Marcus Chen

Marcus Chen, Senior Vice President of Sales at Forge Analytics, discusses sales team composition and why hiring for thinking matters more than hiring for activity.

**On building sales organizations:** "I'd rather have 10 reps who can think than 50 who can't. Most companies optimize for size. I optimize for quality of judgment."

**What he looks for:** "I look for people who ask good questions before they make calls. People who listen to prospects and actually hear what they're saying. People who can improvise in a conversation without a script."

**On training and development:** "The best sales training doesn't happen in a classroom. It happens in coaching sessions where you're asking your rep: Why did you say that? What were you trying to accomplish? What else could you have done?"

**The challenge with scale:** "When you grow quickly, the temptation is to lower your standards to fill headcount. Don't. The cost of hiring the wrong person is higher than the cost of staying understaffed."

**On quotas and incentives:** "I don't believe in pure activity quotas anymore. I believe in outcome quotas with activity guidelines. The rep needs to figure out how to hit the outcome. That forces thinking."

**For sales leaders:** "Your job isn't to manage activity. It's to build a team of people who are smart enough to manage their own activity and focused enough to hit results."

**Looking forward:** "Sales is becoming a thinking person's game. The reps who win are going to be the ones who can navigate complex environments, adapt on the fly, and make good judgment calls under pressure."