Revenue Builders · 20 Aug 2026 · From the week of 17 August
How to Hire Better Salespeople Than Yourself and Lead Them to Win
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Michelle Bove, AVP of East Sales at Wiz, joins hosts John McMahon and John Kaplan to discuss hiring, coaching and leading sales teams, drawing on her time at PTC, AppDynamics and Zscaler. Topics include judging likability in candidates, running skip-levels transparently, deal review and prospecting rhythms, the case for in-person selling as AI grows, and what it costs to be a young female leader in cybersecurity. Her central argument is that sales leaders should hire people better than themselves and combine process, which she calls science, with human connection, which she calls art.
For founders
- Bove puts likability and human connection near the top of her hiring criteria, alongside discipline and EQ.
- She tests candidates in person by bringing a third person to lunch, because how someone performs on Zoom or the phone can differ from how they act face to face.
- She values discipline over motivation and looks for reps who self-assess their business every day without being checked on.
- She says strategic accounts and larger deals still need in-person selling even as AI takes over more of the routine work.
- She describes an expensive executive dinner, approved by her leadership, that she credits with six deals from one account in about a year and a half.
For revenue leaders
- Run deal reviews with a 15-question spreadsheet that she says takes about 30 minutes rather than an hour or more.
- After every meeting, reps should look for other people in the same account to prospect, since a platform is sold to many buyers.
- When a rep underperforms, check the territory timing and walk through the rep's patch with them before deciding whether to coach or move them out.
- Coach underperformers, document the coaching, and check back a month later: no progress points to moving them out, while visible progress points to coaching.
- Prepare for each skip-level with the RD and VP, document the session, and send the findings back to them afterwards.
What was said 22, most useful first
Likability ranks higher in hiring salespeople than most people expect, because deals depend on building champions and executive relationships. Listen
Bove says people buy from people they like and that building champions and executive relationships is the biggest factor in deals, so she weighs likability well above what she thinks most people do. She pairs it with EQ alongside IQ, discipline over motivation, and human connection with clients.
“I always say likability is a lot higher up on that list than people might think.”
Test a sales candidate's likability by taking them to lunch with a third person and watching how they treat others. Listen
Bove says a candidate can be flawless over Zoom or on the phone and then different in person, so she brings a third person to lunch to see how the candidate interacts with someone else. She says you can learn in about an hour whether the person can hang out and whether others want to talk to them, including how they treat the waiter and coworkers. She calls it the lunch or beer test.
“Bring a third person to that lunch, see how they interact with somebody else.”
A front-line sales leader should aim to hire reps who are better sellers than they are, because getting promoted depends on other things. Listen
Bove says her goal as an RD is to hire people who are better at sales as a rep than she is, and that she builds a tree of strong people by promoting from within. At Zscaler she took over a team of reps who had sold far more software than she had, and she says RDs must humble themselves rather than feel intimidated.
“your goal is to hire people that are better at sales as a sales rep than you”
Ask managers how they would react if a rep quit tomorrow, as a quick gauge of whether that rep is worth fighting to keep. Listen
Bove says when an RD is on the fence about a rep, she asks, if they quit tomorrow, what would your call be to me? If the answer is that the RD would be devastated, she says the RD should sit down with the rep, dig into their why, and work out how to retain them.
“if they quit tomorrow, what would your call be to me?”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Coach an underperforming rep and document it; if they show no progress a month later, the rep probably needs to move out, and visible progress points to coaching. Listen
Bove's process is to coach the rep, help them, and document it. If a rep comes back a month later having done none of the coaching, she says the rep probably needs to move out, while a rep who shows great progress needs coaching rather than a work-ethic change.
“if they come back a month later and they haven't done anything that we just gave them a whole list of coaching to do, we know that person probably needs to move out.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Before acting on a request to fire a rep, get the data, then the context, by talking to the rep's SE and having lunch with the rep. Listen
On her first day leading a team, Bove was told to fire a rep. She asked for data first, and the data looked good, so she called the rep's SE and then had lunch with the rep. She concluded the rep needed help with one thing rather than firing, and says he later went to President's Club year after year.
“First I need data, then context.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Run deal reviews with a 15-question spreadsheet that takes about 30 minutes rather than an hour or more. Listen
Bove's leaders review current-quarter and next-quarter top deals using a spreadsheet of 15 questions, filled in by the rep. The questions cover the close date and why it is that date, the economic buyer and when they last met, the champions, and when a proof of value started and ends, so reps often spot gaps themselves.
“there's a deal review spreadsheet we have that asks 15 questions. It saves time. So a deal review isn't an hour, an hour and a half, but it's actually only 30 minutes.”
AI helps with smaller, high-volume deals, but strategic and larger deals still need in-person selling, which Bove sees as a competitive edge. Listen
Bove says AI can shorten the work for reps who run many small transactions, but reps on strategic accounts need to be on site with executives, champions and procurement. She gives the example of a rep who spends most days with customers in person and closes large deals quarter after quarter, and says remote-only competitors may be at a disadvantage.
“But if you're doing more strategic selling, you have to be in person.”
An executive customer dinner that cost $7,000 was followed by six deals with that account in a year and a half, and it became one of the company's top revenue accounts. Listen
Bove describes a costly dinner with a customer, which her leadership approved, and says it was followed by six deals in about a year and a half and made the account one of Wiz's highest revenue generators. She says the relationship built at the dinner is something remote meetings cannot produce.
“this company did six deals with us in a year and a half after that”
A deal forecast at about a million dollars closed at four to five times that after the team found missing executive champions and went multi-threaded. Listen
Bove says the team realised they were missing executive champions and had not understood the customer's why or ideal future state. They mapped the current state to the future state, met more people, and stopped being single-threaded, then closed a much larger deal on a shorter timeline, which she says has happened on several deals.
“We weren't single threaded anymore.”
Reps can make a meeting personal by spending the first one to two minutes on people rather than business. Listen
Bove teaches reps to open meetings with a minute or two of personal conversation, such as how the weekend went, a sport they played, or a shared contact, before moving to business. She says people open up once the walls drop, but the personal part should stay short and not run to eight minutes.
“the first one to two minutes of every meeting we don't just jump into business”
Interview for relationship skills by asking candidates how they built their best champion and who they would name as a customer reference. Listen
Bove asks candidates who their best executive relationship or favorite champion is, why, and how they turned that person into a champion. She also asks who she could call as a reference and insists it must be a customer, not a co-worker. She says RDs and directors can ask these questions in interviews.
“who's your best executive relationship or who's your favorite champion and why tell me how you built them into a champion?”
Look for discipline over motivation when hiring, because motivation fades while daily self-assessment is what drives results. Listen
Bove says everyone can be motivated for a day or two, even coming out of sales kickoff, so the question is whether a rep goes home and assesses their business every day. She gives the example of a rep who reviews his deals daily and reads his customers' annual reports at night, so she does not need to check in on him.
“Everyone can be motivated.”
When taking over a team of stronger sellers, a new manager can meet each rep one-on-one, ask what they need, and name where the manager will help. Listen
When Bove took over a team at Zscaler, she met each rep one-on-one, told them she heard they were really good, and asked what they needed from a manager. One rep was weak at prospecting but closed deals 90 percent of the way, so she agreed to prospect for him, and another was less comfortable with executives, so she agreed to help him reach them.
“I leaned in i sat down with them one on one each of them i said I hear you're really good at this. What do you need out of a manager?”
For many reps, recognition ranks just after money as a retention lever, and sometimes ahead of it. Listen
Bove says a VP on her team, TJ O'Shea, told her recognition comes right after money for many reps and sometimes matters more. She says retaining top performers is therefore not only about pay but also about giving them the recognition they deserve.
“recognition is just right after money for a lot of these people”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Prepare for each skip-level with the RD and VP, then send the findings back to them and document the session afterward. Listen
Bove calls the RD and VP before each skip-level and asks what she should know and how the rep is doing, so she knows what to aim for. After the meeting she documents the session, sets the next one, and sends what she found back to the RD and VP with the coaching they need to provide, which she compares to keeping executives informed on a deal.
“it's so important to then send that back to the RD and the VP to say, hey, I'm circling back.”
Give a struggling frontline leader direct feedback, let them reflect for a few days, then build a plan to fix the gap. Listen
Bove says she tells the leader directly what people around them are saying, then gives them a few days to reflect before discussing solutions. Fixes she gives include going on camera more, hosting a team dinner, and using one-on-ones to ask about life and goals rather than the forecast, with weekly check-ins afterwards.
“You really give people time to soak it in and hear their thoughts over a few days.”
After leaving a meeting, a rep should look for who else to prospect within that same company. Listen
Bove argues that a platform is sold across an organisation to many people, not one niche buyer, so reps should prospect to security operations, engineering and the CISO or CTO after each meeting. She says prospecting should happen every day, not only on a set day, and describes the habit as PG Monday and PG Tuesday.
“The second you leave that meeting, you should say, who else can I now prospect to within that company?”
Listen to the episode Pipeline & demand generation Link to this
Leaders should measure themselves every morning on three things: recruiting, retaining, and revenue. Listen
Bove says leaders can self-assess each morning on the three Rs, asking whether they are recruiting, whether they are retaining, and how revenue is doing, and then hold themselves accountable. She contrasts being busy with being effective and says time management is extremely important at her level and also matters at the rep level.
“You can self-assess and measure yourself every morning on those three things”
AI cannot read a room or decide when to ask a hard question, and Bove says great reps are the ones who do both. Listen
Bove says AI is useful for building decks and articulating feature and value, but at a dinner with a C-suite account a rep has to read the room, know when to ask hard questions, and dig into second and third-level questions. She says many reps are afraid to ask hard questions, though great reps do.
“AI is not going to go do that for you. You have to read the room of when the right time is to ask a hard question”
Reps can build customer depth by reading an account's annual report and tying how the customer makes money to the vendor's product. Listen
Bove describes a rep on her team who covers accounts he sells to and reads their annual reports late at night to understand how they make money, then ties that back to Wiz's technology. She says he sends her material from those reports without being asked, which she takes as evidence of his customer obsession.
“reading their annual report about their business, understanding how they make money and tying that back to Wiz's technology”
As a young female leader, Bove has to prove her credibility in every room, and she says the hardest part of her job is doing so with male teams and customers. Listen
Bove says she is often the first female boss of people older than her, and she manages three VPs and ten directors, all men, so she has to earn trust in each new organisation. She says most of her customers are male and that people sometimes judge her as a marketing person or assistant before they know her role.
“The hardest part of my job is being a female in this space.”