Last Thursday evening, I had the privilege of hosting a panel on building and shaping a high performing sales culture, at the Airwallex office here in Sydney. I sat down with three leaders who are scaling sales teams across very different stages and markets: Konner Fritz, Senior Sales Manager at Vanta, Lisa Tsai, Head of SME & Growth at Airwallex, and Serena Lam, CEO and Founder of Fuzzy AI.
We covered a lot of ground: what happens when headcount growth outpaces the funnel maths, how to hire for grit instead of talk, why the jump from top rep to first-time manager is the hardest in sales, and how AI should actually be trained rather than just switched on. Here’s what stood out.
Key takeaways
- High performance isn’t about pressure alone. It’s high demand paired with high support, high belief and buy-in.
- Growth targets set without funnel maths behind them create attrition, not revenue. Quotas need to reflect what marketing, SDRs and outbound can realistically deliver.
- The best predictor of a strong hire isn’t their previous logo. It’s whether they own outcomes, work as one team and hold a positive mindset under pressure.
- Every hire should raise the bar, not just fill a seat. A “great, but not a slam dunk” candidate is still a no.
- Self-awareness is a stronger hiring signal than confidence. Candidates who can’t name a genuine development area are a flag, not a strength.
- Promoting your best rep into management is the hardest jump in sales, and it needs a structured six-to-nine month runway, not a title change on promotion day.
- AI is only as useful as the training you put into it. Treat it like a smart intern: clear instructions in, and continually retrained as client context changes.
- It can now take up to 40 touchpoints across multiple channels before a prospect books a meeting, and what works varies significantly by market.
- Sales approaches that work in the US often fail in Australia and New Zealand without real localization, not just translation.
When growth targets outrun the funnel maths
Konner Fritz described a headcount decision at Vanta that tripled the regional sales team in a single planning cycle, from three account executives to thirteen, without matching it against what marketing and outbound could actually deliver. The result: no AE in the region hit quota that year, and roughly half the team left after the following company kickoff.
The recovery came from a deliberate framework, not a quota change. Konner’s team ran what they call “10x Thursdays”: a full day each week dedicated to outbound calling, done together on the floor rather than remotely. Within six months, the region became the top outbound-performing team globally, and leadership dropped the quota by 37 percent off the back of demonstrated effort rather than complaints.
The takeaway for sales leaders: if you’re pushing back on a target, come with the funnel math, not just the objection. And if the target isn’t going to move, build the case for change through visible behavior first.
Hiring for grit, not for talk
A recurring theme across all three panelists was that talent pipelines are easy to fill with confident, well-spoken candidates, and much harder to fill with people who actually follow through and underpin a high performing sales culture.
Konner’s framework for assessing this: ask what a rep is doing when they’re not on a call with a customer. Are they responding to a client question within the hour, or does it take two days? Are they proactively seeking coaching when they’re behind on quota, or waiting until it’s too late to recover? The behavior, not the self-description, is the signal.
Lisa Tsai runs a similar test through what she calls a “raise the bar” hiring philosophy: every single hire, regardless of how strong the interview process gets, needs to lift the standard of the team in some way, whether that’s sales technique, industry experience or culture. A candidate who is “great, but not a slam dunk” doesn’t get an offer.
She also flagged a specific interview signal worth borrowing: ask candidates for a genuine development area, not just their strengths. Candidates who can’t name one, or who deflect the question, often lack the self-awareness that later shows up as an inability to take feedback.
The hardest jump in a high performing sales culture: IC to manager
Lisa was direct about this being the toughest transition in a sales career, and one that many organizations get wrong by promoting on performance alone. Her team tests motivation first: does the candidate genuinely want to see other people succeed, and are they prepared for a possible pay cut relative to a high-performing individual contributor role?
Only once that motivation is confirmed does the six-to-nine month development process begin, built around regular coaching conversations that expose future managers to the skills they’ll need before the promotion happens. The goal, as Lisa put it, is that by promotion day the person has already done 60 percent of the job.
Training AI like you’d train a new hire
Serena Lam offered a practical frame for sales leaders navigating AI adoption: treat AI like a very smart intern. Give it clear, specific instructions and it will perform well. Give it vague or incomplete instructions and it will make mistakes, the same way a new hire would.
Her example: an AI assistant configured to chase unconfirmed meetings sent a follow-up to a colleague who had actually sent the original invite, rather than received it, because the training hadn’t accounted for who initiated the meeting. The fix wasn’t to abandon the automation, it was to retrain the logic.
The broader point applies to any team building feedback loops from call recordings, CRM notes and client interactions: the value comes from continually retraining the system as client pain points evolve, and from distributing what’s learned across the whole team rather than leaving it siloed with one rep.
Forty touchpoints, and why one playbook doesn’t travel
Serena also pointed to a shift worth planning around: it can now take up to 40 touchpoints across multiple channels, not just outbound calls or emails, before a prospect books a meeting. That includes LinkedIn engagement, profile views and comments alongside direct outreach.
Just as importantly, what counts as an appropriate number and style of touchpoints varies by market. A cadence that works for a US buyer can come across as overbearing in Australia or New Zealand, and a playbook built for one region rarely transfers without real localization of tone, pacing and channel mix.
Final thought
Thanks again to Konner, Lisa and Serena for such an open conversation, and to everyone who came along and asked such sharp questions on the night. If any of this resonates with what you’re building in your own high performing sales culture, I’d love to hear from you, and don’t hesitate to reach out to any of our panelists directly on LinkedIn.
Next steps
- Subscribe to the B2B Sales Blueprint for conversations with operators who have done the work.
- See how Firmable powers the data layer behind high-performance outbound teams, with a free trial
FAQs on building a high performing sales culture
It means combining high expectations with high support: setting demanding targets while also giving reps the coaching, belief and resources they need to hit them. As Konner Fritz recounted form experience, pressure without support tends to produce attrition rather than results.
Quotas should be built from funnel math: how many leads marketing can realistically deliver, what SDRs can generate from outbound, and what conversion rates the team can sustain. Headcount growth alone doesn’t create revenue if the funnel behind it hasn’t scaled.
Confirm the person’s motivation first: do they genuinely want to develop other people’s success, and are they prepared for the trade-offs of moving out of an individual contributor role. Then build a structured, multi-month development plan before the promotion happens, rather than promoting on performance alone.
Industry practice now points to as many as 40 touchpoints across multiple channels, including social engagement, before a prospect commits, though this varies by market and industry.
No. Cadence, tone and channel mix that work in the US often feel overbearing to Australian and New Zealand buyers, and playbooks need to be localized rather than copied across markets.
Treat AI the way you’d train a new hire: give it specific, unambiguous instructions, monitor its output for errors, and continually retrain it as client context and pain points change. Feedback loops should also be shared across the team, not kept with one individual.
