20Sales: The Best Sales People Are F***** in the Head | The Unspoken Truths All Sales Leaders Need to Know in 2026 | Why Europe is a Nightmare for Recruiting | How to Improve Sales Team Performance in 24 Hours with Chad Peets

Chad explains his philosophy on recruiting obsessed sales talent who think about work at 3am. He discusses why Europe is particularly challenging for recruitment due to cultural differences around work-life balance, and reveals his preference for hiring immigrants and very young people (23-24) who haven't been told not to pursue sales.

• •Look for candidates who are 'obsessed' - those who wake up thinking about work, not those who work to fund other passions
• •Europe is harder for recruiting due to cultural expectations (3-week vacations, different work norms)
• •Best hires: immigrants, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and very young people (23-24) who are hungry
• •Ask 'what's your passion?' as a setup question - if they say painting or hobbies, they work to fund passions rather than being obsessed with craft
• •Screen for grit by asking about life challenges they've overcome - upper middle class backgrounds without hardship are red flags

Chad provides a detailed framework for evaluating sales talent, focusing on demonstrated ability to close new logos rather than upsells. He explains why domain expertise is overrated and how to stress test candidates' track records through specific questions about quota attainment, deal sizes, and competitive rankings.

• •Must demonstrate track record of closing NEW logos, not just upselling existing customers - this is non-negotiable for startups
• •Ask specific questions: exact quota, actual attainment, number of deals, biggest deal details - passionate reps know every detail
• •Where do you rank among peers? Great reps obsessively track their ranking and are driven insane if not #1
• •Can teach deal size progression ($200K to $2M) but cannot teach pipeline generation and new logo closing ability
• •Domain expertise is overrated - hiring from competitors often means hiring their C-players who happen to know the space
• •Prioritize talent and intangibles over domain knowledge - can teach technology, cannot teach integrity or grit

Chad reveals that 48 out of 50 CEOs he talks to have hired the wrong CRO. He explains the common mistake of hiring for tomorrow's company size rather than today's needs, and why he often tells CEOs they need to fire their current sales leadership before he'll work with them.

• •Most common mistake: hiring someone who managed a $500M business when you need someone who built 0 to $500M
• •Founders hire for scale and big company resumes (20 years at Salesforce) rather than startup building experience
• •Chad's approach: looks up the CRO on LinkedIn before first call, often tells CEO 'if we partner, you're firing your CRO'
• •Also reviews entire sales team on LinkedIn - typically recommends firing half the reps
• •Most CEOs aren't prepared for this level of change and the partnership ends immediately
• •Focus on quality of sales organizations candidates worked for, not just company brand names or tenure

Chad takes a hard stance against remote work for inside sales teams while explaining why field sales must be distributed. He shares how he immediately identified distributed inside sales as a major inefficiency at Snowflake and the importance of managers being physically present with their teams.

• •Inside sales MUST be in office 5 days a week with their manager - no exceptions
• •One-on-ones and ad-hoc conversations are different - structured weekly 1-on-1s are mandatory
• •Field sales should be distributed and live where their accounts are located - must be in front of customers
• •In Europe: Germans want to buy from Germans, French from French - need local presence
• •First thing identified at Snowflake: inside sales managers distributed across Denver, Chicago, Seattle was killing performance
• •Cadence with direct reports is a new hiring red flag - if leaders haven't established weekly 1-on-1s immediately, it's a concern

Chad explains his framework for measuring sales performance beyond just quota attainment, including why 25% annual attrition is healthy for scaling companies and why you should fire the bottom 10% every year. He addresses the 'culture of fear' criticism and why A-players demand accountability.

• •Don't measure only quota - track new customer meetings, conversion ratios, travel, steps in sales process
• •Target 25% total attrition for scaling companies: 10% fired for performance, promotions, and voluntary quits
• •If involuntary attrition is only 2%, you're not holding people accountable - should fire bottom 10% annually
• •Plan for attrition with over-hiring - bake in 6% quarterly turnover when building hiring plans
• •A-players quit when surrounded by B-players who aren't held accountable - lack of accountability drives away top talent
• •Fire fast when you make hiring mistakes - pretending you didn't fuck up makes problems fester and get bigger

Chad provides a masterclass on setting quotas and designing comp plans, explaining the difference between productivity metrics and compensation, the 3x OTE rule, and how to use comp plan tweaks to drive specific behaviors like new logo acquisition versus expansion.

• •Productivity (output per rep) is different from quota (compensation/cashflow measure) - don't confuse them
• •Minimum productivity: 3x OTE in new ACV - if paying $350K OTE, need $1M+ in new ACV or unit economics don't work
• •Always err on setting quotas too low rather than too high - can adjust up, but setting too high causes A-player exodus
• •Use comp plan tweaks to drive behavior: pay 17% on expansion vs 12% on new logo to shift focus
• •Set gates for accelerators: must close 8 new logos before accessing over-quota accelerators
• •Take expected productivity, add 20% to set quota - don't expect everyone to hit quota

Chad discusses why sales leaders need to be respected rather than liked, the necessity of conflict for winning, and his approach to public criticism. He shares his Snowflake 'country club days are over' speech and why avoiding conflict to stay popular is the biggest leadership shortcoming.

• •If your CRO is beloved by everyone, you have the wrong person - need respect, not popularity
• •Cannot win without conflict - leaders who avoid conflict to be liked avoid making right decisions
• •Snowflake speech to thousands: 'Country club days are over, we'll find you if you're cruising' - got 5 HR complaints and massive performance boost
• •Public criticism can be effective for teaching moments but need to improve delivery to avoid humiliation
• •In-person pipe reviews allow team to learn from one rep's mistakes (multithreading, channel selection)
• •Biggest leadership shortcoming: cannot stand not being popular with people beneath them

Chad reveals why xAI's enterprise numbers will shock people in 2026, explains the company's unique culture of mission-focused employees, and discusses why hardware expertise at scale gives xAI an unbeatable advantage in compute. He also addresses why xAI isn't yet in the enterprise conversation like Anthropic.

• •xAI enterprise APIs only 6 months old vs Anthropic's longer presence - just getting started
• •2026 enterprise numbers will 'floor people' and 'shock' the market
• •Every person at xAI is mission-focused and prepared to sacrifice - most unique experience Chad has seen
• •Hardest working environment of Chad's career, but it's a choice driven by loving the mission
• •Hardware at scale is the key differentiator - only Elon has done this successfully (cars, robots) in recent decades
• •Internal feeling: not 'if we win' but 'when and how big' - compute advantage is insurmountable
• •Brought in Graham from MongoDB (best training/development at scale) to run enterprise sales

Chad predicts SDRs/BDRs will be gone in 5 years, discusses the changing role of sales engineers versus forward-deployed engineers, and questions whether AI will eliminate the SaaS industry. He pushes back on engineers predicting the death of enterprise sales.

• •SDRs and BDRs will be 100% gone in 5 years - most obvious function for AI replacement
• •Presales engineer role changing dramatically - reps can now do their own demos using LLMs for technical enablement
• •Forward-deployed engineers becoming critical for post-sales, proving outcomes before purchase
• •Enterprise sales won't die despite 25 years of predictions - CIOs making million-dollar decisions want human relationships
• •SaaS multiples compressing in public markets as people question if AI will eat the industry
• •AI companies closing very large deals ($5-20M) very early - unprecedented and requiring rethinking of talent requirements
• •Engineers who've never done enterprise sales predicting its death - 'the fuck do you know about enterprise sales?'