Suresh Khanna is the Co-Founder and COO at Pieces. He is the former CRO and president of AdRoll Group, where he led the go-to-market strategy, scaled sales, success, and support teams from 10 to 400 people, and increased revenue from about $3 million to over $150 million when he left.

Suresh also established award-winning training and development programs that helped the company win Best Place to Work multiple times

What You Will Learn:

How to build a performance culture that works.
How AI advancement could impact go-to-market and agencies.
How to maintain raw energy while scaling.

Highlights:
(5:12) Suresh’s background and story.

(10:00) Why Suresh turned down a once-in-a-lifetime McKinsey job at 26.

(12:22) Suresh’s experience at Google.

(13:22) Why Suresh left Google for AdRoll.

(14:39) Suresh’s success at AdRoll.

(14:39) Suresh founding Pieces.

(17:00) AI advancement and its potential impact on go-to-market and agencies.

(25:21) How to build a winning performance culture.

(28:54) How to find and hire people wired for greatness.

(34:01) How to train managers to make better hiring decisions and scale the hiring process.

(38:29) How to reduce new hire ramp-up time.

(44:20) How AdRoll created a winning self-policing culture.

(46:20) What Suresh would do differently.

(49:15) How to keep the raw energy when rapidly scaling.

(53:32) The number one reason startups fail.

(57:30) Summary of Suresh’s career learnings.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khannasuresh/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.

GTM 13: How to Hire People who are Wired for Greatness with Suresh Khanna