David Cummings on Startups

Category: Entrepreneurship

  • Top 3 Hiring Mistakes

    Alright, now that we have 5 Non-Standard Recruiting Tactics and 7 Non-Standard Interview Questions let’s talk about hiring mistakes. As much as we work hard to build an excellent recruiting and hiring process, mistakes happen. Here are the top three hiring mistakes:

    1. Sacrificing Culture Fit – When the hiring manager and team feels pressure to deliver, and few candidates are available, people start talking about sacrificing culture fit. Don’t do it. Everything starts with culture fit.
    2. Rushing the Process – Assuming you’ll be working with this person for the next 2-3 years (if not more), that’s thousands of hours. Don’t you think you should spend several hours with the person in the hiring process, especially if they’re a manager (see Chronological In Depth Survey Interviews)?
    3. Not Moving Fast Enough When Ready – Great candidates don’t hang around for long. Once you’ve finished the process, and it’s the right person, move quickly and seal the deal. Don’t linger.

    Don’t make these hiring mistakes. Ensure culture fit, follow the process, and move fast.

    What else? What are some other common hiring mistakes?

  • 5 Non-Standard Recruiting Tactics

    Now that we have the 7 Non-Standard Interview Questions from yesterday, let’s go up a level and talk about non-standard recruiting tactics. When an entrepreneur needs help with recruiting, I ask about their current tactics and it’s typically LinkedIn listings, job boards, and recruiters. Well, here are five non-standard recruiting tactics:

    1. Culture Blog / Engineering Blog – At Pardot we used to have a culture blog called Pardot Wave where Pardashians shared stories and experiences to help prospective employees better understand our culture. At Netflix there’s an excellent engineering blog called The Netflix Tech Blog that highlights many of their open source contributions.
    2. Sponsor Meetup Groups – Go to where the potential team members do their networking and continual education. For example, if recruiting for iOS developers check out The Atlanta iOS Developers Monthly Meetup.
    3. $10,000 Employee Referral Bonus – Don’t do the basic $1,000 employee referral bonus. For really hard to find positions, make the referral bonus substantial (it’ll still be much less than using recruiters).
    4. Public Career Fair – Host a happy hour at the local pub for anyone that’s interested in learning more about the open job positions. A casual group setting is a great way to meet potential candidates that aren’t ready to go through a full recruiting process but might be with a little more information.
    5. LinkedIn InMail from the Entrepreneur – Found a good candidate on LinkedIn but haven’t received a response? Have the entrepreneur reach out with a personalized InMail message expressing how much they’d enjoy getting together and start the process that way.

    Recruiting is a serious endeavor that requires tremendous effort to do well. Run a process with the basics and incorporate some of these non-standard tactics as well.

    What else? What are some other non-standard recruiting tactics?

  • 7 Non-Standard Interview Questions

    Continuing with yesterday’s post on Chronological In Depth Survey Interviews, I’ve enjoyed testing a variety of interview questions over the years. While there are a number of excellent resources with example interview questions available, I’ve found a few non-standard interview questions I like. Here are seven:

    1. What did you do to prepare for this interview? More details.
    2. Why do you want to join our company? More details.
    3. How would you describe our product or service to a stranger on the street?
    4. What are our core values? How do your values align with ours?
    5. What are three things you like about your current company? What are three things you really don’t like? Why?
    6. What are three things you like about your current manager? What are three thing you really don’t like? Why?
    7. What’s your work style? In what type of environment do you thrive?

    Remember that an interview should be a conversation where the interviewee does most of the talking. Combine these non-standard interview questions along with your existing favorites and the Chronological In Depth Survey Interviews.

    What else? What are some more non-standard interview questions that you like?

  • Chronological In Depth Survey Interviews

    Nearly 10 years ago I first learned about Topgrading and the chronological in depth survey interviews. Generally, the idea is to do an incredibly detailed interview of every past job for people in management and senior management positions. Start from college, regardless of stage of career, and ask deep probing questions. Find out how the person thinks and why they moved from position to position.

    Here’s how to do chronological in depth survey interviews:

    • For each and every single job, ask about the following:
      Job title
      Start and end date
      Starting and ending compensation
      Roles and responsibilities
      State of affairs when joining
      Results and accomplishments
      Mistakes and failures
      Most enjoyable and least enjoyable aspects of the job
      Circumstances that led to change of jobs
      Manager name and phone number
      Manager strengths and weaknesses
      What manager would say about candidate’s strengths and weaknesses
      Names of direct reports, their strengths and weaknesses, and rate them A through F
    • After the jobs review sections ask questions about the following:
      Analysis skills
      Judgement/decision making
      Creativity
      Continuing education
      Integrity
      Organization/planning
      Independence
      Stress management
      Interpersonal competencies

    Plan for this process to take 3-4 hours, minimum. Hiring great people is one of the three most important things an entrepreneur does and chronological in depth survey interviews are key.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on chronological in depth survey interviews?

  • Video of the Week: Patrick Collison on Hiring at Stripe and the Role of a Product-Focused CEO

    For our video of the week we have Patrick Collison on Hiring at Stripe and the Role of a Product-Focused CEO. Enjoy!

    From YouTube:
    This is session 11 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features John Lilly interviewing Patrick Collison, the Co-Founder of Stripe.

  • The Emotional Journey of Anything Great

    Last week I met with an entrepreneur that had been working on a startup for two years and it was clear he was having a tough time. Late in the conversation I asked about the The Trough of Disillusionment and there was an affirmative that it was happening currently. After that, I saw Chris Maddern tweet this excellent graphic titled The Emotional Journey of Anything Great:
    emotional-journey

    Steps along the journey, as taken from the picture:

    • This is the best idea ever!!
    • This will be fun
    • This is harder than I thought
    • This is going to be a lot of work
    • This sucks and I have no idea what I’m doing
    • #%@}!!!!!
    • Ok but it still sucks
    • Quick, let’s call it a day and say we learned something
    • Hmm…
    • Hey!
    • Wow
    • This is one of the things I’m most proud of

    Every entrepreneur goes through dark times. Unfortunately, it’s part of the process but the ones that break through have a greater appreciation and resilience that makes it even sweeter.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on this emotional journey of anything great?

  • The 10 Year Anniversary of Pardot

    Today marks the 10 year anniversary from when Adam and I started Pardot. I first registered the domain name on January 30th, 2007 (whois lookup) and Adam had to give notice to his current employer, InterContinental Hotels Group. We first started out as a PPC lead generation service for tech companies before pivoting into marketing automation in the first 60 days (more key milestones). After hiring 11 interns and building v1 of the product, we were off and running on the adventure of a lifetime.

    Here are a few things about the Pardot journey that I’m especially proud of:

    Overall, I’m most proud of Adam and me building an enduring business that’s 15x larger than when we sold it and making a small mark on our community. Here’s to everyone that helped make Pardot a success and a thank you for the last 10 years.

  • Quantifying Account-Based Engagement Efforts

    Continuing with this week’s theme of account-based engagement (see here and here), there’s another element that needs more discussion: quantifying account-based engagement efforts. Let’s say you have accounts rated by tier with the ‘A’ accounts being best-fits, the ‘B’ accounts being the second tier, the ‘C’ accounts being the third tier, and so on. How do you decide how much effort to devote to each tier?

    There are two common approaches:

    Minutes-Based

    • Take the most common activities (call, initial email, email reply, demo, etc.) and allocate a number of minutes for each as a proxy for effort (e.g. 5 minutes for an email, 20 minutes for an email reply, 90 minutes for a demo including prep work, etc.)
    • Figure out the ideal mix of activities and the corresponding minutes per rep per week, assuming 40 hours:
      • 5 hours – general meetings, coaching, etc.
      • 25 hours – 50 Tier 1 accounts at 30 minutes each
      • 10 hours – 40 Tier 2 accounts at 15 minutes each
      • Total: 90 accounts engaged
    • Build a CRM report by activity type with a formula to multiply by the number of minutes allocated and then group by the account tier to see the results

    Touches-Based

    • Take the most common touches (call, email, social media interaction, InMail message) and assume each is roughly the same amount of effort
    • Take the number of Tier 1 accounts and Tier 2 accounts and start with 2x the effort for Tier 1 accounts
    • Assign a required number of touches per Tier 1 account and per Tier 2 account each week (a touches quota)
    • Build a CRM report by activity type grouped by the account tier to ensure the efforts match the touches quota

    Quantifying account-based engagement efforts takes work to setup and requires an on-going process. Every sales leader knows that more effort equals more results, and this strategy is excellent for more predictable revenue.

    What else? What are some more ways to quantify account-based engagement efforts?

  • Standard Sales vs Account-Based Sales

    With the basics of Account-Based Sales for More Predictable Revenue in place, next comes a deeper explanation as to how “standard sales” differs from account-based sales. First, let’s start with an example.

    At Pardot, every August the new Inc. 5000 would come out and Account Executives (AEs) would would go through different relevant categories like software and claim “ownership” of any new accounts on the list that weren’t already in the CRM. Then, they’d go in to LinkedIn (or LinkedIn Sales Navigator) and find the right people based on their department and seniority level. Next, using a scraping tool like LeadIQ or Hunter, the names in LinkedIn would be turned into CRM leads with email addresses. Finally, the AEs would call and email the leads a few times, giving up quickly if there was no response.

    This outbound approach, combined with following up to any inbound leads, represents how the majority of companies do standard sales. A few characteristics of standard sales:

    • Reps do both prospecting and selling (no distinguishing between SDRs and AEs)
    • Reaches out to any company that’s loosely relevant
    • Builds a list of two or three people per company
    • Sends an email or two personally and/or makes a phone call or two to each person on the list with generic messaging (most reps give up too early)
    • Treats all companies the same

    Now, contrast that to the characteristics of account-based sales:

    • Prospects via SDRs and sells via AEs (specialization of skills)
    • Reaches out to accounts only if they fit the ideal customer profile
    • Looks for every relevant decision maker at the account and has them bucketed into a specific persona based on department and seniority level (e.g. marketing director)
    • Runs a coordinated engagement cadence that involves multiple people in the organization (e.g. the CEO reaching out to the CEO, the marketing director to the marketing director) with persona-based messaging that’s relevant and timely with 10+ touches per contact over time
    • Treats each account uniquely using a system that manages Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 accounts via a predictive marketing platform (e.g. Tier 1 accounts get 120 minutes of effort per month, Tier 2 accounts get 30 minutes of effort per month, etc.)

    Standard sales is more “spray and pray” while account-based sales is targeted and deep.

    Entrepreneurs would do well to initiate an internal shift to account-based sales and deliver more predictable revenue.

    What else? What are some more thoughts on standard sales vs account-based sales?

  • Account-Based Sales for More Predictable Revenue

    With Rainmaker 2017 only a few days away and Revenue Summit 2017 the following week, the account-based sales and marketing conference season is in full force. Targeting specific accounts as a sales strategy has been around for decades. With more focus on high quality customers (larger deal size, shorter sales cycle, better lifetime value), increased pressure on sales and marketing to grow revenue faster, and the advent of high quality sales engagement platforms, account-based marketing platforms, and account-based intelligence platforms, account-based sales has become more top-of-mind. In fact, when you look at the most common sales rep job title — account executive — the word “account” is front and center.

    MatterMark recently published Introducing Account-Based Sales Into Your Process – The Four-Step Framework to help companies get started with account-based sales. Here are the four steps:

    1. Research your current customers – Analyze the existing customers to find patterns like industry, size, geography, tech stack, social presence, and more.
    2. Build your target list – Using the signals from your current customers, build a list of lookalike/net-new accounts that match the most important attributes.
    3. Identify prospects – With the target accounts, use LinkedIn to find the right people in the accounts based on department and seniority level.
    4. Reach out – Run a process to engage via email, phone, social, and more (too many sales people give up after three or four tries — go deep and be pleasantly persistent).

    Think accounts, not individual contacts. Build an account-based sales program for a more predictable sales engine.

    What else? What are some more ideas around account-based sales?