, and the salesperson’s job was not to mess it up.
Ask probing questions without leading: “what were the biggest challenges along the way?”, “what was your approach to objection handling?”, “what did you do to get past the gatekeeper?” Transferable behaviours are far more valuable than one lucky win. On top of this, use valid psychometric assessments to gauge raw cognitive ability and, importantly, whether their natural behaviours align to your role, not their old one. If their natural energy is far out of alignment, you will be constantly chasing them.
Now recruitment. Once you know what you are looking for, the most sustainable answer is to build your own pipeline. It is not fast or instant, and it takes patience and discipline, which is exactly why many businesses will not do it. But done well it transforms the quality and sustainability of your sales team over time.
In practice that means identifying the feeder roles into sales, hiring earlier for attitude, aptitude and behaviours, and looking for the right raw ingredients: achievement orientation, resilience, communication, curiosity, coachability, rapport, willingness to learn and the energy to do the hard yards. Then actually develop them, with a clear pathway, a career development framework, explicit progression milestones, and remuneration structures that reward progression and performance properly. Give them coaching and exposure in feeder roles where they learn the product, the customer and your way of doing things before carrying a full quota.
“Instead of buying whatever the market throws at you, you’re building your own context. They learn your standards, your language, your method, your expectations.” Tommy Sim
This is not the only approach. You may still hire experienced people at a senior level when it makes sense, but external hiring becomes one lever rather than your only one. It matters most in two situations: when you want to deliver a premium service, and when you are trying to challenge the status quo in your industry. If your strategy is to do things differently, people deeply attached to “how we did it at ABC Limited” can be more of a drag than a help.
“Can I just get this salesperson?” is really two questions: do I feel an urgent need to solve this now, and is this particular person actually the right answer? They are not the same. Short-term urgency manufactures certainty, so we tell ourselves a quick hire is the answer, just get a warm body in the seat. That creates a cycle: hire quickly, the fit is not quite right, six months later you are frustrated, eighteen months later they are gone, and the same panic hits again. What looked like action was really just pain relief.
“The best time to start building your internal pipeline of sales talent was five years ago. The second best time is today.” Tommy Sim
Lead to Grow explores the people principles behind high-performing businesses. Hosted by Tommy Sim, Managing Director of Inject HR, the podcast focuses on leadership, performance, culture and decision-making, with practical insights leaders can apply immediately. New episodes are released regularly. Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or subscribe on YouTube.
Connect with Tommy Sim on LinkedIn. Follow Inject on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Get new episodes and practical leadership insights from Tommy Sim and the Inject team, delivered straight to your inbox.
