Building High Performing Teams by Tom Lavery

Building High-Performance Teams with Tom Lavery, CEO of Jiminny

Tom Lavery, President and founder of Jiminny, discusses the intricacies of building and leading high-performing sales teams. Drawing from his extensive experience in the SaaS B2B sector, Tom shares candid insights on team dynamics, hiring strategies, leadership, and the evolving landscape of sales technology.

The Essence of a High-Performing Team

When asked about the key attributes of a high-performing team, Tom emphasizes the importance of unity and collaboration:

"First of all, that they are actually a team. People don't close deals as an island; you have to pull together as a go-to-market function to be as successful as possible."

He underscores that success isn't solely about individual talent but about how well the team functions collectively. This includes the synergy between sales, marketing, customer success, and enablement teams.

Moreover, Tom highlights the significance of dedication and going the extra mile:

"70-80% of your team have to be making those extra dials, staying late to do that meeting in a different time zone, being prepared to get that proposal over on a Friday night."

Hiring: Beyond Skills to Stage Appropriateness

In the hiring process, Tom looks beyond just skills, focusing on three critical fits:

Skill Fit: Does the candidate have the necessary abilities?

Team Fit: Will they integrate well with the existing team?

Culture Fit: Do they align with the company's values and culture?

However, he introduces a fourth, often overlooked aspect: stage appropriateness.

"Are they stage appropriate? For example, if you don't have sales enablement yet, they're going to have to be scrappier... making sure that they are right for your stage of business is imperative."

Many GTM Leaders have urgent hiring needs, but Tom warns against compromising on these fits for speed of filling the role.

"One thing I've learned over the years is it doesn't matter how desperate you are, if you mess it up, you write off a year."

The Myth of the Universal A-Player

Addressing the concept of A-players, Tom challenges the notion of a one-size-fits-all top performer:

"Someone can go be an A-player somewhere and go somewhere else and be a B or C player. And that's okay because every business is different."

He likens it to football, where a player's performance can vary based on the team and system they're in:

"You might see one player fail somewhere... they turn up at another club and they’re world class. Why? Because they’ve got the right manager and are playing in the right system."

Leading by Example: Inspiring High Performance

At Jiminny, leadership is about setting the tone and leading by example. Tom believes in being hands-on and not asking the team to do anything he wouldn't do himself:

"You just shouldn’t expect your team to do anything that you wouldn't. You can never do it at the same scale, but will you book an outbound meeting? Join a sales call out of hours? Yes."

This approach fosters a culture of mutual respect and shared commitment.

Navigating Distractions: Maintaining Focus

In today's digital age, distractions are rampant. Tom emphasises the importance of discipline and focus:

"The world is a distracting place... Slack, LinkedIn, Instagram—it's just noisy. Each day that goes by that you don't do what you should, then becomes a week, and then you've missed your quarter."

He advocates for structured work habits, such as starting the day with deep focus tasks before checking notifications.

Turning Around Underperforming Reps

When it comes to underperforming team members, Tom believes in support but also recognises the individual's role in their improvement:

"You can guide and you can support, but they've got to want to do it too. At the end of the day, I think most people get fired because they subconsciously really want to.”

He stresses the importance of self-awareness and the willingness to change as key factors in turning performance around.

Embracing Self-Awareness: Turning Weaknesses into Strengths

Tom discusses the importance of self-awareness and how you can turn your weakness into a strength:

"Self-awareness is really important because you'll be flexing your strength in a meeting but realizing that also at the same time that could be harmful to someone else's way of working."

“A simplistic example would be someone who’s naturally dominant or very direct—they like to take control of the room. That can be a great quality; it shows leadership, confidence, and presence, like an actor stepping into a role. But at the same time, being a great leader also means listening and creating space for others to contribute. So the question becomes: how do you strike that balance between stepping up, motivating the team, and also making sure everyone feels like they’ve had a voice in the decision-making process?”

The Future of Jiminny: Harnessing AI for Better Insights

Looking ahead, Tom is excited about the potential of AI in transforming sales technology:

"With generative AI, it can be more subjective... you're really able to understand context from the conversations, from messages, from Slack."

“I wouldn't say it's scary—more that it's a really interesting time in go-to-market. Things are changing fast, and honestly, it doesn't matter what part of the tech stack you're in—everything is evolving. From our perspective, the entire landscape will look very different in two, three, five years.

Your business naturally evolves with that. I say this all the time: when we first started, it was all about recording. Then it shifted to coaching, then transcription, and then it became about insights layered on top of that transcription. Now, with the rise of AI agents, the question is: what are we actually doing with all this data?

There are so many possibilities—but the most exciting shift, in my opinion, is that this isn’t just a Gemini problem, it’s a SaaS problem. Historically, technology hasn’t given people the kind of outcomes they need to make truly informed decisions. It's all been averages and binaries—very black and white.

Sales teams have typically run on things like average conversion rates or average deal sizes because that's what the data allowed for. But with generative AI, we can move beyond that. We can start to understand the actual context—conversations, messages, Slack threads—and that's a game-changer. The ability to harness that qualitative data in a meaningful way, to help teams and executives make smarter decisions, is what’s really exciting.”

To learn more about Jiminny and the work they are doing, click the link .