Without commenting on the possibility that 10x engineers exist, I can tell you from experience in sales that 10x salespeople are extraordinarily easy to identify, but nearly impossible to hire.

The problem is that the market for salespeople is very efficient. So your 10x salesperson is nearly always already earning an outstanding amount of money working for an excellent company. They are already selling a product with a demonstrable value-add, and they are employed by a company with a good reputation.

Why would they want to come and work for a start-up that stumbled and then at some future date tried to turn itself around?

> 10x salespeople are extraordinarily easy to identify, but nearly impossible to hire

Doesn't that just mean you need to offer a higher percent commission, more equity, or whatever it takes to sweeten the deal?

Well, now you're into a different problem: If the market is efficient, what makes you think you can afford to pay them that much?

Your equity isn't magically worth more than the equity of the company that already employs them. And if you give them a tremendous chunk of every sale they make, your COS is through the roof and you aren't making any money.

You might go raise a ton of cash and spend it buying great salespeople so you can buy some MRR and ARR, but everyone else is playing the exact same game, so you don't automatically raise more money than anyone else to spend on better salespeople.

In the end, what I am saying is that there is an efficiency in that market for salespeople such that anything you might think of doing to bring them on board, their existing employer has already done. And possibly better than you ever could.

Presumably, you're targeting an opportunity that is very lucrative with a product that is very compelling, such that a sales person can generate more value per unit effort than at their current position.

Or perhaps the issue is that, in sales, there isn't the same multiplier phenomenon you see in engineering from massive scale/market opportunity. And this nonlinear effort-to-output relationship is what enables the market inefficiencies (sometimes in favor of companies, and sometimes in favor of engineering employees).

Presumably, so is anyone else who can afford to hire a 10x salesperson.

i've known enterprise sales guys making $1m+ per year, cash comp.

a YP seed would get you 30 work days...

Perhaps offer them more than the outdated model of a fraction of a percent of equity.

And of course be a company with a convincing path to success, which is as a rare an entity as those 10x salespeople.

A 10x salesperson will make ten times as many sales, but I doubt they will close sales that no amount of normal sales people can close.

They will close specific sales, and at a higher price, than other salespeople.

If you are limited by number of solid leads, putting great salespeople on the leads will get a greater amount of value than putting a larger number of weaker salespeople on it.

Great salespeople aren't just taking orders. They are finding and closing opportunities which others would miss, and making those opportunities far more valuable. You can have 10x the value on a single sale in enterprise by having the right team on the deal.