A commercially intelligent way to hire salespeople.
Most recruitment processes start with a vacancy.
We start with the commercial decision behind it.
Before looking for candidates, we get clear about what the business actually needs, what success must look like and what evidence would give us confidence we've found it.
And we don't stop collecting evidence when somebody accepts the job.
A job description gets written. A recruiter starts searching. CVs arrive. Interviews happen.
Everyone is busy.
But some of the most important questions still haven't been answered.
Why are we making this hire?
What needs to change commercially?
What should this person actually achieve?
Which behaviours will make that possible here?
What evidence would make us confident they can do it?
Without those answers, candidate selection becomes heavily influenced by experience, presentation and interview confidence.
That's where the gamble begins.
DECIDE. DEFINE. PROVE.
Three stages. One commercial decision.
A sales hire should be treated as an investment that needs a commercial case, evidence before commitment and validation afterwards.
01DECIDE
02DEFINE
03PROVE
01 — DECIDE
Decide what the business actually needs.
Before we recruit anybody, we understand the commercial problem.
That means looking beyond the job title.
Why does the business believe it needs another salesperson?
What needs to happen that isn't happening today?
Where is growth being constrained?
What is still dependent on the founder?
What should change if this hire works?
And sometimes:
Is another salesperson actually the right next hire?
The objective isn't to get a vacancy live quickly.
It's to make sure we're solving the right problem before spending money solving it.
Evidence in practice — Portman Tech
The obvious next hire wasn't necessarily the right first hire.
Portman Tech originally had new-business growth in mind. The commercial conversation identified a different immediate priority: Customer Success — releasing leadership capacity, strengthening relationships across the existing customer base and creating better visibility of expansion opportunities before adding another new-business salesperson.
The principle: Start with the commercial problem. Not the vacancy.
Next: Define what success requires ↓
02 — DEFINE
Define success before meeting candidates.
Once the commercial requirement is clear, we turn it into something candidates can actually be assessed against.
Not a generic job description.
A definition of success.
We establish the outcomes the person needs to create, the behaviours likely to produce them, the environment they'll be working in and the evidence we'll need from candidates.
That creates the basis for:
the Role Scorecard
candidate assessment
structured interviewing
evidence gaps
reference conversations
final hiring decisions
A strong CV may get somebody into the conversation.
It doesn't decide whether they're right for the business.
We look beyond career history.
The emerging Your Wavelength Sales Success Model looks for evidence across seven behavioural signals:
Opportunity Creation
Ownership
Activity Discipline
Pipeline Thinking
Commercial Curiosity
Learning Agility
Self-Direction
We're less interested in how impressive someone's career history sounds than whether they can evidence the behaviours required to succeed in your environment.
A failed hire became evidence for defining the next one properly.
The previous salesperson's best month had been around three units.
Rather than simply recruiting another salesperson and hoping for a different outcome, the next role was defined around what would actually need to happen to produce the commercial result — including opportunity creation, networking, follow-up discipline, pipeline activity and evidence at interview.
The principle: Define the behaviours behind the number before you hire against the number.
Next: Prove the decision ↓
03 — PROVE
The decision doesn't end when somebody accepts the job.
A successful recruitment process gives us a hypothesis:
We believe this person can succeed in this role, in this business, under these conditions.
Then reality starts.
Your Wavelength stays involved through the first 120 days to determine whether the evidence emerging in the job supports the original decision.
The purpose isn't to create more management administration.
It's to identify useful evidence earlier.
Problems surface earlier.
Good performance becomes visible earlier.
Management gaps become clearer.
And the business gets a better basis for deciding whether to retain, support, redirect or ultimately replace.
What does proving the decision actually look like?
GREEN CIRCLE
4/4 recruitment predictions confirmed by Week 8.
The recruitment process identified relationship building, commercial judgement, disciplined territory management and coachability as primary behavioural indicators.
By Week 8, all four had been confirmed through observed workplace behaviour.
The identified development area — product knowledge — was progressing as expected.
0 unexpected performance concerns.
Green Circle's verdict:
“I'm very confident that we have the right person.”
HFR had previously experienced the opposite of what it needed from a commercial hire: insufficient self-direction, uncertainty about activity and a salesperson who required ongoing management.
Twelve weeks into the replacement hire, the employer's assessment was very different:
“I don't need to manage him at all.”
The business reported no reservations or concerns about the appointment, while the salesperson described joining HFR as:
“one of the best decisions I've ever made.”
Commercial revenue was still developing, but the leading evidence was already visible through opportunity creation, outbound activity, tender development and increasing commercial understanding.
The principle: Don't wait for lagging revenue to be the first evidence that tells you whether the hire is working.
