Hire salespeople who beat quotas selling inferior products at tier-three companies
Shaan Puri · Ex-Tesla President reveals EVERYTHING Elon does to win · Apr 9, 2026 · at 9:14
Shaan Puri discusses talent selection heuristics with former Tesla President Jon McNeill, sharing a mental model for evaluating sales talent.
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“Hire salespeople from the ones who had the shitty product. He's like, if you hire a salesperson from the people whose, the product was just being pulled by the market, they, you know, the fish were jumping in the boat, and you don't know if that person's a great fisherman, just because they were just being handed inbound, organic, warm leads, and they were closing them. That's, that doesn't mean anything. You want to go to the guy who was selling on the tier three company, still beating quota even though their company was not the winner, their product was not the hot one, because that person actually knows how to sell.”
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