01
Role Definition
Is the role solving the right problem, and are stakeholders aligned on year-one success?
Do you know what your sales leadership vacancy is billing you?
In less than 60 seconds, get your number with the Vacancy Cost Calculator.
Why this diagnostic
A vacant seat has a price tag.A wrong hire costs more.The one you never see coming costs the most.
Clarity First. The Right Talent Follows.
What the diagnostic covers
Four Critical Levers.
One Honest Diagnostic.
Your hidden cost
Your leadership hiring process may be costing you top candidates, consuming leadership time, and increasing the risk of a wrong-fit hire in places you cannot see.The Empty Seat Diagnostic shows you where.
02
Outcome Scorecard
Are criteria clear, calibrated, and shared, or is every stakeholder picturing someone different?
03
Candidate Experience
What is your process actually communicating before you have made the hire?
04
Interview & Human Fit
Communication style, leadership chemistry, coachability, resilience, and the traits that predict success here.
See the eight questions before you startTwo per lever · roughly five minutes · see your Hiring Clarity Blueprint immediately
01Role Definition
When your decision-makers quietly picture different wins, you hire someone who succeeds at the wrong job, and everyone calls it a bad hire six months later.
What the blueprint fixes: Align every decision-maker on the business problem and a written definition of year-one success before the search advances.
What best describes your current hiring situation?
Choose the one that feels most true right now.
How aligned are your key stakeholders on what this hire needs to accomplish in year one?
1 = we have never had that conversation, 5 = fully locked in
02Outcome Scorecard
When interviewers are measuring different things, strong candidates get rejected and weak ones advance, and you won't catch it until it's on payroll.
What the blueprint fixes: Build one shared outcome scorecard and align every interviewer before the search advances.
How clearly defined is your hiring scorecard for this role?
Be honest. This is where many searches quietly fail.
Is your compensation range aligned to the caliber of talent you actually need?
The market answers this question even when internal stakeholders do not.
03Candidate Experience
Every silent week and inconsistent interview tells your best candidates you're not serious, so they take the other offer before you've decided.
What the blueprint fixes: Review every candidate touchpoint from first contact to offer. Fix the friction before the next strong candidate enters the process.
How would you rate your candidate experience right now?
Think about how the process feels to a high performer seeing it for the first time.
How quickly and consistently do candidates hear back after each stage of your process?
Silence is a decision. Top candidates interpret it as one.
04Interview & Human Fit
Hire for résumé over how someone leads under pressure, and you get a leader who looks right on paper and stalls the moment it gets hard.
What the blueprint fixes: Build a human alignment profile that defines the leadership style that succeeds under pressure and the evidence interviewers should seek.
How clearly can you articulate the human traits that predict success in this role beyond skills and experience?
1 = we have never gone there, 5 = we have a precise profile
When top candidates disengage late in your process, what do you typically assume?
Your answer reveals a lot about current blind spots.
5-minute diagnostic
You know the cost.
Now uncover what's driving it.
Answer 8 focused questions.The moment you finish, see your Full Diagnostic Results right here on this page.
In under five minutes, get an immediate read on where your sales leadership hiring process may be costing you top candidates, consuming leadership time, and increasing the risk of a wrong-fit hire in places you cannot see.
0/ 40
Your Empty Seat Diagnostic
Your diagnostic
Priority lever......
Visible cost of waiting
$0
Your calculated estimate while the seat remains open
Your complete readout
The Four Hiring Levers
The lowest score is the first place to focus. It is where risk is most concentrated today.
Your risk concentration
Where to Focus First
Your immediate action plan
What to Do First
How scoring works: each lever is scored 0 to 10, where 0 is highest risk and 10 is strongest. Scores are the average of the questions in that lever.
Your next step
Your results are already yours. To open the full Blueprint, we only ask for your first name and work email.
Get your number first.
Before you diagnose the hiring problem, know what the empty seat may be costing you. Three inputs give you the cost. Eight questions help uncover what may be driving it.
Your blueprint
Sales Leadership
Hiring Clarity Blueprint.
Every blind spot the diagnostic found has its fix in here. We've opened to the lever that's costing you most, so start there. Each module is a focused leadership conversation, not a course you must complete.
Module 01
Role Definition.
What problem are you actually solving?
Most job descriptions describe the last person who held the role, not the problem the next person needs to solve. This module forces the clarity most searches skip.
The Business Reality Check
Define what is breaking or at risk because this seat is empty or wrong, and what the business needs to be true in 12 months.
The Failure Autopsy
Understand what happened with the last leader, or which capability gap created the need for a new role.
The Stakeholder Alignment Test
Ask every key stakeholder separately what year-one success looks like, then resolve material differences.
The Internal Environment Scan
Identify the behaviors actually rewarded internally and the leadership styles that struggle in this culture.
Do not start with the leader. Start with the problem.
Ask yourself the following four questions...
What happens to the business if this role stays open another six months?
What kind of leader has failed here, and what specifically went wrong?
What does year-one success look like in measurable terms, not adjectives?
Where are you willing to flex on requirements, and where are you not?
Module 02
Outcome Scorecard.
Rate what actually matters.
Rate each outcome from 1, low importance, to 5, non-negotiable. Meaning comes from the distribution, not the total alone: your 5s become interview anchors, while low-rated outcomes should not distract the hiring team.
Rating total, not a pass/fail score: 0 / 35
Complete the scorecard to reveal your priorities.
For the strongest insight, ask each stakeholder to complete this independently, then compare where ratings differ by two or more points.
Module 03
Candidate Experience Audit.
What is your process telling them?
The best sales leaders decide whether they trust your company long before the offer stage. Answer honestly for your current process, not the process you intend to have.
6 to go.
Answer for the process you run today, not the one you intend to build.
Module 04
Interview & Human Fit.
Turn clarity into a consistent decision.
The diagnostic identifies risk. This module prevents that risk from returning during interviews by assigning evidence, ownership, and decision rules before candidates enter the process.
Assign Evidence Owners
Give each interviewer specific outcomes and capabilities to validate instead of asking everyone to judge everything.
Define Proof Before Interviews
Agree on what strong, weak, and disqualifying evidence looks like for every non-negotiable criterion.
Protect Independent Judgment
Require written ratings before the debrief so the loudest stakeholder does not reshape everyone else's view.
Set the Decision Rule
Decide which gaps are coachable, which require more evidence, and which automatically stop the process.
Evidence beats impressions.
Ask yourselves the following five questions...
Who owns validation of each year-one outcome?
What evidence would cause us to change our mind about a candidate?
Which criteria require unanimous agreement?
How will we capture candidate feedback and process friction?
Which human traits predict success here under pressure, and what evidence proves them?
Ready to stop paying the bill you can't see?
Book a Confidential Conversation15 minutes. One leadership problem. Clear next steps.What Leaders Say
Voices from the
leaders we have served.
Michael asked tough questions that I've never been asked before, he heard what we wanted and delivered what we really needed. I'm beyond happy and highly recommend him and Synchrony.
Wish we found Synchrony Talent sooner. Would have saved me from more than a few bad hires and quite a lot of lost opportunities. My recommendation: don't hesitate calling Synchrony. Our ROI has far outweighed the investment.
Recently, we engaged Synchrony because we were hiring for the same CRO role for the 3rd time and needed to get it right. Mike and Synchrony came through like champs and they saved my a$$. Our new CRO is an absolute killer leader who's accomplished more in the last 6 months than the other two did in two years, combined. I'm a very satisfied client. Problem Solved.
Synchrony gave us a special process for a special hire. We had never worked with a recruiter before, but we knew this role required someone who could help us find the right person, not just another candidate. Michael listened deeply to what mattered to us, even the delicate cultural and faith-based pieces that are part of who we are. He made it approachable, honest, and necessary.
This is my second time hiring a sales leader with Synchrony and they did a good job finding our first full-time sales leader a few years ago. The good news is we've grown and the bad news is we've outgrown our current sales leader. So, I called Michael and he found me a superstar leader that has the expertise and the previously missing strategy piece to help us scale the company.
For this leader hire, we needed a values-aligned sales leader with the proof, ownership mindset, and credibility to help our company scale. Synchrony delivered that person through a process that was very thorough, targeted, easy, honest, and different from anything we have experienced before. I highly recommend them.
We never hired a sales leader before but found ourselves growing out of our own ability to do it by ourselves. With a growing sales team we knew we needed to hire somebody who actually had industry experience and expertise building. Michael North was recommended to us and we're so happy he found us our new leader.
We contacted Michael and his team on a recommendation to help us get clear on what we needed in a proper VP of Sales. It was extensive but a seamless process and the team at Synchrony made it easy to know what a great fit looks like for us at our stage of growth.
Michael asked tough questions that I've never been asked before, he heard what we wanted and delivered what we really needed. I'm beyond happy and highly recommend him and Synchrony.
Wish we found Synchrony Talent sooner. Would have saved me from more than a few bad hires and quite a lot of lost opportunities. My recommendation: don't hesitate calling Synchrony. Our ROI has far outweighed the investment.