Blueprint for Building Great Teams

Why "Will to Succeed" Beats Skill Every Time: Building Modern SDR Teams (with Frances Ingham)

If you hire the right person, you're 70% of the way there. The rest is process. Frances Ingham (Head of Sales Development EMEA, Vimeo) breaks down why "will to succeed" matters more than skill, why most modern SDR teams are over-reliant on automation, and where to find SDR talent that nobody else is looking at. You'll learn: * How to spot the will to succeed in an interview * Why graduate academies and non-traditional talent pools outperform second jobbers * How to turn an underperforming SDR around (and when you can't) #SalesDevelopment #SDRHiring #SaaS #CommercialLeadership #TeamBuilding

How do you cut £170,000 of annual recruitment agency spend without breaking hiring?

Caroline Oxley (Chief People Officer, Evolve) walked into a business spending £208,000 a year on agencies and reduced it to £38,000 in 12 months, whilst the team grew by almost 50% and Evolve was ranked #15 in the Best Companies Technology Sector list. You'll learn: * How to build an internal recruitment function hiring managers actually want to use * Why managers unconsciously recruit in their own image, and what that costs you * Why "subject matter expert" recruiters are often overrated * Where AI genuinely helps in hiring, and where it makes a bad situation worse #InternalRecruitment #PeopleAndCulture #HRStrategy #RecruitmentCost #AIInHiring #TeamBuilding

How to Hire a Hayley: The Character Archetype Framework Most Founders Have Never Heard Of (with Mike Winnett)

How do you hire when you don't trust job specs and don't believe in CVs? Mike Winnett (Co-Founder, G&G Studios) built and sold a business for £8 million and admits he sold it too soon because he'd never built the team that should have been running it. He's hired differently ever since. In this episode, Mike shares the character-archetype hiring framework he uses now, why he finds his best hires through their LinkedIn writing rather than their CV, and what most founders quietly cost themselves by being too busy to build the team. You'll learn: • How to hire by character archetype rather than job title • Why approaching candidates through their writing beats waiting for applications • The difference between hires that protect your business and hires that elevate it • Why most founders are the cap on their own business's growth #FounderHiring #ScalingTeams #EmployerBrand #StartupGrowth #TeamBuilding

Why More Salespeople Won't Fix Your Revenue Problem (with Toby Phelps)

Why does adding more salespeople rarely deliver more revenue? Toby Phelps (Interim CRO, Fulfilmentcrowd, scaled SaaS businesses from £5M to £50M+ ARR) shares the two-pillar framework he uses to assess any commercial team, the metrics that actually predict sales performance, and why demand generation must scale before headcount. You'll learn: * The two-pillar model for assessing capability and traits * Why the sales capacity fallacy kills growth in PE-backed businesses * How to interview for coachability, curiosity and resilience, not just pedigree #SalesHiring #CommercialLeadership #ScaleUp #PrivateEquity #SaaS #TeamBuilding

Why Your Best Salesperson Shouldn't Become a Manager (with Evie Emanuel)

Your best salesperson doesn't want to be a manager. Now what? Evie Emanuel (Commercial Director, Events Concept | Co-Founder, Elevate New Gen) has led commercial teams through growth, mergers and redundancies in an industry where the margin for error is zero. In this episode, she shares: * Why the "grittiness" you need is never on the CV — and how to pull it out in conversation * How to create progression for top performers who don't want to manage people * Why the wording in your job description is quietly filtering out great candidates * Why adding headcount is often the wrong answer to a growth problem Essential listening for founders, commercial leaders and anyone building a high-performance team. #Recruitment #TeamBuilding #CommercialLeadership #EventsIndustry #Hiring #Retention