How to Hire Better Salespeople Than Yourself and Lead Them to Win

We all have that phone call that when it comes in, you go, I don't want to answer this, right? Don't be that person. How do you not be that person? Be a human. These are just people like our clients. My clients are my genuine friends. I want to talk to them. I want to hang out with them throughout the years. We are friends because we've gotten to know each other on a personal level and same with my team, right? If you don't have that human connection and that ability to do that, your ceiling is only going to be this high in many ways.

Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel, behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.

Welcome back to another episode of the Rebel New Builders podcast. I'm John Kaplan with my co-host, John

McMahon.

I met today's guest, Michelle Bovee, in my force management office in Charlotte. And it didn't take long to understand why the people who've worked for her and worked with her talk about her the way they do. Michelle is AVP of the East at WIZ. running strategics, majors, and enterprise. Before Wiz, she built her game at PTC, AppDynamics, and Zscaler, some of the sharpest sales cultures in all of enterprise software history. She's closed the deals nobody else could get into, She's mentored some of the best sellers in the business and become one of the best leaders in all of cybersecurity. In this episode, Michelle takes us inside what it actually felt like to win in the toughest patches, what separates the best sellers and the best leaders she's ever worked with, where she sees AI heading in sales, and the work she's doing personally to bring more women into cybersecurity leadership. This is Michelle Bovee,

AVP

Wiz. So, Michelle, it's great to see you again. I think the last time we saw each other was in my charlotte office with steve was it steve mullet

it was yeah

and uh it was the first time that i met you uh and it was i was really really really impressed so i'm thankful that you're on the podcast welcome

thank you so much for having me both of you are idols to me growing up so very cool to be here thank you

awesome

hey so one

thing girl grown up now

I'm all grown up.

That's a little joke.

That's right. All grown up. My older years.

One thing we didn't really talk about, we were just kind of rapid firing in the Charlotte office. It was awesome having that conversation with you. But I didn't really understand like your origin story, like how you got into sales. So do you mind starting there and then we'll kind of kick it off?

Sure. Yeah, that's great. So, I mean, growing up, I was extremely competitive, played every sport, a little bit of a tomboy. My family would say a lot of a tomboy. And, you know, I just loved competition. And my parents really said hard work is earned. So in seventh grade, they made me get a job. I was a soccer referee making 30 bucks an hour. And I understood that that was a lot.