#5. You underpay. The best salespeople want to make money. If you pay under­market, you get bottom of the barrel.Huge rookie error. #6 –– Not (intentionally) going upmarket faster to Double Your Deal Size. Nothing is an 4 anomaly: If you can get 1 enterprise customer –– you can get 10. If you have 1 customer in an industry –– you can get 10. The outliers aren’’ t anomalies. They are The Future. Corollary: Target bigger deals as soon as you can. Same work, more $$$. #7 –– Not firing a bad VPS in one sales cycle You should know subjectively in just a few months –– just 50% of the way through your average sales cycle Numbers should increase in one sales cycle –– with a keen focus on Revenue Per Lead First few hires should be clear upgrades –– and should be made quickly and seemingly effortlessly #8. You ask your VP of Sales to carry a bag for too long. Her job is to recruit a great deal and hit the overall plan. Not to sell herself, not mostly. Have her own the whole number, the ARR plan. Not an individual quota, not for very long at least. #9. You hire someone who last sold Nu Skin. This can work later, but not in your first reps.They need to understand how to sell vaguely similar products at vaguely similar price points. #10. You hire because she worked at Salesforce/Box/DropBox/ABC Famous Company.Don’’ t hire them because they worked at a well­known or hot company.Hire them because they can close. And have closed at least vaguely similar products at somewhat similar price points. Not because they are one of 4,000 reps that sell a product at Salesforce.com, which has $7,000,000,000+ in revenues, a proven brand, and huge infrastructure behind it. #11. You allow any great reps to leave. You should strive for 0% voluntary attrition,not to fire the bottom one­third. That’’ s for boiler rooms. Great sales teams stick together. Great sales teams inspire each other. Great sales teams attract higher and higher quality reps as time goes on. #12. Not doubling the plan. ☺ Once the team was (finally) Great –– we exceeded the plan. Every quarter, every year. Always. But...... I should have challenged us to do Even Better. I should have pushed harder the same way Parker at Zenefits pushed Sam to answer the question, ““What would it take to do $20M instead this year instead of $10M?”” CASE STUDY: ADVICE FROM THE VP SALES BEHIND LINKEDIN AND ECHOSIGN WHY SALESPEOPLE SHOULDN’T PROSPECT If you haven’t specialized your sales team roles yet, nothing will make a bigger impact in your team and ability to grow than biting the bullet and doing it. Specializing sales roles is a cornerstone of Predictable Revenue. Without specializing, your team will struggle. Prospectors need to prospect. And, yes, your closers should prospect –– we will never tell you that anyone on