Why Most SaaS Sales Hiring Fails And How To Fix It
- Louis Fernandes
- Dec 12, 2025
- 3 min read
Hiring Salespeople Is Your Biggest GTM Risk — Here’s How to De-Risk It
Watch the conversation above, then consider a blunt reality: across SaaS, sales performance has slipped while buying has grown harder. In our discussion we talk through data showing falling quota attainment, lengthening enterprise sales cycles, shrinking average deal sizes, and new-logo win rates that are, in many categories, below one in five. None of this is a moral failing; it’s the predictable result of bigger buying groups, greater perceived risk, and teams still running 2019 playbooks in a 2025 market.
The problem beneath the symptoms
Most leadership teams default to macro explanations—“the market”, “budgets”, “AI noise”. They matter, but the controllable levers are closer to home:
Shallow qualification. Too many deals jump from “situation” to “solution”. Frameworks (MEDDPICC/MEDDICC, SPICED) and methodologies (SPIN, Challenger, JOLT) only work when they’re practised rigorously—metrics tied to impact, real decision criteria, real champions, real access to the economic buyer.
An unbalanced revenue engine. Obsession with net-new names crowds out retention and expansion. CAC rises while existing customers sit under-served.
The hiring lottery. One of the highest-cost, highest-variance decisions in your company is still being made on CVs, references, and “feel”. That’s not diligence—that’s hope.
Evidence over opinion: assess for Will, Wiring, and Skill
At M10 we use validated assessments to reduce hiring failure and to target coaching for existing teams. We look at three layers:
Will to Sell – motivation, commitment, responsibility.
Sales DNA (“wiring”) – the beliefs and tendencies that either enable or sabotage performance (comfort discussing money, need for approval, ability to recover from rejection, etc.).
Tactical Skills – prospecting, discovery, qualification, opportunity management, negotiation.
Why this order? Because skills sit on top of wiring, which sits on top of will. If the foundation is weak, a two-day course won’t stick. When you objectively measure all three, two things happen: you hire fewer risks and you coach what actually moves the number.
Mindset still wins (and it’s measurable)
The best AEs don’t outsource pipeline. They create it—by phone, in-person, and through targeted outreach—then qualify hard. Self-sourced pipeline consistently converts better than hand-offs optimised for meetings booked rather than revenue closed. That mindset shows up in assessment data long before it shows up in your forecast.
Don’t just train—embed
Workshops are useful; coaching cadence is decisive. Use assessment insights to personalise enablement, then reinforce weekly in pipeline, deal, and skills coaching. Leaders must coach to frameworks (not folklore) and tie behaviours back to commercial impact: revenue, gross margin, payback, expansion, retention.
How M10 can help (fast, practical, outcome-focused)
Sales Hiring Risk Audit (2–3 weeks). Role blueprinting, Will/DNA/Skill assessment for candidates, decision support with red/amber/green risk scoring, and an onboarding plan that targets gaps from day one.
Sales Team Effectiveness Diagnostic (3–4 weeks). Assess your current team, map gaps to revenue impact, and install a coaching plan linked to MEDDPICC/SPICED execution, deal hygiene, and pipeline quality.
Revenue Engine Rebalance. Shift emphasis from net-new at any cost toward a Bow-Tie model with clear plays for retention and expansion—so growth is sustainable, predictable, and profitable.
Find out more: If you want to cut hiring failure, shorten cycles, and raise win rates, let’s talk. We’ll run a quick discovery, share the assessment model, and show you where to start. Reach out to Magnitude 10 Associates and reference this video for the Hiring Risk Audit starter.
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