The Journey to Sales Leadership | Shani Shoham, Growth CRO, Advisor & Investor

Shani Shoham, renowned Growth CRO, Advisor & Investor, joined James on a recent episode of Tech Salescraft. This episode revolves around the importance of questioning; asking the right questions, posing the difficult ones, and approaching them with a solution-orientated mindset. We explore the questions Shani addressed to himself that allowed him to take his career from strength-to-strength. And we delve into the interview process, understanding the questions that must be asked to ensure you don’t simply get the answers you’d like to hear.

“I want to ask questions that give me an indication of their character. How do they manage a team? How do they use the extended resources the company has to offer? How do they add value?”

The interview process starts well before you sit in a room with a potential employee. It starts with you acknowledging your intention to hire, and understanding what you want to get out of this next stage of growth. Posing questions that create a fuller picture of the character you want to introduce to your team is vital. As highlighted by Shani, you can measure the success of a sales person to a degree; you have metrics, revenue numbers and the likes. But you need cultural fit too, and understand they have the right motivations. Knowing the character that is best for your business allows you to build interview questions that bring out the best of that character, and lets you look beyond the literal sales numbers.

“In the early stages, we experimented with pricing, looking at how we can best grow the pipeline, and expanding on our go-to-market initiatives. It was trial and error but that’s how we got to where we are today.”

Questions can be implemented, as Shani demonstrated in the early founding stages. Trial and error may come with an increased degree of risk, but often it’s an effective way of posing questions to your marketplace and gaining an authentic response. Conversations around risk in the founding journey have been frequent across episodes of Tech Salescraft; and whilst efforts to minimise it should be taken, the unanimous understanding is that it should also be embraced. It’s an inevitable part of the process and so you need to question how you can make it play in your favour. Allow yourself to experiment and gain the best answer to questions you may otherwise struggle to get the answer to.

Thank you Shani for joining us on Tech Salescraft! You can watch the full episode now on YouTube, or listen across all major podcast streaming platforms here.