The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

2Five Traits Great Salespeople Have and How to Interview for Them

After reading the analysis in Chapter 1, you're probably wondering which characteristics predicted sales success at HubSpot.

Here is the answer.

There were five traits that correlated most significantly with sales success.

1. Coachability
2. Curiosity
3. Prior success
4. Intelligence
5. Work ethic

Figure 2.1 shows the full Interview Scorecard with weights adjusted to the strength of each characteristic correlation.

Figure 2.1 HubSpot Sales Candidate Assessment

At this point, I must remind you of one of the lessons from Chapter 1.

The ideal sales hiring formula is different for every company, but the process to engineer the formula is the same.

The foregoing results represent the sales hiring formula for HubSpot's sales context at the time of the analysis. This sales hiring formula is probably not optimized for your company. In fact, it may not be ideal for HubSpot's current stage of evolution. Nonetheless, I have helped many rising companies hire salespeople over the years, especially in the technology space, and I suspect these five characteristics will play an important role in your firm's sales hiring formula.

Therefore, let me share how I evaluated sales candidates for each of these key characteristics.

Coachability

Coachability: the ability to absorb and apply coaching.

Coachability was the most significant influencer ...