Most sales leaders wait too long to think about hiring.
They wait until someone quits, retires, or they finally get approval to add headcount. They wait until there’s pressure or a time crunch. And more often than not, that’s when bad hires or the wrong hires get made.
The best sales leaders don’t hire reactively. They treat hiring the same way they treat sales.
They are always prospecting.
As Mike Weinberg says, they are always building the bench.
That means they are consistently meeting, connecting with, and identifying top sales talent even when there is no immediate opening. They build relationships with strong reps long before there is a role to fill.
Just like a healthy pipeline, they make sure their bench is deep enough. If four or five people aren’t interested, two or three might be. And maybe one is truly excited. That gives them options. It allows them to move the right person into a “closed won” role without ever posting a job ad.
When I was a sales leader, I treated this as a discipline.
I had a weekly 30-minute time block dedicated to connecting with sales reps. These were people others had recommended, strong reps in adjacent industries, or people I found interesting on LinkedIn. I also blocked 45 minutes every two weeks for coffee chats or Teams calls with the reps I had connected with.
Those conversations kept me sharp. I was regularly talking with high-performing reps and started to recognize patterns. How they talked about sales. How they approached their territories. How they thought about strategy. It became much easier to identify who belonged on my bench and who didn’t.
The key part of this strategy is how low-friction it is.
Top performers already have jobs. They aren’t actively looking. And because you’re building your bench before you need to hire, you’re not trying to sell them on your company, your role, or your team. The conversations stay focused on sales, strategy, and best practices.
Once you start building a strong team, something interesting happens. You begin attracting strong talent.
When you have a few people in the right seats, referrals from your own reps become incredibly valuable. Great reps know other great reps. They’ve sold alongside them or competed against them, and they want them on their team.
It’s worth remembering this: every hire either raises or lowers the bar.
Top performers want to work with people who raise it. I was at a conference last year where a multi-time President’s Club winner said the happiest days of his career were when bottom performers were let go. Not because he was unkind, but because low performance drags standards, energy, and momentum down every single day.
Building your bench allows you to stay in your sales leader role.
And just like selling, it’s built through small, consistent habits. Time blocking. Networking. Having conversations. Doing the work before you need the outcome.
That’s how you fill your bench and hire top performers with far less stress and far better results.
Happy selling.
Happy hiring.
Cheers,
Kyle Jager
