Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

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Jun 16, 2020

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INSIGHT

Product Fit Plus Customer-Facing Teams

Slack combined product-market fit with investor-pushed investment in customer-facing teams.
That mix enabled scaling into enterprises that need help navigating complex procurement and compliance.

ADVICE

Prioritize Team, Customers, Success

Build growth around three pillars: team, customers, and customer success.
Recruit top talent, reinforce values, and keep customers as the North Star to drive sustained growth.

ADVICE

Hire By Track Record And Specific Deals

Hire based on past behaviors, motivation, communication, and business acumen.
Use structured interviews that walk through deals to reveal value-selling and technical navigation skills.

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In Episode #1 of Go to Market Grit, Slack’s SVP of Sales and Customer Success, Bob Frati, gives the inside scoop about the company’s sales and go-to-market strategy, and why they have been able to scale their go to market so quickly and effectively over the last few years. Bob and Joubin discuss two key topics in detail, outlining the next four years for Slack and key growth levers they can pull, along with growing competition in Slack’s market and what that means for their future.

In this episode of Go to Market Grit, we cover:

Key growth levers for Slack, and why the company is positioned for continued market dominance.
Slack’s response to growing market competition, and why it’s ultimately better for the consumer and for the company.
How Slack identified a business need and strong product market fit, and then worked to expand the solution to a broader audience.
The importance of having a strong and developed customer-facing team to navigate complexities in large enterprises, and push business forward to completion.
How Slack grew its sales team from 300 to 2,000 people — quickly, and effectively.
Some of the factors that Slack looks for when hiring customer-facing sales staff, and why they value these characteristics.
Why hiring should be a mutual fit for both the candidate and the employer.
Identifying motivated individuals, and finding ways to tap into their motivation that will drive them to be successful.
Bob’s career journey from sales rep to manager — including why and how he executed the leap.
Why much of Slack’s success can be attributed to tight collaboration between its engineering, product, sales, and success teams.
Slack’s ability to not only deploy a solution in an organization, but to help manage through the change and ensure success — and why this is a game-changer.
Slack’s role in ushering a new way of working, and why it transcends the tired and overused digital transformation narrative in business.

Links

Host company: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/
Loom: https://www.loom.com/
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfrati/
Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/Joubinmir
Host Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com