There’s a version of hiring I see all the time, especially when a business decides it’s time to grow.
Revenue needs to increase, pipeline needs to improve, and fairly quickly the conversation lands on the same conclusion: “we need a salesperson.” On the surface, it makes complete sense. Growth equals sales, so bring someone in to drive it.
The role gets defined in familiar terms. Head of Sales, Commercial Lead, Business Development Director. The brief usually talks about bringing in new business, opening doors, building relationships and hitting targets. All of it sounds right, and all of it feels like progress.
But this is where things often start to go wrong.
Because most businesses think they’re hiring a sales professional, when what they’ve actually described is a door knocker.
The difference isn’t always obvious at first. In early conversations, there’s often a heavy focus on activity. How many calls they’ll make, how many meetings they’ll book, how quickly they can build pipeline. Energy, drive and hunger come up a lot, and while those things absolutely matter, they’re not what separates a genuine sales professional from someone who’s simply good at generating noise.
A real sales professional isn’t just there to chase opportunity. They’re there to shape it.
That distinction matters far more than people realise, particularly in the event world. This isn’t a transactional environment where you’re shifting something off the shelf. You’re selling thinking, solutions and experiences, often to clients who don’t fully know what they need yet. That requires a very different kind of salesperson.
The person you need isn’t the one who can knock on the most doors. It’s the one who can sit in a room with a client and help them understand why they should open it in the first place.
Where I see the biggest mismatch is in the gap between what businesses say they want and what they actually structure the role around. They talk about needing someone senior, strategic and commercially strong, but the expectations are still built around volume. More outreach, more meetings, more immediate pipeline.
What you end up with is someone who can start conversations, but can’t always move them forward in a meaningful way. They create activity, but not momentum, and over time that gap becomes more and more obvious.
A true sales professional operates differently from the start. They’re not just thinking about who to contact next, they’re thinking about how the business is positioned, how the proposition lands, and how it’s perceived in the market. They’re asking questions most people would rather avoid, not because they’re difficult, but because they understand what sits behind a successful sale.
They’ll want to know why a client would leave who they’re currently working with. They’ll want to understand what genuinely makes your offer different, and where you win versus where you don’t. If those answers aren’t clear, they don’t just push ahead regardless. They slow things down and help fix it.
That’s the part many businesses underestimate.
A strong salesperson will often challenge you before they ever sell for you. They’ll question the messaging, the offer, the pricing and even the delivery, because they know that without that clarity, the best sales process in the world won’t land properly. It’s not about slowing things down for the sake of it, it’s about making sure what you’re taking to market actually stands up.
This is usually where tension creeps in. The business wants momentum, but what they’ve hired is someone asking for clarity. It can feel like friction when, in reality, it’s exactly what you need.
You see it play out in hiring decisions time and time again. A candidate talks convincingly about relationships, long-term growth and strategic accounts, but then gets measured against short-term activity. Questions shift towards how quickly they can generate meetings or bring in revenue, and before long, the role becomes something different from what was originally intended.
At that point, you’re no longer hiring a sales professional. You’re hiring someone to prove themselves through volume.
The irony is that when it’s done properly, it tends to work better and faster. A true sales professional builds a pipeline that’s actually winnable. They qualify properly, position properly and create conversations that lead somewhere. It doesn’t always look as busy, but it’s far more effective.
So how do you avoid getting this wrong?
It starts before you ever go to market. You need to be honest about what you actually need as a business. If the role is genuinely about high-volume outreach and quick wins, that’s fine, there’s a place for that. But call it what it is and hire accordingly.
If what you really need is someone to shape your proposition, build your positioning and create a sustainable pipeline, that’s a very different hire. It requires a different brief, a different conversation and a different level of expectation.
It also means being ready for a different kind of person. Someone who doesn’t just nod along in an interview, but asks you difficult questions. Someone who wants to understand the business properly before talking about targets, because that’s exactly what they’ll do with your clients.
The biggest mistake I see is trying to sit in the middle. Wanting a strategic, senior salesperson, but expecting them to behave like a junior door knocker. That mismatch doesn’t last long. Either they leave, or they adapt, and when they adapt, you don’t get what you thought you were hiring in the first place.
The reality is that finding people isn’t the hard part. Getting the role right is.
If you’re clear on what you need, clear on what success looks like, and honest about the type of sales function you’re trying to build, you’ll hire well. If you’re not, you’ll get activity, but you won’t get traction.
And in a market where everyone is talking about growth, pipeline and revenue, that difference matters more than ever.
So before you push the hiring button, take a step back and be honest with yourself. Are you looking for someone to knock on doors, or someone to help you decide which doors are worth opening in the first place?
