Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!
This season, we’re talking to B2B sales leaders about their experience building winning processes, coaching & scaling teams, and partnering with customers.
Our guest this week is David Barron, Global Director of Sales at HubSpot!
David’s background is a mix of product and sales – in his 8+ years at HubSpot, he went from sales, to launching Service Hub & Operations Hub on the product team, and back to sales, where he’s building a specialized global sales team to sell those products.
In this episode, he talks to Ross about how to build a strong sales team in 2023, the pros of team quotas, and more tactics for sellers & sales leaders.
Listen to the episode here, and get the key takeaways from our conversation below!
👯 What’s your advice for hiring & building a 10/10 sales team?
“Make sure every hire adds something new to your team, whether it’s to your culture or your skillset, so that everyone continues to get better.”
David sees himself as the facilitator of his team – it’s not his team, it’s his reps’ team. His role is to set a clear mission and vision for the team to follow, let them execute and innovate within those guardrails, and move blockers out of the way for them.
The main thing he looks for when hiring? The ability to take and action feedback.
“One of my favorite interview questions is, ‘What’s a piece of feedback you received recently, was it fair, and what did you do about it?’” David said. “And then I ask the same question again. You can really start to see whether they are self-aware and can take coaching effectively.”
🏆 What’s your argument for team quotas vs individual quotas?
“I thought that having a team quota would break when my team got to like 10 people – but it’s become more successful with each new person we hire. We’re at around 20 globally now.”
Having a team quota isn’t the right fit for every business, but David feels strongly that it’s something more modern sales orgs should implement.
Time to ramp: when you’re leaning on enablement teams, you don’t 100% own your rep training and onboarding.
But in David’s experience, every time he hires a new rep, his more experienced reps jump in to teach the new hire – because they know if they can teach the skills faster, they get paid more.
Efficient demand capture: with individual quotas, typically inbound leads are rotated between reps – no matter who may actually be the best fit for taking care of a specific lead.
Having a team quota gives you the ability to rotate prospects to the rep who has the best shot at closing the deal, based on their individual skills.
⚡ Lightning Round: David’s Fast Sales Insights
- The biggest misconception about sales? That you have to be extroverted.
- A helpful sales or business book you’d recommend? The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
- The hardest part of scaling sales? Prioritization and focus!
About David
David Barron is an experienced sales and product leader who loves bringing new projects, teams, and products into existence. In his 8+ years at HubSpot, he moved from sales to product (launching the Service Hub and Operations Hub) and most recently back to sales to build the future of HubSpot's sales organization.
