Good morning,
A conversation this week turned to hiring and how few leaders take the time to do it right. Or really, have a short list of what it takes to hire right.
Harold Morgenstern did not hesitate. He put out his four non-negotiables, and each ran true, one after the other. His summary: “Your people are your greatest asset. Hiring is one of the most critical responsibilities for a manager.”
No strangers. Either I know them, someone I trust does, or the candidate finds someone who knows me to recommend them.
No politics
No drama
Would you bet your mortgage payment on them?
For those who know Harold, well… you also know he has never pulled a punch. He gives it like it is, and he has the data to back it up.
For the past three and a half years, he has been the President of National Advertising Sales and Partnerships for Allen Media Group. Before that, he was the CRO or head of sales for Plex, Pluto / Paramount+, and Discovery. He sticks with what works because he can prove it works.
Look at the list again. The first item is a reference you can bank on. The middle two protect the room. The last is a gut test you cannot fake. That is the whole hiring problem in a few lines: evidence on one end, culture in the middle, and conviction on the other end. (Took me the better part of three decades to be that blunt about it.)
This week, the workshop is about why some teams outperform. It starts with who you let in the door.
The team that outperforms rarely has a better product or a softer market. It has fewer mistakes in who it hires, how it develops people, and why those people stay. Get those three wrong and you rebuild your roster every year. Get them right and your best people compound.
35% B2B sales team average turnover rate. By role: SDR 45%, AE 30%, Sales Manager 28%, CSM 25%. By industry: SaaS 38%, Manufacturing 32%, Professional Services 33%. Best-in-class companies (<20% turnover) invest 2.5x more in onboarding and career development. Source: Optifai Sales Ops Benchmark (N=939 companies, Q2 2025-Q1 2026)
FOR SELLERS Your growth is not your manager's job to chase. Own the skills you build and the reasons you stay. |
FOR MANAGERS “A” players do not arrive finished. You hire the raw material, then you develop it on purpose. |
FOR OWNERS Turnover is a tax you pay in lost pipeline and slow ramps. Build the system that keeps it low. |
The cost of a miss compounds. A weak hire eats a manager's calendar, drains a territory, and leaves a hole that takes months to fill. Replacing one seller runs into six figures once you count recruiting, ramp, and the deals that never happened. Outperformance starts by making fewer of those mistakes.
Your support queue gets a head start every morning.
Viktor reads overnight tickets, tags them by product area, summarizes the patterns, and posts a brief in #support. The agent picks up the queue already triaged. The PM sees recurring requests rolled up by Friday.
KEY TERMS
Scorecard | A written definition of the outcomes and competencies a role must deliver. You hire against evidence, not gut feel. |
Ramp time | The weeks a new seller needs to reach full productivity. Shorter ramp means faster return on every hire. |
Regretted attrition | The departures you did not want. The number that separates healthy churn from a leaking team. |
DO AND DO NOT
DO | DO NOT |
Hire against a written scorecard of outcomes. | Hire the most charming person in the room. |
Coach skills every week on a set rhythm. | Save development for the annual review. |
THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE
Write the one-page hiring scorecard from Module 03 for your next open seller role, even if you are not hiring yet.
THE WORKSHOP
MODULE 01 · FOR SELLERS
Own Your Development
Build the skills that make you hard to replace.
You wait for your manager to tell you what to work on. The strong sellers around you are not waiting. What is the one skill that, if you doubled it, would change your number this quarter?
EXAMPLE A digital ad seller at a regional publisher kept losing renewals at the eleventh hour. Instead of blaming the market, she recorded three of her own renewal calls and listened back. She was pitching features while the client wanted proof of outcomes. She rebuilt the renewal conversation around results. Her renewal rate moved before her manager ever flagged the problem. |
Step 1 Treat skills like inventory.
The ones you do not use today are gone. The ones you sharpen compound into pricing power over your own career. Outperformers pick one gap and work it on purpose.
Step 2 Find the gap yourself.
She did not ask for a course. She found the gap, named it in one sentence, and drilled it on real calls. That is development you control, and it shows up in the number first.
Do This Today. Pick one skill, review one real interaction, and name the gap in a single sentence. Share It. Tell one teammate the gap you found and ask them to do the same. |
Q. What if my manager does not coach me?
A. Then you coach yourself with recordings, peers, and the deals in front of you. Waiting is the only wrong move.
MODULE 02 · FOR MANAGERS
Coach on a Rhythm
Turn development into a weekly habit, not an event.
You know coaching matters. It keeps slipping behind pipeline reviews and fire drills.
How many minutes did you spend coaching skills last week, separate from inspecting deals?
EXAMPLE A sales manager at a broadcast group ran weekly one-on-ones that were really forecast checks. Numbers got reviewed and nobody got better. He split the meeting in two: ten minutes on the forecast, twenty on one skill per rep. Within a quarter his team's win rate climbed because the conversations finally changed behavior, not just dates. |
Step 1 Inspecting is not coaching.
Inspecting deals is performance management. Building skills is coaching. Teams that confuse the two stay flat. The CSO Insights 2024 Sales Enablement Report found that actively coaching a team produced a 21.3% increase in quota attainment.
Step 2 Protect the time, pick one skill.
He protected twenty minutes, picked one skill per person, and made the rep own the next move. Consistency beat intensity. The win rate followed the new conversation.
Do This Today. Block twenty minutes per rep this week for skill coaching, separate from any forecast talk. Share It. Tell your team the one skill each of them will work on this week. |
Q. What if there is no time?
A. There is never time. You make it, or you keep paying for the gap in missed quota.
MODULE 03 · FOR OWNERS
Build a Hiring System
Stop hiring on gut and start hiring on evidence.
Your last two hires looked great in interviews. One is thriving, one is gone, and you are not sure why.
Could you show me the written scorecard you hired your last seller against?
EXAMPLE A media company owner kept hiring likeable reps who interviewed well and underdelivered. He wrote a one-page scorecard for the role: the outcomes it had to produce, the competencies it required, and the evidence he would demand. His next three hires were chosen against that page. Two became top producers and all three stayed past a year. |
Step 1 Talent is a system, not luck.
Define the role on paper, hire against it, then develop and retain on purpose. A streak of good hires is luck. A scorecard is a system that repeats.
Step 2 The scorecard kills charm bias.
He stopped asking who he liked and started asking who could produce the outcomes. The page removed the bias that had cost him two hires in a row.
Do This Today. Write a one-page scorecard for your next open role before you post it. Share It. Hand the scorecard to whoever runs your interviews and align on it. |
Q. Is this not just more process?
A. It is the process that pays for itself the first time it stops a bad hire.
RECOMMENDED READING
BOOK 01 Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street The clearest system for hiring A players against a scorecard instead of a hunch. |
BOOK 02 Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions by Keith Rosen The playbook for turning weekly coaching into a habit that changes behavior. |
BOOK 03 Revenue vs. Sales by Mort Greenberg The case for building revenue as a system, with your people as the engine. |
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