Sharing an excerpt from Positioning with April Dunford: Rethinking Sales Strategies for Modern Markets with Loren Padelford podcast, Jun 13, 2024

April Dunford:

What kind of personality traits were you looking for? I’m curious. What’s the interview like?

Loren Padelford:

So I’ll explain it this way. I was looking for things I couldn’t teach them. So I couldn’t teach them creativity.

I couldn’t teach them curiosity. I couldn’t teach them intelligence. I couldn’t teach them work ethic.

And then a big one was you can’t teach success. People are either successful people in a variety of things or they’re not. And they usually come from, success is usually driven from those other personality traits.

So this was not a totally original idea by me either. Mark Rowe-Behrs at HubSpot had written his own book at this point and had talked a lot about the same thing, right, of like, we all look at the wrong things. So fun fact, there is no statistical correlation between education and success in sales.

There’s no statistical correlation between a past history of success in sales and a future history of success in sales. It sounds like there should be, but there just isn’t, except that’s what everyone interviews for is where did you go to school? What was your last job?“ And it’s like, these are irrelevant. There is a perfect correlation between those personality traits and success. And so I looked for things I couldn’t teach you, because I could teach you how to sell.

I could teach you how to do a cold call. I could teach you how to close a deal. I could teach you how to do a demo.

I could teach you how to position something. I can’t teach you to get up and go to work.

I’m not one who feels comfortable asking for help. It requires confidence and courage sometimes.

Now that I have a clearer picture of the industry I want to be in, I am going to take a new (for me), direct, and frank approach to asking for help: “I’m really interested in working for a B2B SaaS startup. How do I do it? What do I need to know?”

I have been asking myself if I had the chance to do our kids’ younger years over again, knowing what I know now, would I choose to be a stay-at-home-mom? Each time, my answer is “yes.” But I would probably do things differently.

Here’s the thing, I never imagined life beyond the younger years. It’s strange to think that I never pondered life with older kids. Did I think my kids would be perpetually young and I would always be needed to hold down the fort at home? So strange. I never envisioned going back to work. It’s not that I didn’t want to. It didn’t cross my mind.

Now here I am, walking the bumpy road of re-entry and career change, riddled with self-doubt and comparing myself to others in the same space or doing the work I want to do—peers who are younger, but seemingly more confident and capable because they have more years of doing the actual work than I do. Perhaps I should have started my post here (!) since self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy are at the root of my questions like, “What could I have done differently?”

Going down the “what if” road for too long is a waste of time, but if our daughters (or sons) one day have children and choose to stay home with them, I think I will mention that a time may come when they will consider going back to work. Not in a pushy way, of course. There is no right answer or one way to do life. But the reality is, our kids grow up. Most will eventually leave the house. I have many mom friends whose youngest kids are now in elementary and beyond returning to work. It’s a bit of a trend.

As for what I would do differently knowing what I know now? Stay tuned.

If I’m honest, I always believed I would do something big. Not sure if my mom planted the idea, or if all kids have big dreams. My mom said my biological dad had grandiose dreams (but no follow through). Are big dreams innate? I wonder…

Things to learn:

What are the challenges tech startup founders face as it relates to getting the right message out?