The best sales reps are not coin-operated

I am a huge fan of Harry Stebbings's content, mainly with his 20VC podcast. Specifically, as a GTM nerd, the 20Sales podcasts he puts out ~once a month are the ones I enjoy the most.

This past Thursday, he had on AJ, the head of sales @ Glean. It was one of the better sales podcast episodes I've heard in a while, and it aligns with our ethos @ GTMBA.

Harry asked him, "Are sales reps coin-operated?"

Without any doubt, AJ answered very close to this:

• "No, not at all. The coin-operated sales reps are those you don't want to hire. The best sales reps have insightful IQ/are smart, want career development and challenges to overcome, and want to get coached. Good sellers look like this."

This is spot on. In my opinion, the top GTM reps see money as a by-product of many other things working - not the main input.

There is a split view on this in the sales community: Should we hire coin-operated reps or not? For example, AJ’s take is the polar opposite of the top-down, old-school sellers, like the ones you see at Oracle, Salesforce, Outreach, Gong, or selling a commodity (staffing, HR software, etc.). See this take from Collin Cadmus below:

I am on AJ's boat and nowhere near agree with Collin. Just because you don’t consider money the #1 motivator doesn’t mean you aren’t hungry and ambitious.

Jason Lemkin also said on Lenny's Podcast - "you want to a hire a rep that cares about money."

I agree with this one, but there is some nuance. You want someone to care about money but not have it be the main focus on their mind.

Every top rep I have worked with cares about money, and they want to ensure their efforts are appropriately compensated (both in variable compensation and equity). I am just trying to be clear here: the reps who put money first—the ones who care about the most—aren't the highest-performing reps.

It's important first to define what we mean by coin-operated:

Two types of coin-operated reps

• 1) How they define it in “I went to a small school in Cambridge Business Review” article, the"Sales Learning Curve"

  • In the famous article, they define these reps as those who want you to give them a book of business, put their heads down, and sell

  • “In this phase, when the formula for success has been developed, and all of the support requirements for sales reps are in place, the company needs more traditional salespeople—what's known in the industry as "coin-operated reps"—who require nothing more than a territory, a sales plan, a price book, and marketing materials to bring in orders.”

  • When it makes sense: you are a large enough company and need bodies to put their heads down and sell

• 2) A rep that would answer "money" if you asked in an interview, "What motivates you?"

  • Truly is doing this job with money as the main/only input

    • Chances are, this rep will reek of commission breath

    • It reminds me of someone who asks, “What do you want in a partner?” and then someone says, “I want them to be hot.” Of course physical attraction is important, but putting that first as your answer is not how the people in the best relationships would think this way, and they realize that there are other important components to a successful relationship

      • There are so many similarities between sales and dating, but that is for another post

  • When it makes sense: your product is highly transactional and/or commoditized - you need less of a consultative seller and more of someone to go out there and be aggressive to close business

There is a time and place for when coin-operated reps are needed - but they aren’t the best ones out there. I’d argue that the best reps are talented enough to want to bet on themselves in startup/growth sales over BigTech, and thus, the Renaissance Reps are the top ones in tech.

As mentioned, it's important to define these because everyone in sales cares about money to some extent. However, the difference between putting it as the primary input vs. a by-product of other things separates the good from the great.

When you are a later-stage/IPO company and need someone to sell into a few zip codes in Michigan, hire coin-operated rep #1.

If you are selling something super commoditized (like Collin's products that were Aircall/Single Platform/etc.), hire coin-operated rep #2. Those jobs come with so much rejection and are more of a transactional sell that you'll need a more aggressive seller with money on their mind to push them through and someone to prove it.

But don't hire a coin-operated person for an evangelical sale, or a sale to a technical persona, or want a more cerebral GTM team. Hire someone who is a problem solver, someone who is customer-first and wants to learn and get better—knowing that when those hit, financial success is a by-product and inevitable, not the primary input.

With people knowing more and more about a product before they even engage with a seller (thanks to PLG and the internet/GenAI for market research), the best GTM teams out there will arm themselves with Renaissance Reps who are truly problem solvers/consultants, not mercenary, money-hungry reps.

So yes, money is important. But if it’s someone’s main driver, realize you’ll create a less cerebral and building-type environment.