By ToplineJohn McMahon has trained 100+ CROs. He’d still tell most of them they weren’t ready.
With five-time public company CRO John McMahon, and co-hosts Sam Jacobs, Asad Zaman and AJ Bruno
John McMahon has been CRO at five public companies. His team at PTC built MEDDIC, which is now the most widely used sales methodology in tech. More than 100 CROs came up through his teams (someone once counted 300), including OpenAI’s current CRO, Dali Rajic.
He came on Topline to talk about how the best revenue leaders build teams, how he decides whether someone is ready for the CRO seat, and how a CRO should handle a CEO who thinks they know sales. He’s blunt about AI sales tools, and about CROs who never carried a bag.
He also takes a few positions plenty of operators will disagree with. We pulled five of them into a vote at the end. Tell us where you land.
What’s in the episode
06:25 Position vs. opportunity. People pick the CRO title at a weak company over a director role at a great one. Three years later they call him to say it went nowhere.
08:19 Hiring on characteristics. He picks intelligence, drive, coachability and adaptability over experience, because skills take years of reps to build and only driven people put in the reps.
12:10 The bag question. He says a CRO who never carried a bag is “100%” disqualified. His reason is that you can’t coach a rep through a deal you’ve never lived. AJ pushes back.
15:38 AI reps are filling demand. Fast-growing AI companies can’t yet tell who’s good, because everyone is selling. That changes once competitors start running into each other.
19:55 “You’re not ready.” He explains why he once refused Dali a promotion. His readiness test is whether you can recruit, whether you can tell a knowledge gap from a skill gap, and whether people follow you through the wall.
23:20 CEOs who think they know sales. First-time CROs often don’t see themselves as the CEO’s peer. His advice is to bring the problem and a solution, argue it partner to partner, then live with the call.
31:33 Conversational intelligence tools. They confirm something was said, but they can’t tell you who said it or whether that person is really your champion. His word for most of them is “garbage.”
52:41 When a rep fails, the manager failed. Late at PTC he stopped blaming reps and started holding managers accountable. He also started giving new headcount only to managers who beat average rep productivity.
59:44 Hiring ahead of the plan. Add up every manager’s “only a month late” on recruiting, and you get exactly how much the CRO misses by.
“If you hire all B’s and C’s and do everything else perfect, you’re not going to the championship. If I hire all A’s and did everything else average, you’re going to the championship.”
John McMahon at 40:08
Where we land on holding managers accountable for failed reps
The clip from this episode that will get passed around is McMahon saying a CRO who never carried a bag is disqualified. It’s a fun fight, and most people already know which side they’re on.
The idea that deserves more of your time comes at 52:41. McMahon says that when a rep washes out, the manager owns it. The manager hired the person, so either they hired wrong or they couldn’t train and lead the right hire. He pairs this with a hard rule on headcount. If your reps produce below the company average, you don’t get more of them.
His case is simple. Growth companies exist to promote from within, and managers exist to recruit and develop people. If reps keep failing and nobody above them answers for it, what is the management layer for?
We think he’s right about the problem. Fixing it is harder than it sounds.
Most frontline managers get almost no interview training. Asad makes this point at 57:40. If you hold managers accountable for hires you never trained them to make, you’ve just moved the blame down a level. McMahon trained his managers relentlessly, and most companies don’t.
Productivity-based headcount rewards territory as well as coaching. A manager handed a weak patch can trail the average for reasons that have nothing to do with how well they lead.
Punitive accountability makes managers hire safe. If every miss lands on the manager, they’ll pick the polished resume over the raw, driven candidate. That’s the opposite of what McMahon is asking for.
Our view is that this works best on teams large and stable enough for patterns to show. At an early-stage company with two reps per manager, one bad hire is noise. The harder question is personal: would your managers accept being measured on how their hires ramp and stay, the same way they’re measured on bookings?
McMahon thinks a nine-out-of-ten hiring hit rate is the standard. We’re less sure most teams can get there, and it’s the part of the conversation we’d most like to hear frontline managers argue about.
Pick a side
Five positions McMahon took on the show. Vote on each one and we’ll share the results next issue.
Said at 12:10
Said at 06:25
Said at 30:27
Said at 31:33
Said at 56:57
Watch the full episode
65 minutes. If you disagree with something, say so in the YouTube comments.
TOPLINE
The show for GTM operators building and scaling in the age of AI.
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