Hey ,

Last Thursday, I got a message from a CRO who had just hired a star salesperson from a top-tier competitor. They were so excited, and expectations soared immediately. Six months later, that star was struggling significantly, only hitting 47.3% of their projected revenue targets. Sound Familiar?

The uncomfortable truth is that the belief that great salespeople succeed everywhere is a damaging myth. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that approximately 53.7% of high-performing salespeople experience significant performance drops when changing companies. Context, culture, and alignment with your go-to-market strategy play a significant role. Even highly talented performers can struggle when these elements are misaligned.

Today, let's unpack why your proven hires might be underperforming and how you can correct the course.

Estimated reading time is 3.5 minutes. Feel free to reply with your thoughts or questions.

On Deck:

• Why Your Star Hires Are Flaming Out

• Marketing Tip of the Week – Powered by Decoded Strategies

• Episode #105: Enablement Is DEAD: Why Sales Teams Don’t Trust You Anymore with Sreedhar Peddineni

Why Your Star Hires Are Flaming Out

When a proven performer struggles, it's tempting to blame the individual. However, the reality is often more nuanced. The mistake many companies make is assuming that past success guarantees future results, ignoring the unique dynamics of their own sales environment.

Even experienced professionals need alignment and clear expectations tailored to their organization's specific context. To help you better understand this issue, here are four critical reasons your top hires might be falling short:

1. Weak Onboarding and Enablement

Organizations often underestimate the importance of strong onboarding, even for experienced sales professionals. Star performers typically rely on robust support systems. Without tailored onboarding and ongoing enablement, your star hires may become overwhelmed, losing effectiveness quickly.

2. Misaligned Sales Motion

Success in one sales environment doesn't automatically translate to another if the sales motions differ significantly. For example, enterprise sales differ greatly from transactional sales. Each demands unique skills and approaches. Success in one sales environment doesn't automatically translate to another, especially when sales motions differ significantly. Research by CSO Insights found that 61.8% of companies report declines in sales rep performance when selling environments differ. Placing an enterprise seller into a transactional sales role creates confusion and hinders performance because each sales motion demands unique skills and approaches. And yet, we see this pattern often, especially when startups hire reps from well-known brands and expect them to thrive without that name behind them. Selling without a recognized logo on your back is a different challenge entirely. It takes resourcefulness, grit, and a different kind of credibility-building that many big-company sellers have never had to master.

3. Poor Cultural Fit

High performers can falter if your company's culture doesn’t align with their working style. Gallup research reveals that poor cultural fit can reduce employee engagement by up to 33.64%. Company pace, collaboration expectations, and risk tolerance significantly influence success. A lack of cultural alignment can leave talented hires feeling disconnected and ineffective.

4. Unrealistic Expectations

Setting overly ambitious expectations based purely on past achievements overlooks critical contextual factors such as market conditions, territory specifics, and product maturity. What worked elsewhere might not replicate the same way in your unique environment. Ignoring context sets your hires up for unnecessary pressure and potential failure.

The Hidden Cost of Sales Hiring Mistakes

Hiring mistakes aren't just frustrating; they're expensive and have long-lasting impacts on your business. When a salesperson underperforms, you're not merely losing potential revenue. Consider these hidden costs as well:

• The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the cost of a bad hire can equal 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. For sales roles, the financial hit can be even higher.

• According to a report by Sales Benchmark Index, a single mis-hire in a quota-carrying position can cost a company anywhere from $114,957 to $231,773, factoring in lost revenue, recruitment costs, and ramp time waste.

• Every missed sale or mishandled lead can set back your company's growth trajectory by as much as 23.6%, according to Aberdeen Group.

• Replacing and onboarding new sales hires costs companies, on average, around 212.7% of the departing employee’s annual salary.

Understanding these hidden costs underscores why getting hiring right is essential for sustained growth and profitability.

How to Ensure Your Next Star Hire Succeeds:

Great interviews reveal genuine sales capability rather than rehearsed responses. Implementing a structured interview process can help you uncover authentic skills and significantly improve hiring outcomes. Research by Talent Board found structured interviews improve hiring success rates by 45.49%. Consider these approaches:

• Role-Specific Simulations: Have candidates conduct a mock discovery call or handle realistic objections live during the interview. Evaluate their technique and adaptability rather than memorized scripts.

• Behaviour-Based Questions: Focus on scenarios from the candidate's past roles. Ask detailed questions about specific deals, challenges faced, their precise actions, and measurable outcomes.

• Collaborative Team Panels: Include key stakeholders in interviews to assess cultural alignment and interpersonal dynamics. Diverse perspectives help prevent biased hiring decisions.

• Structured Evaluation Scorecards: Utilize standardized criteria to objectively assess candidates. Clearly define and score critical competencies to avoid subjective bias and ensure consistent evaluations.

Implementing a structured, data-driven interview approach helps your organization consistently identify candidates who can genuinely succeed in your environment.

The Bottom Line:

Bringing in top sales talent is just the first step. Ensuring they succeed involves careful alignment of your hiring, onboarding, enablement, and performance evaluation processes. Your revenue and your next sales hire’s success depend on getting these elements right.

Companies that strategically align these processes experience approximately 29.4% faster growth than their competitors, according to research by McKinsey. Investing thoughtfully in your hiring strategy not only safeguards your immediate revenue goals but also positions your company for sustained, long-term success.

Thanks ZoomInfo for Keeping This Newsletter Free!

ZoomInfo is the Go-To-Market intelligence platform that empowers businesses to grow faster with AI-ready insights, trusted data, and advanced automation. Our solutions provide a complete view of your customers, making every seller your best seller.

Marketing Tip of the Week – Powered by Decoded Strategies

"Stop Marketing to Personas. Market to Moments."

Traditional personas alone don’t capture customer decision-making fully. Shift your approach toward identifying pivotal moments when your prospects actively seek solutions or encounter specific challenges. Understanding these key moments allows you to create messages that resonate deeply and address immediate needs effectively. 

Start today by collaborating with your sales and customer support teams to identify common triggers or critical events influencing purchase decisions. By targeting these specific moments, your marketing becomes timely, relevant, and impactful.

Episode #105: Enablement Is DEAD: Why Sales Teams Don’t Trust You Anymore with Sreedhar Peddineni

Sales enablement sounds great on paper. In practice? It’s a mess.

In this episode of Bridge the Gap, we sit down with Sreedhar Peddineni, founder of GTM Buddy and co-creator of Gainsight, to pull apart everything wrong with enablement in modern GTM orgs and how to fix it.

From outdated content and AI hype to onboarding disasters and leadership blind spots, Shridhar holds nothing back. If you’re in sales, marketing, enablement, RevOps or just tired of pretending like enablement isn’t a mess, this one’s for you.

Topics We Cover:

• Why enablement gets cut first and what that reveals

• What “just-in-time enablement” should actually look like

• Why your team hates your onboarding (and they’re right)

• How to tie enablement to revenue without lying to yourself

• The biggest mistakes GTM leaders still make in 2025

Follow Sreedhar – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sreedharpeddineni/

Agree? Disagree? Have Questions?

Experiencing Sales Hiring Challenges? Reply to this email and let's discuss how we can help.

Talk soon,

Adam, Dale & Jake
Helping companies bridge the GTM Gap™.