Blog

Multiple interviews can be tiresome, but also valuable.

Imagine a high school lacrosse or football player interviewing with a college coach. The program has a great reputation and the head coach and recruit have a terrific rapport. The recruit joins the team but then discovers the trainers’ methods...
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Communication Skills do not always = Interview and Sales & CS success

As of late I have been noticing candidates with excellent communication skills are not always the most attractive professionals for our clients’ career opportunities. Wait, what? How is this possible? Some candidates are less energized, concise, passionate, and empathetic, and...
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Q4 2022/Q12023 sales team planning. Newly available talent, a blessing or a burden? … A simple tool to evaluate sales candidate fit

Your budget may be restricted to just a few Q4 hires, perhaps limited to top-grading and not team expansion. You therefore want to make sure you get it right. BLESSING: there is more available sales talent now than in previous...
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Job-hopping is Rampant

I received this article: “Job-hopping is Rampant” from VentureFizz‘s Weekly Digest, written by Allison Levitsky, a Protocol Reporter. It discusses hiring managers’ increased tolerance for candidate job hopping. Changing Tolerance for Job Hoppers I personally still seek candidates with a...
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Summary of Xtra Effort clients’ current hiring demand across enterprise Sales, Sales Engineering, and Customer Success

Xtra Effort periodically shares our clients’ hiring requirements across the USA in the form a spreadsheet. It will inform you as to what is hot from an enterprise technology and hiring demand perspective, particularly within Xtra Effort’s client market: high growth information technology...
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Hiring Sales “Explorers” versus “Settlers” versus “Prospectors”; Mark Birch’s super insightful AND actionable advice

We all receive a lot of ideas and content, only a minority of which grabs us as super insightful AND actionable. Mark Birch’s recent Enterprise Sales Forum release meets the criteria. I am personally most impacted by Mark’s informing us...
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Retaining vs. losing your Sales, SE, or CSM team members?

You may soon begin to reflect on changes to your team’s composition since March and create your Q3 and Q4 plans to retain or attract (new) team members. The below observations are from Xtra Effort conversations with USA based Sales,...
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Sales people of acquired technology companies become “Sales Overlays”, sometimes it is good, sometimes it is bad

Xtra Effort has learned from sales candidates working for companies acquired by much larger companies that they often become “Sales Overlays”.   They are originally employed by a technology company with 25 to 500 employees, typically with responsibility for a...
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You moving forward or paralyzed with fear?

Are you moving forward, “Sempre avanti”; or paralyzed with fear? I am reading the book The Winter Army: The World War 2 Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division. The division unit’s motto was “Sempre avanti”, or “Always forward”. It served...
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