Kevin Egan never hires sales reps without a mock presentation
Kevin Egan · Kevin Egan: Biggest Lesson on Managing Sales Teams at Slack and Atlassian | E1034 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 12, 2023 · at 14:27
Kevin Egan is the Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian, previously at Slack, Dropbox, and Salesforce. He discusses mandatory evaluation criteria for sales candidates.
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“No hire that I've made at my past companies have gotten the job until they've presented a mock scenario around a fictitious company and a business problem that they're trying to solve.”
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Egan: Startups Must Master PLG Before Layering On Enterprise Sales
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Egan: Early-Stage Startups Should Avoid Hiring Coin-Operated Sales Reps
“It does not pay to have coin-operated sales reps in the early days. They're going to be overly focused on quotas and crushing their number to get to a certain outcome. The early days are really about who is creating the best connection between my developing pr…”
Egan: Early startup sales hires require intellectual range over big-company logos
“I think for a founder who's hiring, I could absolutely see where the big logo hire does not work out. I think, again, what you're looking for there is intellectual range, and that often doesn't just show up from, by the fact that they worked at Microsoft or ca…”
Egan: Prioritize Candidate Long-Term Commitment Over Immediate Compensation Plans
“I think when I'm closing a candidate, I'm interested if I'm giving them a fair comp plan, Are they really interested in about the long-term journey at this company? Because this comp plan only represents this moment in time for the next year or two.”