Section 1. Hire the Right Reps (Not Just Good Interviewers)

Most vertical SaaS teams don’t struggle because they “can’t find good reps.”
They struggle because they hire the wrong type of rep for an SMB motion.

Selling to SMBs is high-volume, emotionally taxing, and fast-moving. The reality is simple:

• The people who thrive in this motion are built differently.

• They handle rejection differently.

• They learn differently.

• They operate differently.

And no interview or resume will tell you who those people are.

This section lays out a hiring system that surfaces the right people and filters out the candidates who look great in an interview but flame out two weeks into cold calling.

1. What Actually Makes a Great SMB Rep

After watching hundreds of reps in vertical SaaS succeed or fail — across Orbital's 100+ customers, Sellfire, and dozens of others — the pattern is clear:

High-velocity reps win on intangibles and environment, not polish.

The best reps usually share four traits.

1. Work Ethic

Cold calling is repetitive. It’s emotional stamina dressed up as sales.

You need people who can:

• Make 100, 200, or even 300 calls per day

• Get hung up on all morning

• Reset at lunch

• And do it again in the afternoon

This is not something you can teach. You hire it.

2. Growth Mindset

SMB reps fail more than they win. If a rep treats every bad call like a statement about themselves, it’s over.

You’re looking for someone who says:
“Okay, that didn’t work. What do I try next?”

3. Coachability

This matters more than experience.

Most “experienced SDRs” come in with habits that don’t fit your process. If they can’t drop those habits — or can’t take feedback without getting defensive — they won’t improve.

Coachability is the difference between someone you can shape into a top performer and someone who drains your managers and brings down the rest of the team.

4. Competitiveness

Not loud competitiveness. Not “I love winning” competitiveness.

The best SMB reps compete against:

• Their own metrics

• Their numbers from last week

• Their talk time yesterday

It’s internal fuel, not bravado.

Operator Insight
Butch Hodson, who has coached thousands of reps, sums it up cleanly:
“If you don’t have these things, it just won’t work in building a high-velocity machine.”

But here’s the part most teams miss:

Even these traits are not enough if the company itself is unprepared. The right rep + the wrong system = wasted runway.

Your enablement, process, data, and tooling matter just as much as the rep you hire. A great rep can’t overcome a broken sales process.

2. How to Interview for These Traits (Without Getting Played)

Every salesperson knows how to interview well. That means you can’t rely on traditional behavioral questions.

Ask a rep, “Are you competitive?” They’ll say yes.
Ask, “Do you work hard?” Yes again.

These questions measure nothing.

To surface the truth, you need questions that force candidates to recall real, meaningful experiences.

Use multi-example questions

Great reps give rich stories quickly. Weak reps stall, generalize, or give vague answers.

Ask:

• “Think of a few times — personal or work — where you had to push harder than anyone around you. What were those situations, and what did you do?”

• “Tell me about a moment where you were getting punched in the mouth by results. What did you do the next day?”

You’re looking for:

• How fast they retrieve examples

• Whether the stakes felt real

• Whether they take ownership

• Whether they learned anything from it

If someone can’t produce multiple specific stories, that’s a sign they haven’t been in the arena.

Look for evidence of struggle plus recovery

Almost every top SMB rep has a story about:

• Failing at something

• Being embarrassed by something

• Getting crushed early

• And deciding to improve

Resilience in the wild tends to equal resilience on the phone.

3. Homework and Live Role Plays

Homework shows desire.
Role plays show reality.

These two steps reveal more than a full hour of resume walkthroughs.

Homework reveals:

• Do they take prep seriously?

• Do they follow instructions?

• Do they care enough to try?

A surprising number of candidates don’t complete homework. They self-select out — and it saves you weeks of wasted ramp time.

Role plays reveal:

• Tonality

• How natural they sound with a script

• Whether they listen

• Whether they can stay composed under pressure

You’re not evaluating polished sales technique. You’re evaluating raw ability to hold a real conversation.

If a candidate freezes or panics in a controlled scenario, they won’t survive a live call.
If they take feedback mid role-play and improve immediately, plus have the intangibles, hire them.

4. A Three-Step Hiring Loop That Actually Works

This loop is simple enough for a seed-stage company and robust enough for a Series B team hiring 10 reps a month.

Step 1. Quick Screen (5–10 minutes)

Purpose: remove obvious misfits fast.

• Are they clear and concise?

• Do they sound like someone you’d want representing your brand?

• Can they follow a simple question without rambling?

Step 2. Intangibles + Background

This is where you dig in.

• Ask for multiple specific stories

• Look for struggle + recovery

• Test for ownership

• Push slightly to see how they respond

If they get defensive or give surface-level answers, they’ll be hard to coach.

Step 3. Role Play + Homework Review

This is the real interview.

• Review their prep

• Run a simple scenario

• See how they adjust in real time

Three steps — consistent every time — removes bias and saves runway.

Section 2. Ramp Reps in 30–90 Days (Without Throwing Them in the Deep End)

The fastest way to burn a promising SMB rep is to hand them a laptop, give them a login, and tell them to start calling.
The fastest way to scale a team of SMB reps is to do the exact opposite.

High-velocity reps don’t succeed because they’re inherently fearless or naturally charismatic. They succeed because they’re dropped into a structured environment that gives them confidence early and removes as much unnecessary friction as possible.

This section lays out a simple model for turning a new hire into a productive rep within 30–90 days — grounded in what Butch teaches at Sellfire, and in what Orbital has seen across hundreds of vertical SaaS teams that get ramp right.

1. Start with a Proven (Enough) Sales Process

One of the biggest mistakes early-stage teams make is hiring reps before the founders have proven a repeatable sales motion.

You don’t need a 100-page playbook. But you do need:

• A talk track that’s worked more than once

• A clear ICP

• A predictable opener (especially for cold calling)

• A basic qualification framework

This is “proven enough.”

A practical test

If your founder or first rep can run five calls in a row with:

• The same opener

• The same discovery path

• The same close (set the demo, move to next step)

…and get consistent reactions, you have a process.

2. The First 2 Weeks: Training + Early Live Calls

The first two weeks determine whether a rep hits momentum or spirals into confusion. You want enough structure to give them confidence, but not so much theory that they spend two weeks in a classroom with no real exposure.

Days 1–3: Product, ICP, Competitors, Core Pitch

Keep it simple and focused:

• The problem you solve

• Who you solve it for

• Why that customer cares

• How your product is different

• The two or three competitors they’ll hear most

New reps don’t need a dissertation on every feature or technical nuance. They need to be able to explain the “why” behind what you do without stumbling.

Days 4–5: Scripts + Role Plays

This is where confidence starts to form.

Run:

• Openers

• First 30 seconds of a pitch

• Common objections

Reps should leave this stage knowing exactly what they’ll say when someone picks up.

It will not be perfect — that’s okay. The point is to get them sounding human and predictable.

Days 5–6: The First Live Calls (Half-Day Calling)

By the end of Week 1, they need to be talking to real people.

The structure:

• Morning: training or review

• Afternoon: 1–2 hours of calling

• End of day: group session reviewing calls

This blend keeps reps from drowning while giving them enough exposure to start building confidence.

And importantly:

New hires should listen to each other’s calls. They learn faster when they can hear mistakes and wins in real time.

3. Why the Classroom Environment Matters

Most teams throw reps onto the sales floor immediately, where they're surrounded by different voices, different styles, and different pacing. It’s disorienting.

The alternative — and what Butch recommends after scaling teams from five reps to four hundred — is keeping new hires together for roughly 30 days.

Why it works

• Everyone is learning the same script at the same time

• People improve faster by hearing others make the same mistakes

• It builds a shared identity

• You control the environment before introducing more variables

This is especially important for SMB motions, where cold calls are the bulk of the job. Early inconsistency ruins confidence.

A rep who hears three different pitch styles on their first day is already confused. A rep who hears one consistent style for 30 days becomes repeatable.

Operator Insight
Butch’s advice is direct: don’t drop new hires onto the floor just because they can technically dial. Keep them in a controlled environment until they’ve built enough muscle memory to survive the chaos.

4. Transitioning to Full-Time Calling & Certification

After two weeks, reps should be ready to move from protected practice to real production — but not alone, and not without standards.

Weeks 3–4: Mostly Calling, Ongoing Practice

This is where reps start building momentum:

• 3–4 hours of calling per day

• Daily feedback

• Weekly script refresh sessions

• Listening sessions with top-performing reps

Repetition + Correction = Improvement

Certification Before They Graduate

Before a rep finishes their first 30 days, they should be evaluated on a few core abilities:

1. Script proficiency
   Can they deliver the opener confidently without sounding robotic?

2. Objection handling
   Not every objection — just the top 10 they’ll hear daily.

3. Basic product + ICP understanding
   Can they clearly explain who the product is for and why that customer should take a meeting?

4. System readiness
   They should be able to log activities correctly, follow your process, and use your tools without friction.

Certification doesn’t have to be formal. It just has to be clear and consistent.

The 90-Day Goal

A rep should hit the following by Day 90:

• Fully autonomous calling

• Consistent activity levels

• Predictable pipeline creation

• Clear understanding of ICP and positioning

Not every rep will close at the same rate by Day 90, but every rep should be competent and confident.

If not, the issue is almost always either:

• Wrong hire

• Broken enablement

• Undefined process

Rarely is it the rep alone.

Section 3. Coach 90%, Admin 10%: The Manager Operating System

A high-velocity SMB sales team lives or dies by the quality of its managers.
Not by their dashboards. Not by their leadership philosophy. Not by their one-off pep talks.

By their coaching.

Every operator who has scaled a team that consistently books meetings — from Butch at Sellfire, to later-stage Orbital customers, to anyone who’s ever run an SDR pod selling into SMB — eventually reaches the same conclusion:

Operator Insight
Butch: Managers should spend almost all their time coaching and almost none of it on admin.

This sounds simple. It’s rarely how things actually run.

1. What Most Teams Get Wrong

Most sales managers spend their days in:

• Internal meetings

• Forecasting calls

• Cross-functional check-ins

• Updating pipeline spreadsheets

• “Syncs” about other “syncs”

Meanwhile, their reps are:

• Making calls with no feedback

• Repeating the same bad habits

• Stalling early in the month

• Burning leads

• Wondering why they’re not improving

This is the root cause of most underperforming SDR teams. Not the script. Not the ramp plan. Not the tooling.

It’s the lack of daily, hands-on coaching.

The best teams we’ve seen at Orbital — whether it’s a 3-rep team at a seed-stage vertical SaaS startup or a 60-rep team at a Series C company — all have one common thread:

Their managers coach constantly.

2. The 90% Coaching Rule

Butch says it directly: managers should spend 90% of their day coaching and only 10% doing everything else.

Coaching includes:

• Listening to live calls

• Breaking down call recordings

• Running daily role plays

• Jumping into tough conversations

• Helping reps diagnose where a call went sideways

• Practicing the opener or objection handling

• Working deals with reps in real time

This is not optional in an SMB motion. The volume of activity and the rate of failure are too high.

3. What Good Coaching Looks Like Day-to-Day

Here’s what it looks like in high-performing SMB teams.

Daily Call Review Blocks

Every morning, managers spend 30–60 minutes listening to calls from the previous day to find patterns:

• Tone issues

• Missed discovery questions

• Weak openings

• Bad transitions

• Missed buying signals

The key is sharing the learnings with the whole pod so everyone improves together.

Focused 1:1s

Once a week, each rep gets a focused session:

• One skill

• One deal

• One area of improvement

Short and targeted.

Live Call Coaching

This is the most underrated tool in SMB sales.

Managers join reps’ call blocks:

• To whisper advice

• To type suggested talk tracks

• To help with tricky objections

• To jump in if a call escalates

SMB sales moves too fast for slow, post-mortem coaching. Live coaching saves opportunities in real time.

Managers Who Can Model the Behavior

This might be the most important point: managers must be able to sell the product themselves.

If a manager has never cold called your ICP, never run the opener, never handled the common objections, and never set meetings using your process, reps will not take their feedback seriously.

Across vertical SaaS, the strongest teams promote internally:

• The top-performing rep becomes a pod lead

• The pod lead becomes the manager

• The manager already knows the process

This shortens ramp time for everyone.

4. Who Owns the Admin Work Instead

The 90% rule only works if managers have the space to actually coach.

That means:

RevOps or Sales Ops own

• CRM hygiene

• Forecast formatting

• Reporting

• Attribution cleanup

• Territory maintenance

The manager should only interpret the numbers — not build them.

Leadership owns

• Headcount planning

• Compensation modeling

• Cross-functional projects

The manager contributes context. They do not run the project.

Enablement owns

• Scripts

• Playbooks

• Training decks

• Product updates

• Certification rubrics

Managers use these materials, not build them from scratch every time.

Outcome: managers stay in the trenches

When the admin work is removed, managers finally have the calendar space to:

• Listen to dozens of calls

• Run daily coaching blocks

• Support reps during live dials

• Observe patterns in rep performance

• Fix process issues quickly

And this is what actually drives pipeline.

Section 4. Scale and Feed the Machine (With Data That Actually Supports Reps)

Once you’ve hired the right people, ramped them properly, and built a coaching culture, the final step is scale. Not grow headcount. Scale.

The difference is simple:

• Growing is adding people.

• Scaling is adding people without the system breaking.

1. Why Founder-Led Scrappiness Doesn’t Scale

Every vertical SaaS company starts the same way:

• The founders take the early calls

• Scripts evolve daily

• There’s no formal training

• The CRM is half-configured

• Your first reps “figure it out” because they have no choice

Early on, this works. The founders are in every pipeline conversation. Reps learn through osmosis. Everyone is close enough to improvise.

But the moment you add more reps — even just three or four — cracks can easily form.

The typical signs of unscalable scrappiness

• New hires make up their own pitch

• Managers are pulled into 10 different internal meetings

• Ramp times drift from 30 days to 60+ days

• Reps call the wrong accounts

• No one knows which verticals convert

• Coaching becomes reactive instead of proactive

At this stage, you need something different:

A repeatable hiring, onboarding, and coaching engine — not heroic effort.

2. Building a Repeatable Hiring + Onboarding Engine

The teams that scale well in vertical SaaS do three things differently.

1. Dedicated Screeners / Interviewers

Instead of:

• Managers doing 12 interviews a week

• Rushing through calls

• Burning hours that should be spent coaching

They create a small internal recruiting pod to run:

• Initial screens

• Resume filtering

• Homework setup

• Basic role-plays

Managers only step in for the final stage.

2. Standardized Hiring Loop

This comes straight from Section 1:

• Intangibles-first evaluation

• Multi-example questions

• Role play + homework

• Scorecard-based decision-making

A consistent loop removes bias and drastically improves hiring quality.

3. Standardized Onboarding

From Section 2:

• Same Day 1–14 structure

• Same ramp milestones

• Same progression from script → role play → live call

• Same certification criteria

If onboarding is ad hoc, scaling becomes impossible. If onboarding is structured, scaling becomes math.

4. A Coaching Cadence That Doesn’t Break

From Section 3:

• Daily call reviews

• Weekly 1:1s

• Live call support

• Manager calendars dominated by coaching

This is the backbone of a high-velocity team. It cannot disappear when you hire your 5th rep or your 25th.

3. Feeding High-Velocity SMB Teams With the Right Data

Even the best hiring and coaching system collapses if reps don’t have:

• Correct accounts to call

• Enough accounts to call

• The right contacts at those accounts

• Clear prioritization

This is where Orbital’s perspective becomes essential.

The basics of a scalable data foundation

A. Clear SMB ICP definition by vertical

Teams must define:

• The industries they target

• The sub-vertical nuances

• The firmographics that matter

Clarity fuels repeatability.

B. Always-on pipeline of fresh accounts + contacts

Cold calling works when:

• The data is fresh

• New accounts enter the funnel weekly

• Bad data is replaced quickly

High-volume reps burn through lists fast. Your data engine must move faster.

C. Territory/account assignments that match headcount

As you scale:

• Territories shrink

• Reps specialize

• Vertical segmentation becomes viable (and often preferred over segmenting by territory)

• Certain geo + vertical combinations become higher performers

If your data doesn’t adjust with headcount, you bottleneck reps.

The data truth

High-velocity reps can handle the workload. What breaks them is the absence of structured, high-quality data to work from.

The sales engine and the data engine are not separate. They feed each other.

4. Putting It All Together

The scalable SMB motion works like a flywheel:

Hire → Ramp → Coach → Scale → Data → Hire More.

Every part reinforces the next:

• The right hire ramps faster

• The right onboarding creates early wins

• The right coaching drives consistency

• The right data accelerates output

• The whole system enables you to hire again

This isn’t theory. It’s the common pattern we’ve seen across high-performing vertical SaaS teams using Orbital, Sellfire, and similar systems.