You Can Teach Selling, Not Attitude: James Irving, Founder, Emotive JLI

On this episode of Cyber GTM Talk, the cybersecurity podcast for go-to-market leaders, first-time cyber sales leader James Irving explains why he built his team at ThreatSpike from graduates instead of experienced sellers. With a target to double ARR from £5 million to £10 million, he hired for motivation, honesty and a genuine interest in business, then taught the market and the sale himself. He also tells the story of the month he thought he was done, and what turned it around.
In this episode
Why a BMW mechanic convinced James that credibility matters more than sales experience in a cyber sale
The interview approach salespeople can't fake, and why deal stories can be faked
How he tested graduates for interest in the business, down to the board's past investments
Teaching cyber through physical security, so new reps can attempt the technical question they can't answer
His first hire: not great for three or four months, then out-earning his own first year in sales
The month the team sold about a tenth of a normal month, and what told him to hold his nerve
Running cyber startup sales on a Google Sheet, and the one column that decided which deals got deleted
Why two years of SDR experience is massively overrated
About the guest
James Irving spent 12 years in cybersecurity sales, starting as an SDR at NCC Group and moving on to Secureworks, before joining ThreatSpike as its first commercial hire and head of sales. He now runs Emotive JLI, a sales consultancy that helps technical founders build a repeatable sales engine.
Learn more about James's sales training for cybersecurity: https://emotivejli.com/sales-training-for-cybersecurity
Notable quotes
"You can teach people the skills and the fundamentals. You can't teach people attitude."
"Salespeople know how to fake things. They know how to talk through a deal that never existed or someone else's deal that they're pretending is their own."
"There's the pipeline generation, which they will be willing to do, but there's also the closing, which we can teach them."
Chapters
00:00 Intro
02:01 Spin the wheel
02:41 Why hire graduates instead of experience
08:39 What he saw in his first hire
11:27 The hiring criteria
16:41 Interviews that can't be faked
19:49 Testing interest in the business
22:58 Why culture matters more now
28:23 Joining for the mission
30:22 Teaching the market and the sale
34:37 The month he thought he was done
38:27 Leading a remote team of new reps
42:49 Running pipeline on a Google Sheet
49:48 Overrated or underrated
Cyber GTM Talk helps go-to-market leaders at security companies grow sales, from start up sales to scale.
Support the show
The Cyber Go-To-Market Talk is the show for cybersecurity sales leaders, founders, CROs, and go-to-market operators looking to improve cyber sales performance and build more predictable revenue growth. Hosted by Andrew Monaghan, founder of Unstoppable.do, covering cyber sales leadership, revenue leadership, sales onboarding, forecasting, pipeline generation, and cybersecurity go-to-market execution.
Follow me on LinkedIn for regular posts about growing your cybersecurity startup
Want to grow your revenue faster? Check out my cybersecurity sales consulting and training
Need ideas about how to grow your pipeline? Sign up for my newsletter.