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title: Motion-fit factors description: The criteria a sales or GTM scorecard draws from, each with the question to ask, what a strong answer sounds like, and the red flag.

Motion-fit factors

Pick six to eight. The first six describe how the candidate sold. The rest describe how they work. Most scorecards that fail have too many of the second kind and too few of the first.

How they sold

1. Deal size

• Ask: "Walk me through your three biggest deals last year. Size, how long, who signed."
• Follow-up: "And a typical deal, not the biggest?"
• Strong: typical deal within roughly half to double the seat's average, with the detail to prove it.
• Red flag: only talks about the one big deal; vague on the typical one.

2. Sales cycle length

• Ask: "From first meeting to signature, how long did your deals take? What slowed the slow ones?"
• Strong: names the stages and the real blockers (security review, procurement, a budget cycle).
• Red flag: a 30-day transactional rep applying for a nine-month enterprise seat, or the reverse, without seeing the difference.

3. Buyer

• Ask: "Who was your economic buyer, and how many people were involved in a typical decision?"
• Strong: knows the titles, the committee, and how they got to the person who signs.
• Red flag: has only ever sold to a single user or a single champion.

4. Pipeline source

• Ask: "What share of your closed revenue came from pipeline you created yourself?"
• Follow-up: "Take me through one you sourced from nothing."
• Strong: a clear percentage and a specific outbound story with the first touch, the hook and the turn.
• Red flag: "marketing gave us great leads." Fine for an inbound seat, fatal for an outbound one.

5. Product complexity

• Ask: "What did a customer have to understand or change to buy your product?"
• Strong: explains the technical or process change, and how they handled the people who resisted it.
• Red flag: cannot explain the product's value without the brand doing the work.

6. New business or expansion

• Ask: "How much of your number came from new logos versus growing existing customers?"
• Strong: knows the split and why the motion differs.
• Red flag: a farmer applying to hunt, or a hunter applying to farm, without a plan for the switch.

How they work

7. Attainment evidence

• Ask: "Your attainment for each of the last three years, and where you ranked on the team."
• Strong: every year, with the rank, including the bad year and what they learned.
• Red flag: only the best year, or "always over target" with no numbers.

8. Selling environment

• Ask: "How much of the sales playbook existed when you joined? What did you build?"
• Strong: matches the seat. An early-stage seat needs someone who has built without a playbook. A scaling seat needs someone who can run one.
• Red flag: only ever worked inside a mature machine and is applying to be employee number three in sales.

9. Coachability

• Ask: "Tell me about feedback that changed how you sell."
• Strong: a specific change with a before and after.
• Red flag: feedback they disagreed with is the only example.

10. Forecast accuracy

• Ask: "How close was your commit to what you actually closed last quarter?"
• Strong: a number, and how they decide what goes in commit.
• Red flag: does not know, or blames the system.

11. Activity and discipline

• Ask: "What did a normal week of pipeline building look like for you?"
• Strong: real numbers and a rhythm they kept in slow quarters.
• Red flag: activity only when the pipeline was already empty.

Customer success and other GTM seats

Swap the selling factors for the motion of the seat: book size and number of accounts, renewal and expansion ownership, onboarding complexity, how churn risk was spotted early, and the commercial conversations they led. The principle is the same: score what they did, measured against what this seat will ask of them.