EUVC VC | E471 | Sales and Scaling Strategies from Ryan Lieber, Snowflake’s First SDR and EMEA’s Go-To-Market Leader [Path to Market]
May 17, 2025
Ryan Lieber, a veteran Go-to-Market Leader and Snowflake’s first SDR, shares insights from his journey with the company since its startup days. He discusses the impressive growth of Snowflake and stresses the importance of the MEDDPICC sales methodology. Lieber highlights the key role of hiring the right SDRs and the significance of cultural nuances in international sales expansion. He also emphasizes collaboration within sales teams and unveils how his current work empowers data-driven startups across Europe to thrive using Snowflake's data cloud.
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Ryan's Early Snowflake Days
- Ryan Lieber joined Snowflake as its 40th employee and first SDR in 2014 without knowing what a cloud data warehouse was.
- He was a "guinea pig" in a startup in stealth mode, learning messaging, personas, and use cases by trial and error.
Wearing Many Hats in EMEA
- Ryan moved to London in 2017 to open Snowflake's EMEA operations, juggling sales, events, and even IT roles.
- He humorously recalls being the worst IT person while people didn't realize he was actually in sales.
Target Believers Early
- Focus sales on prospects who already believe in your technology to avoid wasted effort evangelizing skeptics.
- Discover your ideal customer profile through experiments and market signals, especially important in category creation.
