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product knowledge. No qualifying questions were asked. We will role-
play this situation in the next session.”

Managing Conflict with Direct Reports: “One of your salespeople signed
up two new customers and both customers cancelled almost immediately.
In both cases, the salesperson's commission was clawed back. It is clear
that expectation setting issues occurred during both sales processes.
However, the salesperson is aggressively claiming that both cancellations
are the fault of the post-sale account manager for mismanaging the on-
boarding process. We will role-play this situation in the next session.”

Building Team Spirit and Pride: “For the second quarter in a row, the
team has missed goal. Fewer than 50 percent of your salespeople are
actually making their quota. You have heard that some members of the
team have started interviewing outside of the company. You need to lift
your team's spirits. We will role-play this situation in the next session.”

Active Listening: “One of your salespeople grabs you in the hallway and
requests to change teams. Given the seriousness of the request, you
inform the salesperson that you are running into a meeting right now but
you would like to meet with him immediately afterwards. We will role-
play this discussion in our next session.”

Prerequisites for Leadership Consideration

Simply accumulating tenure on the HubSpot sales team did not automatically
grant a salesperson entry into the sales leadership curriculum. Entry had to be
earned. There were three skill areas we evaluated as a prerequisite to the
leadership class: performance, sales skills, and leadership potential.

“Performance” was the easiest to evaluate— for example, “Exceed the sales
targets for six months in a row and you have fulfilled the ‘performance’
prerequisite.” It was not necessary to be the top performer, but consistent goal
attainment was a must.

For “sales skills,” I looked for well-roundedness. As discussed in Chapter 5, I
had plenty of top salespeople who had “superpowers” but ranged anywhere from
average to very good on other aspects of the sales process. For example,
remember Bob from Chapter 5? He was pretty good at consultative selling,
above average with his discovery calls, and had mediocre presentation skills.
What was his superpower? Bob was an activity hound. His volume really set him