Here at Martyn Bassett Associates, we are often engaged by founders and CEOs of tech startups who need to recruit their first sales leader. These early-stage, high-growth organizations have a mandate of aggressive growth – where the right VP Sales will mean the difference between achieving those ambitious goals, or not. Steven Silberbach, an experienced…
We love working with the Product Management community for a lot of reasons—not least of which are their commitment to continuous professional development, and their generosity in sharing insights and resources with others in the field. We recently asked a group of Product professionals to share their favourite books and resources for levelling up their…
How effective is your recruiting strategy? How do you know? We know that attracting and retaining top talent is a competitive advantage for organizations—talent drives growth. And in a candidate’s market like the one we’re currently experiencing, the competition for that talent is fierce. Recruiting should be viewed as an extension of your marketing and…
The employees who are at the top of their game simply aren’t cruising job boards in their spare time—a solid recruiting strategy needs to account for passive candidates. Active candidates are job seekers who are actively looking for a new opportunity. They may be unemployed — they have been laid off (or fired), or are…
In Toronto, a war for talent is underway. A robust community of start-ups and early stage tech companies is growing, while tech giants are continuing to invest in offices here in the Six. Unemployment is low, and jobs are being created every day. In Toronto tech, it’s a candidate’s market. Our clients are feeling it,…
You’ve heard the statistics: about 90% of startups end in failure. Some of them go up in flames in spectacular fashion, but for the majority of those failed ventures, their decline was the result of a series of small bad decisions that added up over time. As a recruitment firm that specializes in early stage SaaS…
When was the last time you polished up your LinkedIn profile? It’s pretty common to only update your LinkedIn profile when you’re job searching, or starting a new position. Most people don’t think about it much—if you’re happily employed, why would it matter? Aside from the fact that employment circumstances can change at anytime, having…
More often than not, a job seeker will perceive opportunity as more important than salary; unless there is such a colossal difference that the salary is just too good to pass up. What most people will recognize is that the salary can be nice in the short term but long term, the right opportunity will invariably have…
Rejection is tough (just look at our previous article) but there’s a reason you didn’t get that sales job. It’s possible the perfect candidate fell into their lap or they had planned to hire the president’s brother-in-law all along but it’s more likely that you just weren’t the right fit. Here are a few possible reasons that…
Selling yourself should be easy. It’s a product you’re passionate, knowledgeable, and excited about, plus you’ve got a personal stake in closing the deal. So, why do so many sales professionals forget the fundamentals when it’s time to sell themselves in an interview? These lessons will sound familiar to anyone working in sales, but if you…
Building an effective software sales team is mission critical for growing organizations. Your sales team is your front lines: they are the ones advocating for your product or solution to the market, countering objections, and generating revenue. When interviewing sales candidates it’s helpful to divide the conversation into two domains: the numbers/process and the narrative/behavioural. The numbers are…