Executive Series: Seattle (part 2)
Your Sales Hires Aren't Failing.
The Job Changed Underneath Them.
A pattern is showing up in conversations with services CEOs and go-to-market leaders that is worth naming directly. Recent sales hires are not working out. Not because the people lack experience. Because the skill the job requires has shifted underneath them.
Sales cycles are stretching. Deal sizes are growing, but not fast enough to offset how long it now takes to close. The rep who used to carry a full conversation alone is finding that the job has outgrown one person. Technical questions, business case development, partner coordination, procurement. No single seller can credibly hold all of it.
That is not a performance problem. That is a structural problem.
The deal got more complex. The motion didn't.
Enterprise buying teams have grown from 5.4 people to 12 over the last six years. The buying process now touches technical evaluation, business case development, compliance review, partner validation, and procurement. Often simultaneously.
A single seller trying to represent all of those dimensions ends up being credible in one or two and thin in the rest. The buyer notices. The deal slows down. Another meeting gets requested. Another stakeholder needs to be convinced.
The organizations breaking through this are doing something structurally different. They are pairing technical and business-facing people together on the same deals. The technical expert explains what is possible. The business leader explains why it matters. And someone has to bring those two conversations together and coordinate the full ecosystem around the account.
That coordination role is what one executive in a recent conversation called the shift from closer to orchestrator. Not because closing stopped mattering. Because no single seller can credibly represent everything a modern deal now touches.
Technical fluency is no longer optional
One of the clearest signals of this shift is what happens to sellers who cannot hold a technical conversation. They are not failing because they lack effort. They are failing because the buyer expects technical fluency and business acumen in the same meeting.
That creates a different resourcing question. Not "who should we hire?" but "what combination of people do we need around the customer to create the outcome we are promising?"
That is a structural change, not a hiring problem. The organizations that recognize it as structural are the ones finding ways to shorten cycles and grow deal sizes.
The practical question
If your recent hires are underperforming, before you question the people, question the motion. Are you asking one person to carry a conversation that requires three? Are you structuring deals around a seller, or around the customer's buying process?
Partner-sourced deals close 53% more often and move 46% faster (Crossbeam). Part of that speed comes from the trust advantage. But part of it comes from the structural advantage: a partner adds another credible voice to the deal without adding another headcount to the payroll.
The sales job changed. The question is whether the sales motion has changed with it.
Subscribe to Field Notes, a letter from 3Seven Founder & CEO Eric Loper on what he's hearing from the executives navigating AI, partnerships, and revenue right now.