Eventually, people need to know who is who. As companies grow, everybody won’t know everybody else. - Ben Horowitz

To sell, you had have 1) the competence — expert knowledge of the product you were selling and the process to demonstrate it (qualifying the buyer by validating their need and budget; helping define what their buying criteria are while setting traps for the competition; getting sign-off from the technical and the economic buyer at the customer, and so forth) so that you could have 2) the confidence to state your point of view, which would give you 3) the courage to have 4) the conviction not to be sold by the customer on why she wasn’t going to buy your product. Cranney was obsessed with training every salesperson, testing them, and holding them accountable on the four C’s.

A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.

Does she know how to hire salespeople? What is her profile? Ask her to describe a recent bad hire. How does she find top talent? What percentage of her time is spent recruiting?