What Recruiters Actually Look for in Salespeople | Innovantage Podcast #55

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello there and welcome to another episode of the InAdvantage podcast where business meets tech to bring you your competitive edge. As always, I'm your host Max, and it is my ongoing job and duty to explore that edge between business and tech and to find something interesting for you to listen to and for me to talk about with my kids guests. Today's topic is going to be a very interesting one for the very sake of it being very relatable to most companies out there at the very same time, not being very much discussed as much. At least not as much as we have discussed other topics on this podcast. I am talking about two functions that every company has. Sales and recruiting. And how do those functions combine? How does one influence the other? And what does it mean to run a recruiting agency that focuses specifically on complex sales? To help me on that journey today is my guest Edinus Vasilis, who is the founder of a European recruiting agency focusing specifically on hiring salespeople. Vasilis.

Speaker B: Hey, nice to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know, I, I never tried being so formal like do you prefer being like a Mr. Vasilis or.

Speaker B: No, no, everything. I think it's American way. Right, yeah. Saying uh, yes sir. Yes Captain, yes sir. Yeah.

Speaker A: Adventist, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you come to found a agency and what's your background like?

Speaker B: Yeah, so nice to be here. Um, in brief, you know, because I, I keep telling the story every day at least once or twice but you know, for, for the audience I will be quite brief. I've been in sales all my life. You know, started as just you know, simple sales rep, moved, you know, career, career ladder up, you know, had some you know, business development gigs in biopharmaceuticals and traditional retail sector. Then moved to the startups. Startup um, field where I basically joined as a BDM um for like you know, European market. Then we suddenly hit a success. We expanded to 50 countries globally uh and basically I became head of sales for European market. Then I moved to VP of sales to another startup. Then I joined venture capital fund, uh, where we corporate Venture Capital fund where we tried basically to establish one but it was unsuccessful when I joined as a chief sales officer at another startup um, where we basically raised four and a half million euros and we tried to expand into American market. Worked with such brands like Amazon Games, Netflix Games, Warner, uh, Bros, and so on and it failed. We had to close down the business and basically, you know, let it go. All majority of the people like you know from 60 to 20, uh, in half a year. And it was a big disappointment. Um, and basically I thought like, all right, maybe I should go and try service business. Because all my life I was chasing success in corporate sales, in mid market sales, in B2B sales, in SaaS and in other fields. And I thought all right, you know, I gonna do it my own agency. And this is how Hems uh, appeared was established. Right. You know we have three and a half years in business, 10 people already closing 100 roles per year. So yeah, out of disappointment, as I say, I established.

Speaker A: That's a great story. I love that you're very open about the failures so far because when a lot of people hear sales, a lot of people imagine kind of, you know, the bad type of salesperson, the one that pushes an agenda, the one you got to trust, the one who will never tell you the truth. Speaking about sales kind of as a discipline, um, what kind of sales, sales which you say you prefer and what kind of style do you have?

Speaker B: Um, you know that's a very good topic because uh, we all imagine that you know, traditional sales rep is like in a supermarket, uh, where they try to sell you a cream, uh, like some beauty products, right. And they catch you from your hand, right. And basically try to sell you something. Um, there are totally different type of sales if we move you know, to B2B sales where there is no transactional sales. But basically, basically you try to solve some solution like you'd sell solution and you solve an issue right to the company. Maybe they want to digitalize their manufacturing facility, maybe they want to establish a new entity or establish a new product and so on. So um, I Prefer uh, on B2B sales. Right. Schools I would say. And it really matters if you want to move to mid market, upper market or into corporate sales because all of these type of sales we have totally different approach, totally different style, timeline, um, tickets. Right. You know as, as we say it in sales and, and yes, but my bread and butter is mid market. I, I don't like corporate sales and I don't like, you know, very low transactional sales as well.

Speaker A: So can you tell me why then? Why don't you like, I can understand why don't you like low transactional sales, but why not enterprise sales?

Speaker B: Uh, because with enterprise sales this is one of the reason why our startup failed. Uh, and uh, because you know, we chose to move to corporate uh, sales uh, path. And what happened that uh, it took you, I don't know, half a year. For example, in Best case scenario, half a year to get to the table and to discuss potential solution. Then it takes you half a year minimum to or uh, to basically agree on um, contracts to agree on uh, conditions. Then it follows proof of concept, which is quite low. Right. You know, and quite low paid. And then if everything is okay and you satisfy their needs, then they say, all right, let's talk again about the proper agreement. Right. And it might be that if you are not ready, you're already underwater right your Runway and so on. And one more thing. What can happen during that one year, two years of doing the deal management gonna change and what gonna happen when they say, sorry guys, you know, we now freeze every uh, any decision making. Let's come back to it after half a year and good luck, you know, with all these two years of uh, investing your time and energy.

Speaker A: So all too familiar. All too familiar, yes, I understand that. Indeed. And then maybe we can contrast that with how mid market works. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker B: Yeah. So the mid market usually, you know, business are very efficient on decision making. They don't have many layers. And then they have an issue, you have a solution, you meet. If you match their criteria, if you build the trust, they buy from you, you sell it, you deliver. And it might be that you keep on delivering and keep on working for as long as uh, you know, you find a mutual uh, ground. Right. And then if someone really messed it up, you can be a second in a line who, uh, the next service provider who going to fix it, Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that's much faster, much easier, much more profitable most likely, and much more pleasant as well. But it doesn't last so long as uh, enterprise deals for 10, 20 years if you manage to sign such a contract, right?

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. But I agree. I also personally prefer mid market deals. It feels more personal kind of as a, if I am a salesperson in that sort of deal, um, I feel like I have more impact I guess because in an enterprise deal, like you said, it's a couple of years, many layers of decision making processes. A lot of the time the decision making process is just a very formal procurement thing that you um, can't really control and the customer can control. He says I want to buy from you. I tell them that I want to sell him something. But then in the middle we have regulations that just don't allow you.

Speaker B: Legal team compliance.

Speaker A: Legal team compliance, yes. And then it just doesn't work for mid market. It's usually kind of smaller, it's still large enough where you're not reliant on high volume and constant uh, stream of sales, but it's, it's still small enough where you feel the impact.

Speaker B: I remember one story that my friend told. He said we, he works at corporate and he said we bought a solution. And uh, then the um, solution provider gave us a permission to use AI uh features for the rest of the year free of charge. But there is an issue that um, local compliance team will take half a year to approve that features. So it's basically they are free of charge but they cannot use it. So this is the beauty of running an enterprise deal.

Speaker A: Wonderful. The beautiful world of enterprise deals such as it is. But let's talk a little bit about your then transition into founding a recruiting company because that's not an obvious switch. Recruiting from what you've told me, hasn't been on your responsibilities list so far. It's a little bit of a different thing. So why recruiting?

Speaker B: So it was on responsibility list when I was head of sales in three different companies because uh, in Lithuania it's quite common to assemble your team by yourself, um, as no one wants. You know, like at least we try to save money on recruitment. Right. You know, and comparing to UK or to US where it's a typical thing. Um, but uh, there are two other factors that uh, when I was sensed that our startup is going out of money and running out of money, right then I was thinking like what to do next. And I started to listen the US podcast, how to make your first million. Right. And we were pitching, you know, the easiest way basically to run agency, uh, based on your experience. And then I was like thinking that my passion is basically network with people, uh, connect, um, two different people that they can, you know, benefit from each other. And I was doing free of charge, a lot of interest, uh, where it ended up, uh, as an employment and just by listening the podcast, identifying my strengths, I basically thought maybe I'm gonna try, you know. And I, I started pitching this idea to friends and everyone said like majority of them said man, this is an amazing do it. I totally see you as a matchmaker, you know. And I started doing it, um, and it really got, well, people start paying money, uh, even friends paid money who had the businesses. And um, yeah, this is how I got, you know, approval. Right. I even started with my personal um, Gmail, uh, email. Right. You know, I just established the uh, entity but you know, I didn't have uh, a brand, anything. Yeah, uh, to this day, yes, some people still say that. Edwin, are you going to still um, do sales recruitment because uh, you can do better. Right? You're running an agency is, is kind of like outdated business uh model. But um. Yeah, you know for, for the time being I kind of still see myself doing this matchmaking. Uh, uh, is it just a personal

Speaker A: preference or have you found some success? Because I know that right now you have transitioned from that stage of having just a Gmail and just doing it on your own. You now have a brand, you now have a team.

Speaker B: Yeah. What do you mean by um.

Speaker A: So do you see yourself growing the agency further or you're just enjoying yourself and filling it out as you go along or like what's your current state? Why do you think that doing the agency is still a good thing?

Speaker B: Yeah. So basically you know um, we reached uh now a third stage of uh agency because first stage was just me establishing it, trying to you know get orders and earning first income. Then the second stage was having a second, third or fifth employee. Uh, I achieved that. Uh, so then the second stage was like you know expanding to 10 people. And what I see now that um, going to the fourth stage expanding even more now it's becoming quite difficult especially when you own a niche only and when you are in a such a small market as Lithuania or Baltimore.

Speaker A: Right, yeah.

Speaker B: Because recruitment as it development as well. Ah, such a competitive industry. There are hundreds of thousands of um, service providers and that's why you know me networking with LinkedIn, uh, influencers networking you know and with other service uh providers helps to expand. But yeah, so the next stage would be you know to becoming a proper European agents and either having entities in different countries, um, not merging but basically cooperating with similar agents as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. So your current focus is on the

Speaker B: Baltics specifically or it naturally happens because um, especially recruitment is very network driven and trust uh driven. So basically it is okay for Americans uh to find European employees uh, and they don't care if I'm Lithuanian, Latvian or German. Right. But when German companies looking for German employee and me being Lithuanian, uh, trying to help them does not make much of a sense. So that's why it's not so easy to basically expand outside and to be truly European. But um, we do a lot of um positions um for Lithuanian businesses basically. Now it used to be the trend that if you are Lithuanian business you want to expand into the Germany, you try to find some German speaking uh, person in uh, in in Lithuania now majority um of the companies understand that it's better to hire in Germany local ones and you Know, just use the network and, and that's majority of deals where we work as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. So that transition then, um, how do usually companies approach hiring a salespeople from your perspective, what do they look for? Maybe what kind of mistakes they made when identifying what kind of salesperson they need.

Speaker B: Uh, we have a joke that every time company list uh, the skills that they need, it always burning ice, hungry and uh, commission, um, driven. It's like, I know sometimes joking like, should I bring um, you know, hungry, unfed, uh, person, you know, into the meeting so you could feel that he really wants some food or something. So. But yeah, um, you know, usually companies have that uh, uh, cliches of um, sales reps that they have to be good looking, very talkative. Uh, then, um, kind of James Bond style, right. You know that they fill the room, uh, they accommodate you. Ah, they can do cold calls all day long. Right. And they magically going to bring you new customers and so on. So this is like typical expectations. Um, and of course, you know, if they know any languages, additional languages, if they have an experience and so on. But our goal is um, to bring them into reality, right? You know that, uh, yes, there are some of the people, uh, with these skill sets that I described, but in most of the cases, usually they are business owners.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Because if you are good that you know, and you are so magical and James Bond style, most likely you are successful. Right. You know, and um, and this is the case. So. Yeah. So our goal is basically to educate, uh, the hiring side and educate uh, the candidates and to make them match with each other and basically cooperate uh properly in order to achieve the goals.

Speaker A: Okay. And then from the candidate side, can you give us some insight as to how candidates view the market and how they select their companies?

Speaker B: Uh, some of the candidates. And uh, now we have that soft approach to, to the, to the company that they expect remote positions. They uh, expect, you know, that you don't need proactively look for the clients. They expect that, you know, the KPIs or metrics are not so hardly tracked. And um, you know, usually like, you know, they tend to treat uh, um, traditional sales management like, you know, you're tracking weekly KPIs daily performance and so on as a micromanagement as well. So that's why we need to leverage them between, you know, guys, this is a standard and it's usually. It was always like that in sales, right? You know that you have your KPIs, you have your targets, uh, you have your daily metrics and then basically you need to perform in order to stay it. Right. It's the same like in uh, any sports. If, if you are part of basketball team and you, you miss and miss and always, you know the game or even the shots, you get fired.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Most of the case. So the same with sales.

Speaker A: That makes sense. Makes sense. Sales and sports do have very tight parallels. A lot of the time they require a lot of energy. The younger ones can be as successful as the older ones just by virtue of having that energy and so on and so forth. Um, can you tell me then a little bit about what, what kind of. What's the usual type of company that looks for those kinds of salespeople? Are those tech companies or manufacturing companies that mid market, complicated B2B salesperson that we have talked about so far. What kind of companies usually need them?

Speaker B: Yeah, so all the companies who either manufacturing something or produce something. Right. Have something to offer. If it's a service or product or whatever, they usually need sales. And uh, there are a few stages, right. You know, like um, owner led sales or like, you know, CEO led sales at the beginning or founder led sales as we say. And then in a later stage that you need to replicate yourself and have some, uh, someone, you know, to do sales. Um, so yeah, so mid market, usually they focus either on the local market or on exports, uh, in foreign markets. And basically, uh, the idea is if you have a specific market with a specific language skills, usually you try to prefer and find someone who match that criteria. But um, yeah, the companies who really want to expand, uh, and just grow, you need sales. Because I haven't seen the company who magically grew just by just, I know, by market demand.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. I mean B2C probably where like product led growth is there. You don't really need a sales person. But it's a cold different motion.

Speaker B: Yeah, but we spend a lot of on marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then it's a different, you know, expenses.

Speaker A: Yeah. Like when you sign up on your own, you need more leads. Like just the amounts of leads that you needed is a different thing. But it still sounds if we combine sales and marketing into one singular kind of funnel and you cannot exist without it just growing organically through word of mouth or whatever.

Speaker B: And even growing organically. Right. You know, you still need someone who takes care of your clients. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, you know, there is that joke that uh, I know some sales like, you know, selling and some just, you know, giving you. Right. You know, the package into your hands. But uh, in General, you know, B2B sales, you need the account managers, you need the sales representatives, you need business development managers. Right. Who help your business even sustain to grow or to expand, uh, to other countries and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Can you talk a little bit more as to the types of salespeople that you usually try and hire? So you've mentioned business development managers, sales representatives, what kind of other roles and what's the difference between them for those that don't know.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it always starts, you know, from junior sales reps. And usually they do whatever you, you need them to do. But in most of the cases you prefer that they approach new customers. At least call them, you know, try to book meetings for you once you go to the conference or you try to visit someone. Right. Then um, account executives. So like uh, sales representatives. Depending if you're selling SaaS, it's kind of account executives. If you're selling non SaaS, it's usually sales representative. So they do meetings, they meet customers, um, sometimes they take full sales cycle as well. And then there is this BDM or like business development manager in most of the cases that means that you need to work with other markets, other countries and you need to expand and basically look for long term partners. I know for example you need a distribution partner in uh, Netherlands.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Or in Poland and so on. Or you are logistics company and you need someone you know to, to deliver goods. Right. You know, so that would be a business development. And then of course you know, team leads. So team lead usually means that you are playing coach, uh, which you know, you have your own quota. You have small team, usually four, three people, you are more senior, they trust you and you are like you know, coach. But you still sell. Then of course, um, head of sales, uh, uh, is uh, you know, director of sales is like you know, more serious in your role. VP of sales. In, in reality is if you are really VP of sales, you should have sales directors under you. And then we have team leads and then we have sales reps and then we have junior sales. Right. So you are king of the pyramid. But yeah, and it's more corporate uh, role. But uh, sometimes in startups um, they like this VP of sales, um, role, you know, and so on.

Speaker A: Why?

Speaker B: So it sounds good. You know, it's not like sales director. You um, it's more like you know, traditional role but VP of sales, like you know in us we like president. Right. They all presidents.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Of their own company. It sounds really good. You know, I'm a President, One man show, right? So president. So yeah, that's true. That makes sense. That does add to the discussion. One funny thing. I used to speak with a company who had. They were a custom IT development company and they had um, a request from one client to scrape all the titles from uh, LinkedIn. Guess, uh, at which number they stopped,

Speaker A: I don't know, like thousands.

Speaker B: It was three point something billion. Oh my God. Because look, Ninja guru, right? Father and so on. And people were so creative with titles. And I'm speaking with all of them, right? Not about the sales, but it shocked me as well. And I thought like, how many titles can it be? 10, 10,000, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, like thousands. Like, sure. You have your directors, you have your VPs of, you know, functions like recruiting and sales and engineering and stuff like that. Yeah, millions.

Speaker B: So this is, this is the reality, you know, of uh, titles.

Speaker A: So how do you then identify what is and isn't a good salesperson when you try and find them? So I understand, of course networking helps, right? Um, you know, people personally, you know what they're capable of. But when you scale, you probably need more than that. How do you do it?

Speaker B: So this is the thing with the sales recruitment because I always tell um, myself that uh, technical recruitment is much easier because you show the code and person understands it or not, right. With sales it's a lot of soft skills. And that's why the um, sales representatives, we always tell our customers that it's very important to understand what you sell in which field, to what kind of customers you sell and then do reverse engineering of what person you need, right? So once you know what type of a person you need, you start looking for someone with exact skill set, at least as close as possible. And once you find that person, there is that uh, bullshit filter, right? Everyone knows everything, everyone did the biggest deals and so on. Um, and we use very simple, uh, approach since we are from sales ourselves, we ask, we dig deeper into every deal if you brought them, very massive deal. Okay, let's talk. So how you manage to find the deal, right? Who was part of the deal, how long would it uh, it took, uh, to close the deal, what kind of challenges you had and so on. And if you really close that deal, you can tell me for two hours, right? Non stop, probably. I could even say it's enough. Thank you. If you. Because, you know, majority of sales guys, you know, they come from, they, oh, I landed, you know, I know Carlsberg, I landed, you know, Boeing and so on and so on. And you understand that come on dude, you worked for one year in um, in a company and you landed Boeing, right?

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: But yeah, you know, simplifying the answer. You really need to dig deeper and ask, you know, specific questions. And for us it's easy because we are from sales. We tried once to do technical, uh, role and I understood that apart from asking simple questions, I cannot uh, evaluate uh, people. And this is probably why it's so difficult for some technical founders as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. If you come back to that example of basketball players and salespeople, when you're hunting for a good basketball player, you can just look at their previous games and you will see whether or not they hit the basket or they miss the basket. Most of the time sales, you can't exactly go to their previous employer and tell them, okay, can you just upload all of your CRM data and we'll analyze it for the last three years whether or not your salespeople performed well or no. So like a lot of it is just hearsay.

Speaker B: And, and another thing as well that um, you have to understand that you uh, ah, cannot be successful in all the positions as a sales rep. Yeah. Uh, then I worked in a biopharmaceutical field as a bdm. Um, I lasted one year and then both sides were very happy that I decided to leave because it was just a matter of either they're going to fire me or I'm, I'm going to find another job because I just doesn't, I don't understand the market, I don't understand what we sell and it's, it's not natural for me.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And then I understood that uh, the pitch that you can do anything, you are unlimited, unlimitless. Right. You know that Americans pitch to us, it doesn't apply in all recitations. That's why some people are very good at um, B2B sales, uh, in traditional field, I know retail. Right. And then we move to fintech and we don't understand this payment gateways, uh, Eban sidebands, AMs and so on. And then you understand that, you know, you were amazing salesman at retail, uh, and you really suck at um, you know, fintech.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true, that's true. Salespeople are very much dependent on the context of what is it that they're selling. And I believe that that's why a lot of kind of famous tech sales where everybody talks about are like, you know, Salesforce or you know like Dynamics or uh, you know, Google Cloud, like solutions that are packaged that you can Understand if you really try and then the harder things are, you know, consultancies and outsourcing companies and whatever else like manufacturing, where you really need to understand the industry that you're in and you sell to people that usually understand that industry much more than you do, regardless of how well you understand that, then it creates a whole challenge. And you ask yourself, like, do I even need to do this? Why not go and sell something that I do understand that I am passionate about? Yeah.

Speaker B: And another issue as well that you mentioned, Salesforce, right. Or big logos, uh, you can be super successful with a big logo behind you because it's not only you, you just uh, taking um, you're part of the trip. Right. You know, it's already going well, it's going, it's scaling crazy. And you just need to land the deals and to follow the playbook. But what happens that, you know, when people uh, sometimes become so, um, confident they can sell anything and they move from uh, you know, big logo to no logger company and then they understand that um, they cannot sell that Big logo was the main driver why they closed the deals. They're amazing at following the process. And we have even some professional sales guys who uh, tell us if the company doesn't have a product market fit. I'm not gonna join that company because I'm not good at bringing new business. I'm amazing at closing the leads that inquires your services. And that's massive difference in a sense.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's what I also experienced when I would hire salespeople is like, okay, if you're great at closing the deal, that is like 90% there. Those 10% are not the hardest 10% that are left. The hardest ones are actually getting the deal through the door and creating the proposal in a way that it makes sense and then just reading the results. I mean it has its value of course, but it's not the most valuable thing in a deal. Then you have to understand that as a salesperson.

Speaker B: Yeah. So that's the thing because sales are so complex and so multi channel and multi, uh, level, so to say from complexity side. And everyone treats still sales as um, one dimension. Right. But when you dig deeper, you start understanding that it's so many different things the same. Like in it world, right. You can be front end, back end and this, that's it that I know. But uh, there are plenty of things that uh, you know, separate, uh, developers. Right?

Speaker A: Yes, of course there's seniority. There is just the type of the uh, development process that you Oversee and nowadays with AI, like even the whole dimensions of front end and back end kind of get blurried a little bit. And there's, there always have been full stack people and DevOps and QA and analysts and business and systems analysts are different things. And then there's maintenance and then there's refactoring and blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah.

Speaker B: And look, that's why even now the best uh, AI developers get billions, right? You know, to join top of the company. So the same with the sales guys, some of the sales reps, they make a massive career. For example, um, in, in New York, in, in LA, uh, you can get VP of sales with the base salary 500,000, 600,000 plus you know, commission, couple of millions plus stock option. And if you are that type of guy who can um, hit the wave, you know, of this, uh, top of your companies, you can become a millionaire multimillionaire, you know. So.

Speaker A: True, true. See that's what I wanted to ask as well. So you mentioned in the beginning that the kind of, the perfect salespeople that can do everything that's filled the room that are James Bond types, those usually go on and find their own business and succeed in that way. Because sales is like the metric of success of any business as we've talked about, right? If you can sell anything to anyone, then sell your own stuff and take all of the money back to you. Um, is that always the case or are there those rare positions where people hire for specific people for specific, like unicorns that you just have to find a perfect fit, you know, person who knows their industry and they are willing to pay them a lot and he'll be like a VP of whatever or those kinds of positions don't exist.

Speaker B: It exists and it, there is no one answer because um, that James, uh, James Bond type of sales, uh, professionals, some of them, they're very hard at managing daily processes and that's why they never run their own business because they're just bad at uh, you know, taking care of the daily stuff and um, and CRMs and so on and so on. So that's why uh, company who has a good product market fit and who can benefit from the uh, superpower, just you know, to be out to, to attract people and to bring leads and to close deals, they are perfect uh, match because company has a very good solution. Um, and then that James Bond type of a sales rep has a perfect sales skills, right? And they combine each other and both makes money, right?

Speaker A: True.

Speaker B: In some of the cases if person is very good at understanding the issues, very good at bringing new customers and they even are uh, technical man. They are one of the best founders in the market and probably one of the richest people as well.

Speaker A: True, true, yes. If you can combine that sales excellency with particular industrial know how, then you're probably already a millionaire at the very least.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you know the trend that you need to own a business yourself, I would say it's a bit overrated for uh, because you can have an amazing life being employed, being at successful company, reaching your quota, getting uh, bonus paid, getting respect and so on and still um, do not own all the issues behind that founders have.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's never a one way street of success even if your business is successful in a sense. Right. Even the most successful businesses in the world. Take your OpenAI. Technically, OpenAI is not profitable and not successful yet. Right. Yeah. It has billions invested in it. Everybody knows it. It can pay millions to its employees. But at the same time, if you're Sam Altman, you're under a lot of pressure to make that business actually turn the profits. And right now it's a very theoretical problem. Or even if you take the super profitable ones like meta Facebook. Right. Like Zuckerberg gets invited into Congress to talk about antitrust laws like every other year and he has to go there and he has to kind of maintain a very robust system and he is liable if something goes wrong. And the people that actually do the sales behind that, they just make the money and they go away. They don't risk anything in that sense.

Speaker B: And another thing that uh, you know, now raising money became, became like a success store, right? Yeah, but actually it's an opposite. You, they borrowed you money that you don't need to pay, but you give away part of your company and that's the same like I would go, you know, to, to the bank, I would borrow 200k and I would say, dude, let's celebrate. You know, I just got 200k. Yeah, we can celebrate. But you need to pay them back, either the stock options or, you know, or just pay it back and be a profit.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's why everyone is really happy. And oh, we raised that a lot of money.

Speaker A: So. Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. That's the whole thing.

Speaker B: No one's celebrating that. Oh, we earned uh, 200k this year. Right. You know, as a profit.

Speaker A: So yeah, that's what I like about, you know, the quieter business, the more traditional business that is just predictable and Profit driven versus startups that are investor driven. Hype a lot of the time. Like I appreciate startups, founders, I understand how complicated it is to raise that kind of money and to showcase that early traction that that's not easy at all. But personally as a person who's been in business for a long time, I kind of like the simplicity of okay, you do something good, people like it, they buy it, you earn money from it more than you realistically need in the moment. You reinvest some back to make whatever it is that you're making even better for more people and they give you more money and on and on and on and on. And uh, it goes, yeah, you won't become like a unicorn of like a billion valuation with having zero actual net profit but you know, you'll make hundreds of thousands probably and it's still not a small amount.

Speaker B: You know, uh, of course, you know, we all chase this uh, status, right? Big success. And um, we keep on hearing stories that people, founders became uh, you know, unicorns and then they moved to la because to London, right out somewhere. And then we suddenly understood that we are uh, the least successful person in the room because other founders has multi billion right. Dollars and so on. And then the race is never off, right? You need to play the game until you decide that it's enough. Um, another thing, um, raising money, it's not for everyone because for example I even have candidates who, to whom we pitch new positions, right? And we say that, oh, it's amazing, it's uh, hyper growth and so on. And we say who is uh, investors, right? Do we, is it a bootstrapped company or the VC backed company? And we say VC backed. Oh sorry, I don't want to join. And some of them because we had that journey and we had that push, you know, that you need to grow. And we say no, no, no, I don't want to join such a company. And I respect that as well. Right. You know, for some it's very attractive. For some, you know, it's very, it's a disadvantage basically to be a part of such a, such a race.

Speaker A: Can you maybe elaborate on why that may be a disadvantage for candidates specifically?

Speaker B: Not uh, because you know, when uh, when you are bootstrapped company you make your own decisions, right? You know, and usually you're always profitable because you don't have uh, uh, the capacity, you know, or like a long Runway of VC money. That's why you uh, do not have such a pressure uh, to grow and to innovate every year Even every quarter. As you said, for example, Sam Altman, right? He needs to do, every time someone, uh, do anything with AI, everyone looks at him and like, dude, why not you? Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And uh, with the vc, uh, usually the thesis is always like this, that you have a product market fit or some innovation, we going to give you uh, 2 million, 20 million, 200 million, whatever, right. You know your case. And within two, three years maximum, you need to triple, double or even, you know, you need to double every year in order to really be successful. And that's why you took that money. And all employees feels that pressure because you need to grow and deliver and deliver. And the same with Favreau. When we were, when we raised four and a half million and we start scaling, we start growing, you know, team members, uh, products, uh, travel around the globe. Um, then the pressure built and built and we missed one quarter, another quarter, third quarter, and the mood is suddenly very down because, you know, uh, board are disappointed, investors are disappointed, employees feel pressure. Even though we grew on the smaller tractor, but not so as expected. Right. And then suddenly you are, you know, disappointed in everything.

Speaker A: Yeah, true, true. It's a very complicated, um, thing. Like even on a mental health, uh, front where you, especially in long complex sales, right, Most of the time you are faced with negativity. Like even the best salespeople out there that I have seen, you never have a positive conversion rate where it's more than 50%, it's usually less than 50%. Like most of the time your deals will end up in failure regardless of what you do. That's just statistics. You cannot beat that. You can fight around like maybe it's 30%, maybe it's even 40%, maybe you're even approaching that like coin flip. Yeah. Uh, maybe if you're very lucky, if you have like product market fit that's great and leads that aren't garbage and everything. Right. If you're in the best position that you can be, it's still a lot of the time a coin flip because you know, somebody selects on a criteria that you have nothing to do. Like somebody likes people that they have went to school with and they're like, okay, I'll choose somebody that I went to school with and that's it, you cannot beat that. So like, you work with that negativity a lot of the time. And even on top of that, when those hyper growth companies put more pressure on you when you do win, you can't even celebrate those smaller in comparison the amounts of wins and you still understand that okay, I've won like a million, but I need like 10. And it's so hard to live with that pressure. And you can't even celebrate that you've won a million. And a million is a lot like

Speaker B: you can't realistically celebrate that comparing to what? Right. If your quota is 10 million, it's only 10%. So you're underwater, right? Uh, if you doubled or tripled your quota. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed.

Speaker B: A lot of people doesn't understand one thing that sales, um, profession in general by market standards. Last. Ah. And I mean uh, a title opposition where you at last between 12 to 16 months by default, right? 18 months. Uh, because either you are promoted, either your company went underwater and they fired you, you might be headhunted, uh, and so on and so on.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And it's not like it roles where you know, you work with the project, you plan two weeks upfront, you know, you are uh, everything is ag in sales. Everything is chaotic. Everyone can tell you I know better how to sail. Let's try this idea.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You are talking in a bad manner and so on and so on. And that's why it's very hectic. And a lot of people get tired of just being told what you do and always being uh, underperformance. Right. And if you are lucky to join a company that grows, man, then, then it's dopamine, you know, then you always, you know, hooked on this and um, never satisfied.

Speaker A: True, true. And uh, at the same time those growth sprouts, they do come in waves. You know, very rarely a company just grows for like 20 years. You know, I think that is way behind us. Maybe like in the last century you would have a business that would just steadily grow over 20 years. We still have them, but they are so few and far between nowadays you're like every five years or so there's some disruption that completely breaks how the market works. And previously successful companies can be just annihilated overnight basically regardless of what you do. So even then, statistically speaking, when you do find success and growth, something may stop you from that sense.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, you might left the company two, uh, months before we reach a tipping point.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And it happens. Right. But I remember for example at deeper uh, uh, where we. It was one of the most successful Lithuanian hardware, uh, companies, um, that um, just Lithuanians thought that instead of using boat sonar, uh, on the boat only, let's downsize it to tennis ball, uh, size hardware device attached to your rod, use WI fi to use uh, your Phone screen. And when you, at uh, the shore, you cast it and you see what happens underwater, right? And then you can catch fish. And uh, they grew from 0, uh, to 12, 13 million euros in four years. I think so. And that was my journey, you know, that I joined without understanding where I joined. But uh, and then it exploded. But it exploded after two and a half years. Uh, and I remember the founders, we were joking that first part of the company, usually from 5 to 25 to 30 people were uh, the first employees who saw failure because they chose Bluetooth at the beginning. And Bluetooth works well on the ground, but it doesn't work on water. Right. Then instead of 50, 50 meters, uh, distance, it lasted only 12, 13 meters. And then we as the sales guys were doing a show, um, presentations at the shore, everything failed. It doesn't connect. People disappointed, uh, we need to change the technology. Then we switched to WI fi and then WI fi was a game changer because WI fi was strong enough to last 100 meters. And then everything switched and basically we became successful. So two and a half years of being, you know, always disappointed and ashamed at the presentations and then the rest is the history because the company was acquired and so on. But um, yeah, that's the story, you know, of sales, uh, in general sales. Right. And grow.

Speaker A: There's always two parts, right. You can be the best salesperson in the world but you cannot sell garbage to people at the end of the day. Like you can, but you're not going to be super successful doing it at some point.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a high velocity sales. You can sell a lot of, you know, um, simple things and then just, you know, never see that people again. Right, yeah.

Speaker A: As long as you have the time to run away and never see those

Speaker B: people, then you can do it door to door sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, the Jordan Barford approach, so to speak. But he got prison time in the answer.

Speaker B: Yeah, but uh, we promote him as a success, right? Because we still he is a James Bond type of a guy. Um, and you see this is the ideal sales, uh, rep through majority of us.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: But uh, if we compare him for example with a proper uh, SaaS sales professional, uh, probably they are more successful than he is. He's just famous, knows how to party, knows how to network and so on. Right. And this is, we analyze people from the different angles, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that is true. That is true. There are a lot of layers to sales that some underestimate. And again, um, some examples are bad for one reason or the other, but good for Another reason. So, like, Jordan Belfort, probably a bad kind of example in terms of how you should live your life. Great example to build a movie around, like.

Speaker B: Yeah. Become a influencer and a star, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a motivational speaker, and people pay him just to come in and speak.

Speaker B: I was at his, um, when he formula brought him, I know, eight years ago. Yeah, he has the magic. He has, you know, he. He can run his own sales, church or whatever, and you can go every Sunday and to pump yourself up, you know, all this. So some people has a talent, and that's. That's his talent.

Speaker A: True, true, true. At the same time, I would definitely imagine that he would just die in your typical, like, enterprise sales environment where you have, like, 10 people that you need to convince to move an inch forward with a deal that takes like three years to close. Like, there's not enough cocaine in the world to help you through that.

Speaker B: Yeah. But probably he would come up with such a creative idea, you know, maybe and so on. So I remember one story. My friend was, uh, doing an exchange, uh, program in US and he joined one, um, of. I don't remember which state, but one of the largest marketing agencies there. And he told that they were fighting who will sign with the largest football, American football, um, team. Who will represent them. I got surprised because one day he came to the office and said to me, everyone was dressed like this team. Everyone was cheering. Everywhere was only flags and so on. And that day the meeting was happening with, um, the team representatives, and this is how they got the deal. And, uh, then I thought, like, I would never think about this being a Lithuanian. Right? Because for us, it's, uh, not a natural way, but this is how you make sales. Right. You know, in American way. This is. This is how you can be so creative that just you present to your customer that, look, I'm passionate as you are. Right. You know, I'm crazy about you. Give me that deal, I'm going to crush it. Right. And sometimes you win. It doesn't matter if you're most expensive, if you are, uh, I don't know, you know, not the best runner to win this deal.

Speaker A: True, true. This is a great example, honestly. Yes. A, uh, lot of people underestimate the kind of the extra mile that you can go in order to make a deal. And at the same time, you know, you got to look like fools a couple of times before you do, because even with that approach, you're going to lose something. Just statistically speaking.

Speaker B: Always, always, always. You cannot Win, uh, without losing, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, to come back and kind of trying to wrap up our discussion, um, as a recruiting company, how does your business model work then? You said you have around 10 people and you have transitioned a little bit from just being networked driven. Um, do you like, specifically source people and then bill for the end results or how do you make money as a recruiting company?

Speaker B: Yeah, so recruitment company, it's a universal business, uh, model where you basically take a percentage from annual gross salary. And then it really depends what percentage. Some people take 10, some people take 15, some like, you know, Americans take 30, sometimes percent from executives. Right, yeah. And, uh, and, uh, yeah. Do you charge retainer? Do you work on full success, uh, base, uh, and so on. And then it's a creative, uh, you know, creative accounting as sales. Yeah. Yeah. Then it's really up to you what, how you want to, you know, get that money into, into your pocket.

Speaker A: And most of your team are recruiters then.

Speaker B: Yeah, they are recruiters coming from sales. They worked in sales and converted into recruiters. That helps, you know, them to understand, uh, the market. And yeah, we, we do recruit, um, sales positions from any commercial roles. Right. You know, it can be account executives, account managers, juniors, seniors heads and so on. Um, but yeah, this is our bread and butter. And our goal, you know, is to unite sales, um, representatives under one brand. Uh, they approach us sometimes, you know, candidates approach us and ask, I have this deal from this company. What do you think? You know, and we advise them, you know, how to structure that deal. Is it market standard? Uh, if it's not. So, you know, we are not servicing only companies. Right. We really want, you know, to help the profession in general to grow to, uh, make people successful, to make companies understand, uh, you know, why they shouldn't hire any sales rep, but they should select them. And uh. Yeah, so I'm kind of seeing myself as, uh, becoming, um, an agent.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, for the sales reps coming back to basketball. Right. Like the basketball.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker A: That makes sense. We haven't stated this outright, but I'm guessing you are bootstrapped so you're not pressured by.

Speaker B: Yeah. So if, if you. In raising money to run agents, uh, something is wrong or Unless, uh.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know you have different. But usually, uh, to start an agency, you need a, uh, computer and a phone and yourself. That's it.

Speaker A: True, true.

Speaker B: That's why it's so many agents there.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. But at the same time, kind of again, underrepresented, because everybody Thinks, oh, another agency. But from your example, finding a niche and focusing on that niche that you understand and you know about what can lead to success. And you don't need a lot of VC money to back you for mistakes and you don't need a lot of Runway or capital to start. Then it makes sense. It makes sense.

Speaker B: Yeah. But um, you have to understand, right. You know that uh, when you do a traditional business, most of the time you don't need an extra capital. Right. Unless it's manufacturing and so on. So that's why it's. So it should be different because I cannot call myself as a startup right now. Yes, it's new for me, but. But it's so traditional and uh, so many competitors in the market that it's just another one. Right. Uh, and the startups usually why we raise money because we have totally new idea, totally new innovation or way of approaching. Um, for example, um, I was surprised now Latvians, uh, Latvian startup, they are experimenting and they are quite successful now to pay with your palm. So it's not anymore like fingerprint only not anymore ui they kind of understood that every person palm is different. Right. You know, and then you basically can, instead of carrying your phone, you can even pay with it.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Like this is innovation that uh, all big, uh, uh, payment providers. Very interested.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you know, if I'm not mistaken, the guy was doing a PhD or something on, you know, on, on this biometrics and then he came up with that idea. So this is a true startup. That's why you need a lot of money from VCS to make it either successful or to fail. But running an agency now every second graduate, um, runs an agency. Then m. We apply to find a job because we cannot get the agents running the old pitch. Oh, but I have an agent and so on. Um, so yeah, that's why agents work is a little bit underestimated. And yeah, like everyone can do it.

Speaker A: Yeah. But that's the, the important part. It is competitive, but it is very feasible to do and again to kind of try and wrap up. Uh, what would your advice then be to sales people that are now looking for their jobs and to the hiring managers that are looking for their salespeople.

Speaker B: So always be very specific and selective. Right. You know, and first of all, you start from yourself. It's like, you know, why you at ah, at what kind of like you know, sales you are good at, right? Uh, what kind of deals you, you understand, what kind of products you understand and then focus on this type of sales. Right? And for hiring manager, the same. You know, don't be that person who believes that, that anyone can sell anything, right? And that's easy. You really need to be very selective. That really helps you to properly understand where you at, what kind of customers you sell and so on. Because uh, otherwise you're just dreaming and hoping that you will be successful. And um, yeah, prepare because a lot of people since, especially here in Lithuania that, that we don't have massive um, competition and then people basically um, don't uh, prepare for the interviews. They show up and they're like, all right, show me what you got. Did you read about us? They're like, no, you tell us, right? And then hiring manager is disappointed. You kind of think like man, I should read it, but I don't care because I have a job and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, yeah, that's a good advice. That is good advice. Thank you very much.

Speaker B: One thing that we can speak as well a little bit about AI impact to sales.

Speaker A: Oh yes, we have avoided AI surprisingly. So this is the second episode in a row where we basically don't speak about AI. I am shocked. But let's do it. So what's your thoughts on AI in sales?

Speaker B: In sales or in sales record? Yeah, but yeah, I can start in sales because uh, uh what we see that uh, junior roles in sales are disappearing and usually you joined sales team as a list builder. Uh, right, we call lead research specialist or whatever. You do Excel, you type in Excel, some numbers and so on. Now AI does all that thing, collects phone, um, numbers, emails, aggregates, Excel sheets, um, CRM, now even run by AI. So it's quite difficult for the junior sales reps to get in and uh, sales reps in general. Now we're moving from part time sales of like you know, being responsible for a specific sales um, part. Right. You know, moving to a full sales cycle which basically you know, AI helps you to prepare, you do your outreach, you engage with the customer, you close the deal and you move on. Right. And we talk about market, right. Enterprise. It's still complex. Uh, it requires uh, much more effort. Um, and from um, recruitment side now it's common that candidates uh, have multiple CVS prepared for multiple positions. And then one day your account manager, another day you enterprise account executive, mid market, sometimes your business developer and you change your CVS based on the positions which is bit annoying and time wasting because you might get into the first interview but then you basically waste a lot of time unless they don't understand the difference and you get in right.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true, that's true. Does that happen a lot? Like, how do you handle that when you see the same variations of the same person doing different types of CVs.

Speaker B: So here in local market and small market, because you have to understand that, that Lifin is such a small market. Like it would be one town in US because even Berlin has 4 million citizens. Um, right. Uh, so. And here we have two and a half. So working class, it's few hundred thousand who are in Vilnius, right?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So basically we don't see many cases here in Lithuania because people are smart enough to understand that you can remember them. But uh, in US, in other countries it's a massive issue because, uh, every time we recruit in us we get, um, 1,000 applications, 2,000 applications. And out of that 2,000 applications, only, uh, a few handful are proper. Right. But somehow you need to evaluate all of this. And then AI comes into the help. But AI, uh, does mistakes, does mismatch and so on. They fall for the same titles and fake CVs. Yeah.

Speaker A: So it's a closed loop, right? Like AIs filter out the people, which makes the people make their CVS more specific to the positions with AI, which makes more applications, which makes more AI to filter out. And on and on and on and on and on. And it goes.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. And uh, I think that, uh, it basically, um, tricks you in. Right, I. I remember what I wanted to say. Basically. Now we have even, uh, interviews. That, uh, person runs interview, has a second screen or the phone off and there is a voice enabled. The AI help. And you speak with a person. English is okay, like European English. Right. Nothing bad, nothing great. But then they give you an answer. Somehow it's such a fluent answer. Right? And then he stops answering and then actually gives. And then you chit chat between the questions. And again, you know, English is bitter. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah. Like I've never had that for salespeople or marketing people or where I'm hiring specifically. But, uh, we've had that as a company for engineers, for engineers. That is much more common. We have seen this so many times because there are a lot of questions that we ask and a lot of technical things that you have to do. And like, you know when a person gives like a super specific technical question and an answer to a question, and he's like super knowledgeable, and then you're like, okay, give me an example. Have you used this? And he's like, uh, well, you kind of do like. Sort of. Come on, man.

Speaker B: But I heard some people say that some hiring managers that they say, I don't mind, uh, because it shows that, uh, they can use the AI and be more productive. But it really, you need, really need to understand, you know, it's okay for you or not, because one thing that me and you start using AI to do some kind of some. Something that we never did, uh, before. Right? Editing videos. Right. AI will help us. But are we good at editing videos? No, we can do that, but we are just beginners, right? So the same with employees. You can Google everything, but if you don't understand how it works, you know, what's the point?

Speaker A: Yeah, true, true. You are completely correct. Well, uh, we are a little bit out of time, and I would like to continue this conversation, so maybe next time. But since we are wrapping up, where do people find you? Where can people read more of you or hear more of you?

Speaker B: So, yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn, so if they type Edwin Vasilius, they can find me. And, you know, we have weahemis.com website, but they're trying to be where the hiring managers and candidates are. LinkedIn, you know, so if you don't have LinkedIn and work in sales, something's wrong with you.

Speaker A: Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you all as well for listening and tuning in. If there are any salespeople among you and you don't have LinkedIn, what is wrong with you? Um, do. Do all of the algorithmically correct things to the video that you see or the audio that you hear, like, share, subscribe, comment, all of that good stuff. It really does help. And tune in for the next one. Thank you very much.