Hiring an Agency Sales Rep with John Shea
Key Takeaways
- Hiring sales reps is fundamentally different from hiring for other positions and requires a distinct process
- The training and hiring process takes over 8 weeks with small class sizes under 10 for personalized coaching
- Sales is the foundation - agencies need the right people in sales seats before other investments pay off
John Shea, co-founder of the Inbound Sales Academy, joins the show to share his expertise on hiring agency sales representatives.
The Sales Hiring Problem
The frustration is common: an agency generates inbound leads, hands them to a salesperson, and watches them get dropped. John started his career as VP of Sales for a company outside Baltimore, where he was tasked with hiring their first marketing department. That experience - including hiring his future business partner Lindsay Kelley - eventually led John and Lindsay to start their own agency, The Alignment Group.
A Different Kind of Hire
John’s core insight is that hiring sales reps is fundamentally different from hiring for other positions. Sales requires a specific combination of personality, process orientation, and resilience that standard interview processes often fail to evaluate. His training program addresses this gap by spending over 8 weeks with participants, maintaining small class sizes under 10 for personalized coaching.
Where John Starts
Sales is where John starts every engagement because the hiring process is the foundation. If the wrong person is in the sales seat, no amount of marketing investment will produce consistent results. The program blends self-paced curriculum with live coaching calls, helping agencies develop a repeatable process for identifying, evaluating, and developing sales talent.
The Inbound Sales Academy was co-founded with Kathleen from Quintain Marketing, combining John’s sales expertise with their agency operations experience.