Why Sales Leaders Keep Making Bad Hires (And How to Stop)

Most sales leaders hire on gut feel. Gut feel only predicts top performers 20% of the time. The other 80% of the time, it's a bad indicator — and the cost of a mis-hire in sales goes far beyond one wasted salary. It destroys team morale, consumes coaching energy, and forces leaders to spend their time fixing the wrong person instead of developing the right ones. 📥 Download the Modern Revenue Leader's Sales Coaching Manual https://bit.ly/3QTbqsJ Elaine Tyler is the CEO and founder of Venetrix, a specialist recruitment firm placing SDRs, AEs, customer success managers, and sales leaders into fast-growth SaaS, cybersecurity, and fintech businesses in London and the US. Tim Ogle is a sales coach and transformation specialist at MySalesCoach, helping companies get the right people in place and set them up to win. In this episode, Elaine and Tim sit down with MySalesCoach in-house coach Bryan Mulry to get into why sales hiring keeps going wrong — and what a structured, repeatable hiring process actually looks like from talent pool to day one. In this episode: Why gut feel is a reliable signal in one direction only — and how to use it correctly How to build a talent pool before you need it, using LinkedIn content, referrals, and events What a competency-based scorecard looks like and why it's the only way to avoid decision paralysis Why the offer process starts at the first conversation, not when you send the contract How to onboard a new hire so the first 90 days set them up to perform — not scramble Why the transition from onboarding manager to coach is the moment most leaders drop the ball The real cost of a bad sales hire — beyond the salary Chapters 0:00 Why sales leaders make bad hires 0:44 Why is sales hiring so hard right now 5:31 Cost of a bad sales hire 11:13 How to build a sales talent pool 16:52 How to run a sales selection process 24:12 How to make a hiring decision without overthinking it 28:28 How to make a job offer in sales hiring 32:43 How to onboard a new sales hire Elaine Tyler Elaine is the CEO and founder of Venetrix, a specialist sales recruitment firm placing SDRs, AEs, CSMs, and sales leaders into fast-growth SaaS, cybersecurity, and fintech businesses in London and the US. With 20+ years of interviewing and placing sales talent, she works with hiring managers to build processes that reduce mis-hire risk from the first conversation. 🔗 Connect with Elaine on LinkedIn:   / elainetyler   Tim Ogle Tim is a sales coach and transformation specialist at MySalesCoach. He helps companies hire the right people, adapt the ones they already have, and build the coaching habits that turn new starters into consistent performers. He's worked across sales transformation programmes at companies of all sizes. 🔗 Connect with Tim on LinkedIn:   / tim-ogle-tsc   🔗 Follow MySalesCoach on LinkedIn:   / mysalescoach-com   Surviving Sales Leadership sessions help sales leaders tackle their biggest sales challenges in short, focused bursts - we aim to get most episodes done in 30 minutes or less. New episodes every two weeks. Subscribe so you don't miss one. 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cbVdJa... 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... #SalesLeadership #SalesManagement #SalesCoaching #SalesPodcast #B2BSales #SalesHiring