The Goats of Growth

(Republished from June 2020.) I recently interviewed Samuel Clemens, Partner at Accomplice VC & Founder of Reprise, which helps customer facing teams capture, edit, and assemble the perfect demo every time.  We discussed the 3 types of sales leaders critical to early stage start-up success. The first type is simply founder-led sales because they know the product best and should be able to close the first handful of sales on passion--as long as their is market fit.  The second type of sales leader is what he calls the expeditionary sales leader who can help create and define a repeatable playbook. The third type of sales leader is someone that is process based and can take that playbook, refine it, and then scale the sales team.  Additionally, he shared the critical attributes needed in each sales leader, the one thing that he thinks really defines an organization's culture, the 3 big mistakes he's made in the past when scaling a sales organization, what sales leaders should NOT do during their Board meetings, and much more.  

Whether I’m interviewing a GTM leader on my podcast or confidentially for a retained search, I tend to geek out over the “how” of how success was achieved by my guest. It’s like when we first learned long division. It wasn’t enough to give the right answer, we had to show the teacher “our work”. How we got there, so they know it wasn’t simply luck, memory, or a hidden calculator. From onboarding to strategic planning, to compensation models, to playbooks, I could do on and on but how success was achieved—or not, if I’m screening for a client. But sometimes, what we’re capable of accomplishing simply comes down to "why" and the traits we have or the traits you don’t have.  In the case of my most recent guest on Over Quota, Ramsey Al Ramahi, 3 traits that came to my mind as I was analyzing the why behind his accomplishments were, curiosity, desire, and a bias towards action. In this episode, you’ll hear how he went from selling Bakluvit (a family recipe) to a tech sales leader in less than 5 years. Yes, we dug into strategy and execution, but those 3 traits, curiosity, desire and a bias for action were the hallmarks, from my assessment, as to why he just accepted a CRO role--achieving yet another professional goal.  

Graham Collins has given more than 400 compensation consultations over last 2 years, so I couldn’t think of a better guest to have on to learn all the ins and outs of how comp plans and quotas are established. Whether you're a Founder trying to get your arms around hiring your first sales rep, an established sales leader, or a quota carrying AE, you’ll learn something from this episode, including: The right ways and wrong ways to structure comp plans Why 50/50 comp plans exist and the underlying math The right and wrong ways to establish quota How to deliver new comp plans and keep your best reps The most common mistake leaders make when building comp plans Why companies don't want all their reps to be at 100% of quota And more!    

In this episode you’ll hear Brian Kirk's journey from Submarine Warfare Officer, where he was leading as many as 70 Sailors, to MIT, where he got his MBA, to entrepreneur–and all that he learned from that experience–and then into technology sales where he went from BDR to sales leadership in just 6 months! That’s the journey.  Tactically, you’ll hear him discuss why he’s made the choices he’s made,  his new way of communicating since moving into civilian leadership, how he went from BDR to sales leadership so quickly, and the strategies and processes he implements to inspire his teams to achieve more together.       

To say Jill Rowley has vision, which, by one definition, is the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom, is an understatement.First, early on her career, she saw sales as an avenue to control her own income and destiny. Second, she saw that Salesforce.com would be a great place to launch her sales career when it was just a little-known start-up. Third, she chose to join Eloqua in its infancy (Jill was employee #13) because she saw the power of marketing automation before most did. Then, she saw “social selling” as a powerful go-to-market strategy well before social selling was part of the lexicon. That’s vision.   So, what does she see next?  Ecosystems. She sees ecosystems as the next big shift in the way SaaS companies will win, and playbooks should start to include them--immediately.  True, many companies use partnerships as part of their go-to-market strategy, but few look at prospective partnerships as part of an ecosystem to authentically delight and over deliver value for their customers.  

Patrick Lynch, a technology sales leader with experience building high-performing teams, says that we have a tendency, as an industry, to overcomplicate things. At the end of the day, it's about discipline, rigor, grit, and focus.  As a leader, do you have the team that can help you get the customers you don't have. Simply put, "hire good people and get the hell out of the way".     

This episode features Paul Fifield, CEO and Co-Founder of Sales Impact Academy. You'll hear Paul talk about his own journey and the, somewhat painful, experience he had as a revenue leader scaling two previous companies that lead to SIA. You'll also hear why most companies don't make it, and how to properly instrument an organization from the beginning which includes one key hire needed IF you want to scale.  

I spoke with the Area VP of Sales at Sky Hive, Janet Rosenthal. After taking a decade off to take care of her family, she struggled to find the perfect fit professionally until she found SkyHive where she leads a team of Enterprise Sales Reps. SkyHive’s mission of upskilling talent aligns with Janet personally. Janet also discusses what to look for in hiring the right person, being coachable, and general goal setting to be successful in sales.

In this episode I speak with the VP of Business Development at Video Elephant, K.C. McLeod. K.C. discusses Vyer Films, a company he once founded,  what encouraged him to launch it, and the go-to-market strategy used to bring it to life. At Video Elephant, he started with a small team and faced high uncertainty as he took on the 1st business development position. KC discusses learning and developing his personal leadership skills to help build the perfect team through data and research. Today’s episode was sponsored by Allego.  Allego allows you to record your best sales content for practice, collaboration, and feedback. Allego gives you a way to organize your best content into one place, making it easily accessible to help improve sales performance.

Marci DiGaetano, Head of Global Sales Development at Cyberpion, has a unique and special way she onboards, coaches, and develops her SDR teams. Listen to the holistic approach she takes to onboarding reps, how she builds confidence in her teams, the practical approach every SDR should take if they want to get promoted, and how leading and coaching isn't just a job, but an obligation for her.