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Hiring a Sales Team In Today’s Market · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:01
  Welcome everyone to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:04
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:05
  Excited to have you here most Thursdays, 11:30 Pacific, 2:30 Eastern.
• 0:10
  If you're joining us live today on Sales Pipeline Radio, thank you so
• 0:13
  much for joining us in the middle of your workday, middle of your work week.
• 0:16
  If you are watching or listening on demand, thank you so much
• 0:18
  for downloading for subscribing.
• 0:20
  Every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio is available past, present and
• 0:24
  future at www.SalesPipelineRadio.com.
• 0:26
  Today, very excited to have with us Lou DePaoli.
• 0:30
  Lou is the president of General Sports Worldwide.
• 0:33
  And our topic today is hiring, especially hiring sales teams in this
• 0:39
  crazy environment we find ourselves in.
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  Lou, thanks so much for joining us.
• 0:42
  My pleasure.
• 0:42
  My thanks for having me.
• 0:44
  Alright.
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  Should we talk about the virus going through the GM meetings?
• 0:47
  Talk about the hot Stove League a little bit but definitely
• 0:49
  wanna talk about hiring.
• 0:50
  It's 2023.
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  I remember the beginning of 2022 it was a totally different market.
• 0:56
  Right?
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  Like you put up a job or you like the candidate, you had to hire
• 0:58
  them quickly because they probably got snapped up by someone else.
• 1:01
  Now you put a job description on LinkedIn and there's like 400 applicants.
• 1:06
  Are you seeing that on the sales side as well?
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  Or how has hiring in the sales environment changed?
• 1:12
  You nailed it, Matt.
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  Going back to a year and a half ago to two years ago, you had to hustle
• 1:17
  quickly to hire people because there was a lot of competition.
• 1:20
  Everybody was looking, we're going to bring on good people.
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  Now, you know, when we post jobs online or we post jobs on our own job board,
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  we're getting hundreds of applicants within a day looking for that opportunity.
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  And it's a lot of work to go through and filter through
• 1:36
  and find out the right ones.
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  And, you know, one of the reasons why we do this on behalf of a lot of our
• 1:41
  clients in the sports and entertainment industry is because when they post it,
• 1:46
  and if they have multiple jobs, now they have thousands of applicants coming in.
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  You don't have the manpower to sort through all of
• 1:54
  those applications yourself.
• 1:55
  So thus a recruiter like ourselves, we get involved and the key really
• 2:00
  is, when we post opportunities, we make sure that we ask some pretty
• 2:05
  good questions on the front end.
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  So if you post it on LinkedIn, you post it on a job board, you're going
• 2:09
  to get some questions up front that hopefully, you know, if somebody, if
• 2:13
  there's five questions and you can't answer all five of them, or at least
• 2:16
  three or four of them to a positive, you'd hope that maybe you don't actually
• 2:21
  apply for the job if you go over five.
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  But some people still do and that's fine.
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  We go through every single one of them, myself and my team, but
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  it's, it's definitely worth asking some of those questions up front.
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  So the baby could screen some of the people out that maybe aren't qualified.
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  I mean, this is a problem for both sides, right?
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  This is a problem if you're trying to get noticed as an applicant, because if
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  everyone's going through the same front door, like even if you have advantages
• 2:45
  that make you better qualified for the job than someone else, it's even harder to
• 2:48
  stand out when someone is having to flip filter through like a thousand resumes.
• 2:52
  And I've had recruiters and hiring managers tell me I'm fine
• 2:55
  going through 400 applications.
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  I'm like, A.
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  I don't think that's what you want and B how do you really take the time to notice
• 3:03
  the nuances of the better candidates?
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  I think like it's a problem for both sides.
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  So I think I'm curious, let's tackle them one by one as a candidate.
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  What are things that you recommend candidates do to help them stand
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  out in that kind of environment?
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  Yeah, I think there's a couple of things, depending on how you're applying.
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  And if it's on LinkedIn, so for us, um, we actually coach people on this.
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  If you see us post a job on LinkedIn, don't be afraid then to connect with
• 3:30
  me and maybe shoot me a message.
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  "Hey, just to let you know, I applied online and look forward to hearing from
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  you", like that shows you took a little extra initiative versus you're just
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  randomly applying for a bunch of jobs and, the scatter and pray type of philosophy.
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  Right?
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  For candidates, I think there's a couple of other things.
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  Number 1 you got to make sure that if you're applying for an
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  opportunity that you're actually qualified for the opportunity.
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  B, make sure if your resume needs to be attached, it's in a PDF
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  format, it's easily readable, right?
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  There's just certain just basics that you have to fundamentally get.
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  Make sure that there aren't typos, just, just little things
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  like that that make it easier.
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  But I also have to say, and I've never been one to really put too much emphasis
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  on a really good looking resume, but I think some of the ones that are a little
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  bit more visually appealing shows that you took a little bit more time, or maybe
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  you hired a professional to help you.
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  So you're a little bit more serious about maybe what's
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  going forward for your career.
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  Those definitely get my attention because when we pop them up in our
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  inbox and we can see the PDF quickly.
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  And it looks really crisp and professionally done, I'm probably
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  going to take that person a little bit more seriously than somebody
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  else until I could at least get the first pass of their resume through.
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  So two questions follow up on that.
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  One is, I think in a lot of environments, especially like B2B organizations,
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  or if you're in an industry where LinkedIn is fairly ubiquitous.
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  I've had some people say my LinkedIn profile is my resume.
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  Can you address that and why is a separate resume still important?
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  Yeah, we try to tell people and we've had people on our own webinars that
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  we've done, somebody from LinkedIn sports who came in and told people
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  LinkedIn is not your resume, right?
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  It's a nice platform to let people know what you do, share some ideas,
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  maybe showcase some of your skills and your talents, but it's not a resume.
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  And your resume is a completely different thing than your LinkedIn profile.
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  When I see people's LinkedIn profiles, it's just a exact copy of the resume.
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  I worry about a little bit of lack of creativity.
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  LinkedIn is not really the place to be posting: exceeded sales
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  quota 42 percent this year.
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  No, no, just overall what you do, what your vision is, who you are, if you
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  have highlights of some of your work, if there's video, if there's other
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  things that you can put up there to let people know about who are you as
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  a professional and what you do, great.
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  Then the resume is really meant to be then at that point, the tactical, all
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  the bullet points, all the things you've accomplished, et cetera, after that.
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  So it's a little bit more of a drill down.
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  Where I think that LinkedIn should be a little bit more of a profile piece.
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  Yeah.
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  We're talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Lou DePaoli.
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  He is the president of General Sports Worldwide and talking today about
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  hiring in this crazy environment.
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  One more question for those that are applying, when it comes to that
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  resume, some of those that I see just end up being a block of text, right?
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  And it's just a lot of words.
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  It, and if I'm scanning through 400, it's hard to differentiate things.
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  Some people think I need to put every highlight for my
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  entire career, from every job.
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  What are some best practices as well as mistakes to avoid on those resumes?
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  That's one of them, right?
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  Don't just send a text dump with a lot of info and maybe some bullet points.
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  That doesn't do it.
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  Like I said earlier, it's got to be visually appealing.
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  And I've had, obviously we get tons of resumes that come in through the door.
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  So I've actually earmarked five or six ones that I will turn around
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  and share with candidates to say, "Hey, you have a good resume.
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  You have a good background.
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  Here's, here's an actual better format maybe to try.
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  Here's some best practices from us, from other applicants for jobs".
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  And I'll generally take the name out and some of their history
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  and things like that, right?
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  I've had people email me back.
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  This is great.
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  This is really helpful.
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  Thank you.
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  It's just a simple format and some people don't put that much thought into it.
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  It's like, okay, here's a resume, type it all out, put it all in
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  text, a couple of bullet points.
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  I've, I've done a data dump.
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  That's a sales presentation, especially if you're going for a sales job.
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  This has to be visually appealing.
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  It's got to be attractive.
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  You've got to engage me.
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  You've got to be able to get me to want to call you.
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  Right?
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  So just a white piece of paper with a bunch of text and bullet
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  points and it's just run on isn't going to get you too far.
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  I sometimes find that like sales roles are really hard to hire for just based on
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  that past experience and resume, right?
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  You may have been successful selling somewhere else, your success may have
• 7:48
  had very little to do with your ability to be a successful sales person.
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  It could be, you were just handed great leads.
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  It could be because you're predisposed to that industry.
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  When you're looking for sales reps for your clients, what are you looking for
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  , what are some variables that you think have a higher propensity to reflect or,
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  or to turn into someone who's successful?
• 8:09
  Yeah.
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  Interestingly, you know, so General Sports Worldwide, I think
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  I mentioned, we specialize in the sports and entertainment field.
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  Right.
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  So if somebody is a sales representative for a specific sports organization, that
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  has a history of being very successful on the court or on the field, and they're a
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  great salesperson there because it's easy to sell for a team when they're winning.
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  So we always looked at the people who were able to thrive and
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  succeed for teams that struggled.
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  Right.
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  Or if you worked in minor league sports for a number of years, like you
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  really have to hustle because people aren't coming to minor league games to
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  see championship quality baseball or basketball or football on the field.
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  So if you can show and demonstrate that you can actually sell in a
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  tougher environment, that's going to get my attention very quickly.
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  If I see something where, I don't want to mention any teams, you know, because
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  I don't want to call anybody out, but think of your, your successful sports
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  team that sells out every game and has for the last eight or nine or 10 years,
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  and you're their top salesperson, how hard is it really to do that job versus
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  going to a team that really struggles and you've sold really well, there-- great.
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  How do we find you a job and put you in a spot to really, really thrive?
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  What about crossover?
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  I mean, let's take sports for example.
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  I'm here outside of Seattle.
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  We've done some work with the Mariners and you've got like ticket sales,
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  you've got corporate sales, you've got sponsorship sales, one organization,
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  again, baseball teams, these major teams, they're not huge companies, right?
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  Like not big sales teams.
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  Is there crossover opportunity or are there unique skills
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  you're looking for based on the audience they're selling into?
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  You know, there's definitely crossover opportunities, but you have to really
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  understand what the skill sets are of your people and understand their mentality
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  and then try to steer them towards that right vertical on the sales front.
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  so when you looked at my background, I spent, 16 years
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  in major league baseball, right?
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  I spent eight years in the NBA, five years in hockey, running sports
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  franchises on the business side.
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  I'm just going to use the example of my team at the Mets.
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  So most recently before doing this, I spent almost eight years as an executive
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  vice president for the New York Mets.
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  My ticketing sales team, when I was there was a little over 80 people.
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  That's a lot, right?
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  For a sports team, that's a lot, but we had it broken down into
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  inside sales, outside sales, premium seating, group sales, retaining
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  season ticket holders, sweep sales.
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  So you have all these different verticals that require different skill sets.
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  So when we would bring somebody into our inside sales program, part of
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  what we coached our inside sales leaders to do was to identify the
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  characteristics of where this person might be a best fit down the road.
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  So once they get through inside sales and they could prove themselves
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  that they know how to sell.
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  Great.
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  This person, Matt has all the attributes of being a great group sales rep.
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  So we're going to really coach him up a little bit on the group
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  sales side of the business.
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  Lou is a big game hunter.
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  He's wants to sell suites.
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  Let's make sure we put him in suites.
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  Yeah, and then, Mary is really great at retaining season ticket holders and has a
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  very good empathetic approach and logical.
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  Great.
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  We're going to put her on service and retention.
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  And you have to have that because if not, not everybody can do everything.
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  But when you can find people that you can cross sell to say, Hey, "you sold groups.
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  Now you can sell a suite.
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  Now you're going to work in partnership sales".
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  You know, that's ideally what we were trying to create for a lot of the
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  organizations that I worked for and for the clients that we work for now.
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  So, talking about putting people in the right role based on their
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  skill set, but also creating a bit of a career path, even within an
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  organization to be able to get different skill sets across the way as well.
• 11:53
  Just got a couple more minutes here with our guest today, Lou DePaoli
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  he's the president of General Sports Worldwide., I think a lot of people
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  think of recruiters as critical when it is hard to find candidates.
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  And when the candidates are applying by the hundreds, it's a lot easier.
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  I could argue the opposite that a good recruiter can really help
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  you find the right candidates.
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  It's not just about having access to people and finding the right person.
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  It's also someone that's going to stick.
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  Right.
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  And what's that worth?
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  You talk about like why it's so important still, even in a market
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  like today to bring someone from the outside to fill key roles.
• 12:26
  Yeah, look, that's a great question because one thing that we can do
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  is really help-- and again, for us and my team, we've all worked in
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  professional sports at the team level.
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  We've all led sales teams.
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  I've been part of sales teams and we know what success looks like.
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  So it's a lot easier to go in and help one of our clients hire a sales role
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  knowing that we know what that person is, probably long term trajectory looks like.
• 12:52
  This is a person that will be successful long term because there's nothing
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  worse than, you play somebody or you hire somebody then you realize 3 or
• 12:59
  4 months later it doesn't work out.
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  That's obviously expensive from from a human capital standpoint
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  from a dollar standpoint.
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  So you want to make sure you're getting it right.
• 13:09
  And I think that's one of the reasons why in a pretty short period of time,
• 13:14
  we've only been doing search here at General Sports Worldwide for two years
• 13:19
  and we've placed as of this morning, 87 people in about 24 months in the
• 13:25
  sports and entertainment industry.
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  People know that we know that you're going to get somebody from us that
• 13:29
  has a high likelihood of success and a long tail, someone that will be
• 13:32
  able to stay and develop it and grow.
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  Because we have those types of network.
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  We know how to suss that out of people when we're talking to them
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  on the phone for an interview.
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  It totally makes sense.
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  Well last question for you, Lou, I think you spent a lot of your career in sales
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  and marketing, go to market roles, a lot of sales leadership, sales management.
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  Who have you learned from?
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  Who are you reading?
• 13:52
  Who you recommend other people that are listening here?
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  We get people on the marketing and the sales side.
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  So it, all of it applies.
• 13:59
  What do you recommend other people check out?
• 14:01
  Wow.
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  I could probably go on for hours talking about all the books that I love to read.
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  My team's always knew that I had a massive library in my
• 14:07
  office, no matter where I worked.
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  And I'd always, I encourage people once I got to know them, "Hey,
• 14:12
  this is a great book for you".
• 14:14
  Right.
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  So as we were trying to build culture, again, some of these books, man,
• 14:17
  are probably going to be a little bit older, just, just because, hey,
• 14:21
  I'm getting up there in age, right?
• 14:22
  But when you find a favorite, you stick with it, right?
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  So there's a couple, you know, that I always recommend to people.
• 14:28
  Number one, especially for a sales leader, it's called The No Asshole Rule.
• 14:33
  And I apologize for swearing, but that's the name of the book, right?
• 14:36
  Written by Ben Sutton.
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  It's a great story about culture and how to build culture that I've,
• 14:42
  I've recommended to a lot of people and they always turn around and
• 14:44
  re recommend it to somebody else.
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  It's really smart.
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  The next one is, is Grit, which a lot of people are probably
• 14:51
  pretty familiar with, right?
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  New York Times bestseller.
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  I had the pleasure of meeting the author and co author a couple of
• 14:56
  years back up at West Point when we did a company outing there.
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  Great story, a great book to read about how to overcome things, right?
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  You gotta have that desire to get by and the resilience.
• 15:07
  And then the third one is also a book that's probably a little bit older school,
• 15:10
  but, it's a book called Execution, right?
• 15:13
  So this is written probably in the early two thousands by, Larry boss city and Ram
• 15:19
  Sharan are their name are the authors.
• 15:20
  It's, it's literally, it's called Execution.
• 15:22
  The Art of Getting Things Done.
• 15:24
  Because one of the biggest things that I always like to make sure people understand
• 15:28
  is you can have the greatest ideas, or you can have the greatest sales pipeline, or
• 15:32
  you could have the greatest skill sets.
• 15:34
  But if you can't execute, whether it's your marketing plan, anything else,
• 15:39
  you have to be able to get things done.
• 15:43
  And that is where I would spend a lot of time telling people that's
• 15:46
  something you really got to focus on.
• 15:48
  Absolutely.
• 15:49
  You don't have to apologize for old books.
• 15:51
  To me, one of my favorite marketing books of all time is
• 15:53
  called Scientific Advertising.
• 15:55
  It was written by Claude Hopkins in 1921.
• 15:57
  Still a great read, still a great read.
• 15:59
  If you're a copywriter, if you're a direct response marketer, still phenomenal.
• 16:03
  So Lou, thank you so much for joining us.
• 16:06
  Where can people learn more about General Sports?
• 16:07
  You know what?
• 16:08
  They can go to two websites.
• 16:10
  One of them is www.GeneralSportsWorldwide.Com.
• 16:13
  And , we have a career development platform, Matt, that's called The
• 16:15
  Clubhouse, which is geared towards people looking to get a career in sports with
• 16:19
  a very robust mentorship program, and that is at www.TheClubHouseCareers.Com.
• 16:25
  That sounds really cool.
• 16:26
  The clubhouse careers.
• 16:27
  com.
• 16:28
  Well, Lou, thank you very much for joining us today for your generosity and insights.
• 16:31
  Really appreciate it.
• 16:32
  I appreciate it.
• 16:33
  Thanks for talking, Matt.
• 16:34
  Absolutely.
• 16:35
  Thank you everyone for joining us today, for joining us live
• 16:37
  and for listening on demand.
• 16:39
  My name is Matt Heinz.
• 16:39
  We'll see you next week on Sales Pipeline Radio.