Suppose that your company is a rising star in one of Asia’s most energetic industries, and you need to scale sales across several countries at once. Now suppose you hire a new Head of Sales over Zoom, at the height of a pandemic, on the strength of an impressive CV. Five months later, 75% of your sales team has left, including every top performer who drove your growth. That is the situation Ampverse faced. Ampverse is a creator-first gaming marketing and esports group that connects brands and game publishers with Gen-Z audiences across Southeast Asia, India, and the Gulf.

Ampverse’s CEO knew TIPS well. We had started profiling some of Ampverse’s leaders in 2020, before COVID-19 put everything on hold. So when sales nosedived and morale followed, the CEO and COO knocked on our door again. We suggested one simple step: TIPS-profile the new Head of Sales. The result explained everything. The profile was a Systematizer. Systematizers can have real strengths in sales. They shine in mature organizations, running large, structured sales divisions where the job is to optimize processes, manage KPIs, and keep dashboards on track. But a young, fast-scaling team needs a sales leader who builds relationships, sparks enthusiasm, and closes deals in the field. In TIPS terms, Ampverse needed a Promoter with high People-energy. In other words, Ampverse had not hired the wrong person. It had hired the right person for the wrong stage of its company life cycle.

To their credit, Ampverse’s leaders handled the moment with grace. In a reflective conversation, both sides agreed the fit wasn’t right. The sales leader left with dignity, free to bring those strengths to a more mature organization that rewards them. Now a new Head of Sales had to be recruited. This time, every shortlisted candidate was TIPS-profiled. Ampverse hired a Popular Promoter: a high-empathy leader whose positive energy quickly spread through the sales team. Within nine months, Ampverse had recovered most of the lost revenue. Several of the top salespeople who had left came back. The sales team re-engaged and began performing better than before.

Ultimately, a new principle was born at Ampverse: no one gets hired for a vacant position without being TIPS-profiled first. Since then, more than 300 people have been TIPS-profiled on their way into the company.

On August 18, 2023, we brought our one-day TIPS Talent & Innovator Profiling Workshop to Bangkok for about 30 of Ampverse’s leaders and key influencers. In the TIPS Lineup Game, everyone stood along one long line to make their cognitive styles visible: Figure thinkers to the left, high-Fantasy thinkers to the right, and a few who are both in the middle. Then three more rounds with different lineup to bring out the preferred work styles, interaction styles, and lifestyles of each team member. Next came the TIPS Staffing Game, in which teams huddled over tables of cards to staff a project from a pool of candidates. The twist: four villains hide among those cards, and many teams hired at least two of them. Laughter rippled through the room, and the leadership team exchanged knowing nods. They knew from experience how easy it is to fill the right job with the wrong fit, when every card looks convincing.

Is your company scaling fast, and are you about to fill a leadership seat that will shape your team’s energy for years? Contact us to find out how TIPS may help you hire for cognitive fit and energy, not just experience, so your next key hire speeds up your growth instead of quietly reversing it.