Mark: Welcome back to another episode of “Burning Presales Podcast,” where I’m joined again by the ever wonderful John Hodgson. Thanks for coming back, John, and more wonderful information from your research, this time from the focus of a hiring manager.
John: Hey, Mark. Great to be here again, thanks so much. So, yeah, just to recap again, so, we’ve been surveying, hiring managers from across the world in presales, [00:00:30.269] looking to understand what their criteria is when they hire, what their rates in a great pre-sales professional, and also how they go about assessing those skills during the interview process. And so this is preliminary data from 65 responses and there’s been some really interesting findings.
So one of the questions we asked is, you know, we’re aware that it’s a really competitive market and especially, you know, if we look over the last year, it’s just been [00:01:00.376] crazy competitive, and so as a hiring manager, often you’re having to trade off different skills and different abilities. And one of them that as, kind of, recruiters on the frontline that we often see is, you know, making the decision between, you know, do you want somebody that can hit the ground running from day one, but doesn’t necessarily have the highest ceiling of potential versus somebody that has a high ceiling of potential but will leave some kind of ramp up? And so we, kind of, we asked to trade off [00:01:30.732] and 69% of hiring managers lean towards, and lean quite strongly towards, a high ceiling of potential. So that’s to say that the difference between a great presales professional and a good presales professional is such that they are happy to see a good ramp up period to then have a top performing individual versus this, kind of, need to fill a role and to get people operational straight away. [00:02:00.408]
Mark: Yes, I’ve seen a similar…in the conversations I’ve been having in the industry with people that want to make sure that when they make a hire, they’re sticky, to put it one way. Certainly if you’re gonna put the energy into someone, you want to know that they’re not at the pinnacle of their game because then however good they are, they’re gonna look for the next thing. You need to make sure that you are able to provide that or they’re going to leave in a year or two, and that’s quite difficult. [00:02:30.885] So it’s great that the research reflects that as well. If you were a hiring manager going out looking for candidates, what advice would you have in terms of where to find them?
John: Oh, that’s a big question. So, they can call us, first of all. They’re welcome.
Mark: Yes, [inaudible 00:02:47].
John: Had to do that plug there. No, I think in terms of where to find them, yes it’s interesting. So, often the hiring managers will look at, kind of, immediate competition, [00:03:00.852] people within their own segment and so on and so forth. And I think that makes sense because there is that, kind of, hard skills fit. Obviously, it’s a very competitive market and there’s a limited amount of individuals out there, and so you have to start, kind of, branching out quite quickly. And so I think, you know, people have had real success and have spoken really positively about hiring out of industry, for example. You know, people from industry, they have the true empathy with the customer in the sense that they’ve sat in their own shoes, they’re able to operate on a peer level…
