The Market Changed. Your Definition of a Top Performer Should Too.

Written by: Adam Vortherms

A salesperson tells you they manage a $25 million territory.

Another candidate tells you they grew sales 12% last year.

A sales leader says their region generated record revenue.

Those numbers sound impressive.

But they do not tell you nearly enough.

Building Materials companies have operated through very different market conditions over the past several years. We have seen periods of extraordinary demand, product shortages, significant price increases, housing growth, housing slowdowns, higher interest rates, declining starts, margin pressure, acquisitions, consolidation, and major differences between geographic markets.

Yet many companies still evaluate candidates the same way they did when the market was growing.

How much revenue did you manage?

How much did you grow?

How big was your team?

How large was your territory?

Those are still important questions.

They just cannot be the only questions.

The better question is becoming:

Did this person outperform the opportunity they were given?

That is a much more useful way to evaluate salespeople and leaders in the current market.

Revenue Does Not Tell the Whole Story

Consider two sales candidates.

Candidate A managed a $20 million territory and grew revenue 2%.

Candidate B managed a $20 million territory and grew revenue 10%.

At first glance, Candidate B probably looks stronger.

Now add some context.

Candidate A operated in a market where overall demand declined 8%.

Candidate B operated in a market that grew 15%.

Suddenly, the evaluation changes.

Candidate A may have taken significant market share while Candidate B may have actually lost share.

That is why market context matters so much.

Builders FirstSource recently reported single family sales down 8.1%, multifamily sales down 9.7%, and windows, doors and millwork down 9.1%.

Those numbers do not mean every residential Building Materials company experienced exactly the same decline.

But they demonstrate the environment many sales professionals are operating in.

If a salesperson working in one of those categories kept their territory flat, that might not represent mediocre performance.

It might represent exceptional performance.

The job of the interviewer is to figure out which one it is.

This is especially important in Building Materials because market performance can vary significantly by product category, geography, customer type, and end market.

A salesperson covering production builders in one market may be operating in a very different environment from someone selling to remodeling contractors, commercial accounts, dealers, or distributors.

The same title does not mean the same opportunity.

And the same revenue number does not mean the same performance.

Did They Create the Success or Inherit It?

One of the biggest challenges when evaluating experienced candidates is separating what they personally created from what they inherited.

Imagine two Territory Managers.

The first inherits $15 million in annual revenue, several large builder accounts, strong distributor relationships, and a territory that has been growing for years.

The second inherits $8 million, several declining accounts, limited market coverage, and very little new business activity.

Three years later, the first salesperson manages $18 million.

The second manages $14 million.

Who performed better?

You cannot answer that question from the final revenue number alone.

You need to understand the starting point.

Ask:

What did the territory look like when you inherited it?

Which accounts already existed?

How much revenue came from established customers?

Which customers did you personally bring into the business?

Did you inherit a strong pipeline?

Was the territory already growing before you arrived?

Did your company acquire another business during that period?

Did your product category experience significant price increases?

Did a competitor leave the market?

Did your company add a major national account?

What changed because you were there?

That final question is one of the most important.

What changed because you were there?

It forces candidates to separate their individual contribution from everything happening around them.

That same question works for leadership roles too.

A Regional Sales Manager may inherit a strong team, established territories, favorable market conditions, and several years of momentum.

Another leader may inherit open positions, weak accountability, poor forecasting, turnover, and declining revenue.

Their final numbers may look similar, but the work required to produce those outcomes may be completely different.

Growth Can Come From a Lot of Places

A candidate says:

“I grew the territory from $15 million to $18 million.”

That is 20% growth.

Sounds great.

But where did the growth come from?

Maybe the salesperson opened 40 new accounts.

Maybe they took two major customers from a competitor.

Maybe they expanded the company into a new channel.

Maybe they increased wallet share with existing customers.

Those would all be meaningful accomplishments.

But there are other possibilities.

Maybe product prices increased 15%.

Maybe the company acquired another distributor and rolled that revenue into the territory.

Maybe a major production builder increased starts dramatically.

Maybe the salesperson inherited several new national accounts.

Maybe a competitor had major supply problems and customers temporarily shifted purchases.

Maybe demand increased so quickly that the salesperson spent most of the year managing incoming business rather than creating it.

The revenue still counts.

But the candidate’s contribution looks very different.

Companies should be asking candidates to break growth into its components.

How much came from price?

How much came from volume?

How much came from new customers?

How much came from existing account penetration?

How much came from acquisitions?

How much came from market growth?

Then ask what the candidate personally influenced.

That is where you begin identifying transferable performance.

Because ultimately, you are not hiring the results they produced for someone else.

You are hiring the behaviors and capabilities that created those results.

Market Share May Matter More Than Growth

Companies naturally want growth.

But sometimes the strongest performance in a difficult market is simply declining less than everyone else.

Imagine the total market falls 12%.

Your salesperson’s territory falls 3%.

Technically, revenue declined.

But that salesperson may have gained significant market share.

Maybe they won several competitive accounts.

Maybe they expanded into adjacent products.

Maybe they protected key customers.

Maybe they developed a new dealer.

Maybe they increased wallet share with existing accounts.

Those actions matter.

Now look at the opposite situation.

The market grows 15%, but your salesperson grows 8%.

Revenue increased.

But the salesperson may have actually lost market share.

That is why hiring managers should stop looking at growth in isolation.

Ask:

What did your market do compared with what you did?

That one question can completely change how you evaluate a candidate.

This is particularly relevant right now because the Building Materials market is so uneven.

Single family construction may be weak while roofing remains relatively resilient.

Commercial construction may be strong in one region and soft in another.

Repair and remodeling may outperform new construction.

A dealer serving a growing secondary market may be seeing better conditions than a competitor located in a slower metro.

If the market is uneven, candidate evaluation needs to be more nuanced too.

Margin Needs to Be Part of the Conversation

Revenue is only one side of sales performance.

Profitability matters too.

Building Materials companies have dealt with significant changes in product costs, freight, wages, financing, incentives, and pricing over the past several years.

A salesperson can protect revenue by discounting aggressively.

That does not necessarily mean they created value.

Suppose one salesperson grows sales 10%, but gross margin declines significantly.

Another salesperson grows 3% while maintaining pricing and improving gross profit dollars.

Which one helped the business more?

Again, you need context.

Ask candidates:

What happened to your gross margin?

How did you respond when suppliers increased prices?

How much pricing authority did you have?

Did you lose business when prices increased?

How did you communicate increases to customers?

Did you shift customers toward higher margin products?

Did you improve product mix?

Could you grow without giving away margin?

These questions become especially important for sales leadership roles.

A Sales Director responsible for $100 million in revenue should understand much more than the top line.

They should understand what that revenue is worth.

The same applies to branch managers, GMs, and operational leaders.

Someone who grew the business while improving profitability, customer retention, service levels, and team performance is creating much more value than someone who only increased volume.

Leadership Performance Needs Context Too

The same principle applies when evaluating managers and executives.

A Regional Sales Manager tells you their team grew 20%.

Good result.

But ask what they inherited.

Were the salespeople already strong?

Were the territories established?

Was turnover low?

Was the region growing before they arrived?

Did they personally recruit the team?

Now compare that with another manager.

Their region grew only 5%.

But they inherited three open territories, two underperforming salespeople, poor accountability, and declining customer relationships.

During their first two years they recruited three strong reps, replaced an underperformer, rebuilt the forecasting process, improved retention, and returned the region to growth.

Which leader would you rather hire?

The second person may have created far more organizational capability even though their headline growth number was lower.

When hiring leaders, ask:

What did you inherit?

What was broken?

What did you change?

Who did you hire?

Who did you develop?

Who did you have to replace?

What systems or processes did you introduce?

What happened after you made those changes?

Did the team become better because you led it?

That tells you considerably more than team size or total revenue responsibility.

Candidates Should Tell Their Story Differently Too

Candidates also have a responsibility to provide context.

Saying:

“I manage a $30 million territory.”

is less compelling than saying:

“When I inherited the territory, it was producing $23 million. Over three years we grew to $30 million despite our overall market slowing. I added 18 new accounts, expanded three existing customers into additional product categories, and improved gross margin.”

Now the hiring manager understands the performance.

Candidates should be prepared to explain:

Where the business started.

What the market was doing.

What they inherited.

What they personally created.

What obstacles they faced.

What happened to profitability.

What would have happened if they had not been there.

The more senior the candidate, the more important that context becomes.

For executives, the story should include team building, strategy, accountability, process improvement, succession planning, retention, and how the organization performed after they made changes.

Better Questions Produce Better Hires

If you are hiring a salesperson or sales leader in Building Materials today, consider adding questions like these to your interview process:

What was the territory producing when you inherited it?

What happened in your overall market during that same period?

How much of your business was inherited versus developed by you?

How many new accounts did you personally add?

What percentage of your growth came from price versus volume?

What happened to gross margin?

Which competitors did you take business from?

What major accounts did you lose?

Did acquisitions contribute to your revenue growth?

How did your performance compare with the rest of the company?

What would the territory have done if you were not there?

And perhaps the most important question:

What did you personally do that caused the business to perform differently than the market around you?

The answer tells you whether someone simply participated in success or helped create it.

The Definition of a Top Performer Is Changing

The Building Materials market is becoming increasingly uneven.

One geography can be growing while another declines.

Single family construction can struggle while commercial construction remains strong.

A manufacturer can experience softer demand while a competitor gains share.

Roofing can behave differently than cabinets.

Repair and remodeling can behave differently than new construction.

Large builders can have different conditions than smaller regional builders.

That makes context more important than ever.

The best candidate is not always the person with the biggest territory.

It is not always the person with the highest growth percentage.

It is not always the leader responsible for the largest team.

Sometimes the best candidate is the person who inherited the hardest situation and changed the outcome.

When interviewing your next salesperson or leader, do not simply ask how big their numbers were.

Understand what was happening around those numbers.

Understand what they inherited.

Understand what they created.

Understand what happened to market share and profitability.

And understand whether their success would translate to your business.

Do not hire the number. Hire the performance behind it.

At BRIX Recruiting Partners, we specialize in recruiting experienced professionals throughout the Building Materials industry, including manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and other construction related organizations.

Our recruiters speak with industry professionals every day and help clients look beyond titles and headline revenue numbers to understand the experience, performance, and capabilities behind them.

Because finding someone with the right title is one thing.

Understanding whether they are actually good, whether their experience translates, and whether they can create the same kind of impact inside your organization is the part that matters.