Where this was said
Lightning Round: Sales Wisdom From the Field
At 40:08 · chapter starts 39:40
The conversation shifts gears into a rapid-fire exchange where Joe Schmidt queries Andy McCall on lessons learned across his career. Andy reveals he's closed deals in some unconventional settings — fishing trips, shooting ranges, ballparks — a fitting illustration of the land-grab ethos: be willing to sell anywhere. His biggest career advice for early-stage salespeople is counter-intuitive: don't chase the best commission rate, title, or hottest technology — find the best company that's going to grow, and treat it as a career elevator. The ego-driven pursuit of director titles and base salary targets is the mistake he made early. On organizational design, Andy flags sales operations as the function founders hire too late. It doesn't require a big team — one person thinking daily about territory alignment, commission structures, name lists, and a sales constitution is enough to prevent the bottlenecks that emerge at scale. On quota philosophy, Andy is unequivocal: in early-stage companies, close to 100% of the team should be hitting quota. If only 40–50% are hitting, quotas are too high or the hiring profile is wrong. The whole point of the early sales team is to stack wins, and you attract and retain the best sellers by giving them a realistic chance to win.
Most founders wait too long to hire a sales operations person. By the time they need territory alignment, commission structures, and a sales constitution, they're already in scale mode and the chaos is expensive. One person thinking about this daily is enough — don't build a huge org, just don't skip the function entirely.
Andy McCall recommends hiring a sales operations person earlier than most founders do — even a single person focused on territory alignment, commission structures, and name lists can prevent costly bottlenecks at scale.
Andy McCall argues that early-stage companies where only 40–50% of the sales team hits quota are either setting quotas too high or hiring the wrong profile.
