Top Actions Items Joining as The New CRO with Salesloft's CRO Mark Niemiec

You're here live on Zoom and on Twitter and on LinkedIn at Wednesday, 10:00 AM, um, with an amazing hands-on SaaS workshop. So we always have a different expert walking us through, uh, their tactical content. And we're thrilled today to have Mark, the CRO at Salesloft, uh, join us today for an awesome revenue session. Mark joined the Salesloft team earlier this year around February. Um, before then he spent his career at Salesforce and Cisco. And we are so happy to have Mark with us here today because some of our most requested Workshop Wednesday themes around building a sales team, when to hire your first CRO, when to hire those first senior sales leaders, what to expect from them in those initial days. So Mark is gonna be showing his playbook for what he's done at Salesloft, his lessons learned along the way and his tips. So whether you're a founder or a sales leader or both, which we know a lot of people are spanning both of those roles, this is gonna be a great presentation to give you lots of actions for onboarding a new CRO or implementing them if you are a new CRO. So we're gonna have plenty of time for questions after Mark's slides, so make sure to drop them in the chat throughout. And we'd also love to hear where you're tuning in from, so make sure to drop that in the chat too. Mark, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. Really happy to be here.

Yeah, we'd love to get started with a little quickfire just so folks can get to know you a little bit more. So would love to hear a little bit more about your day-to-day role as the CRO of Salesloft and what projects you're currently working on.

Sure. Yeah. The day-to-day is varied. It's everything, all the things, all at once. So it's definitely talking to and spending a lot of time with customers in the market, our partners and building our ecosystem, certainly our product teams and learning about what we're doing and how we can become more closely aligned to what our customers need and want. And it's working with our executive team and the board to figure out exactly where we're taking the company. So it's all those things and more, and it's incredibly varied and satisfying, and it's been a lot of fun for the past 6 months or so. So really, really happy to be here.

Amazing. Thanks so much, Mark. And then in the last 12 months, what do you think has been the hardest thing that you've worked on?

The last 12 months? Well, I have a 5-year-old, so outside of work, there's probably some things there. But inside of work, certainly, you know, onboarding a new company, taking over the range from a great previous CRO and the culture that was built, and charting a new path forward and getting the team aligned and on board to where we need to go, understanding the current market conditions and how we need to thrive in this market. And so we can be set up for growth as the market continues to evolve. So that's a, that's always a challenge, but as a new leader inside of a new company, that's probably the biggest challenge I've had in the last 12 months.

Yeah, makes total sense, and we're excited to hear more about that in your presentation. I've— that's a preview for anyone, but on the slides, Mark's going to be talking a lot about some change management stuff and his best tips for that. So we're excited to hear a little bit more in a few minutes. Mark, we always love to hear what is the current favorite SaaS tool or platform that you're working with now.

Yeah, I'll tell you, I've been for the past, I don't know, 12 or 18 months, been playing around with ChatGPT. It never ceases to amaze in terms of what it's able to help you do or be a thought partner and get you— help you get started with different ideas. So it's been fun. Sometimes I use it for work, sometimes I use it for personal things, but it's a fun tool that I think is a ton of value in. And, uh, that's probably my most used, uh, app outside of Salesloft, uh, that, uh, that I spend time with.

Amazing. Amazing. Um, well, thanks so much, Mark. I'm gonna pass it over to you, but I know Mark was asking right before we went live of where are people tuning in from. So I just wanna drop some of these awesome locations that we have. People from all over the US, Seattle, California, um, Michigan, and then a lot of international folks. We have people from Denmark, Republic of Panama, Quebec, Australia, and Calgary. So thank you guys so much for being here. Some East Coast representation from Florida and New York too. So Mark, you are— we truly have people all over the world ready to listen in and hear your great takeaways. So I will pass it over to you.

Awesome. Well, welcome everybody. Thanks so much for joining. I'm super happy to be here. I've prepared probably about 20 minutes or so of slides that I'll talk through and then certainly looking forward to questions so we can get more more of your questions into the, into the conversation. But maybe I'll start off with my slides and we'll go from there. So in terms of the first days on the job, you know, these are, these are difficult times that we're in, right? This is a change and change is hard for everybody. And so the things that we, that we maybe gotten used to over the past maybe 10 years or so, all those things have, have been, have become super different. For all of us, and it's created all kinds of changes and requirements that maybe didn't exist before. And so as you think about joining a new company, or as one thinks about joining a new company in a time of change, there's a whole lot of variables that you have to account for and think about. And that's really what I built this conversation on today, is dealing with the current market conditions, the change from what the market conditions previously were, and how to enter a company successfully to chart a new path. As we figure out where we're going in the future. And we've got a pretty exciting and bright future. So excited to share our views or my views on how to make this reality. But when you're joining a new role as a CRO, now it's going to depend on the stage and the style and type and size of company that you're in. But all those things are going to, are going to drive the requirement for what type of research and discovery you want to do to understand and evaluate the business. Not just the business as, as, as a company or as an organization, but how it fits into the broader market landscape. So, you know, what does this company do that you're joining or that you're taking over for? And how do they, how do they fit in the space that they're competing in? Are you going to stay in that space or are you going to broaden outside of that space and look for market adjacencies that'll give you access to more and different market share and also access to, you know, different competitive landscapes? Those things are considerations you're going to have to think about. But step one for me is certainly research and discovery. So learn all about the company, the history, the products. How they fit in the market, what the customers think, what the employees think. Read those surveys of what the employees feel good about, where they think you have an opportunity for change. Because at the end of the day, any of our jobs as leaders is to make sure that we're guiding or marshaling our resources to go do the thing that we want them to do. And in this case, it's we want our salespeople to go out there and listen to their customers, understand their problems, and figure out how we can help them solve those most pressing problems. So understanding your employees is super important. Also understanding the company and how it fits in the market landscape, how that landscape is shifting and changing, how your value proposition may need to shift and change in light of current market conditions. And so that all for me fits into evaluating the business and getting a real sense for where you are so you can then figure out, you know, where you want to go. As you think about or as you get to the place of understanding where you are today, Then for me, it's about figuring out where, where do you want to go? What's that vision? What's your strategy? How are you going to get there? What's your execution plan? Executing on the tactics that you're going to put in place. And then ultimately, how are you going to measure those things? And so this is a framework that exists. It's fairly common in different companies, but the vision setting for me is super important. That's the thing that's going to motivate your employees, that's going to align your internal resources, that's going to get the market hopefully excited. About what you do so they can see where you're going. Because it's rarely the case that the product you have today is exactly what the customer needs. It's sometimes it's the case where that vision, where you're going is what gets the customer excited so that they can buy into the vision and the products and services you offer today fit into a certain need they have. But also they can see, hey, this company is going to be with me for the long haul because I understand their vision. And it's one that aligns with our view of where we wanna take our company. And so that creating a vision is super important both for employees to get them excited and engaged and to be committed, but also for customers for many of the same reasons. But ultimately a durable business is one where your customers are willing to stay with you regardless of, you know, sort of products and features that may come and go over time. Over the long term, do you have a company and a vision that aligns with what your customers want and need? That's probably the most important thing you can do. There'll always be companies that have maybe a little bit of better features or a little bit of better product on this capability or that. But, but an enduring business with a strong vision that is delivered upon is what customers ultimately are looking for in the long term. So, so vision, super important. Strategy. How are you going to get there? Right. How are you going to— what decisions are you going to make to what you're going to do and what decisions to make for what you're not going to do to figure out how you're going to execute on your vision? I think oftentimes folks think about strategy and adding more into the bucket, right? We're going to do more of this. And more of that. There's a great book that I read recently called Subtraction. And it's, it's about what are you going to take away? And so if you believe that you have a finite number of resources and that you're fully optimized or that you're at least mostly optimized, if you're adding in more things on your strategy, well, the math only works out in such a way where you're going to have to take away other things. And so I think a lot of times that, you know, companies may forget about the subtraction piece of this, but there's a really, really important element around, you know, around strategy that requires you to make decisions about what, what you're going to give up or what you're going to walk away from. And those decisions can often be very, very difficult because they can be beliefs or products or capabilities that at one point served you well, but based on the vision that you're charting for the future may no longer serve you. And so once you do that, you can really figure out how are we going to double down, triple down on the things that we are adding in from a strategy perspective. Because if you believe in that vision and you believe in the strategy that you're, you're putting in place to execute on it. Well, you've got to over-index on those things in service of that ultimate long-term vision creation that you're trying to get to. And that comes down to execution. We all talk about execution. Execution these days has become more and more and more important, mainly because the bar to entry or the bar for success has gotten raised. In the environment where money was cheap or even free in some cases, considerations got, you know, appropriate consideration, meaning super low consideration. Customers made all kinds of buying decisions that they wouldn't make in an environment where capital was more expensive. And so as a result, customers ended up with a ton of technology, a ton of swivel chairing, a bunch of maybe conflicting capabilities. And we just added more and more and more to our tech stacks. And that's created a whole lot of other problems, context switching and managing all these different platforms and What happens when I buy different AI systems and they're in conflict with each other and all that sort of stuff? Those things weren't as thought about or considered as some of those technologies were new, but also as the cost of capital is super cheap. Now customers are looking for, or all companies are looking for operational excellence or really, really strong execution. And for me, that's something that's been a hallmark of my time in the working world has been the ability to execute has been really, really important and driving real rigor around the execution is something that I think differentiates companies when, when you have a strong vision with a good strategy, the one that can execute will win every time. And then ultimately, we've got to understand where we are on the roadmap. Are we, are we at step 10 of the journey? Are we at step 1 of the journey? And that's the measurement piece. So what are the things that we're going to measure that are important to us that will tell us where exactly we are and if we've achieved the goal that we're ultimately looking for, if we've realized our vision will, will be able to understand that objectively through our measurements. So picking the right measurements, understanding how to report on those measurements, keeping them top of mind, making sure our teams are all aware of and know about where we stand as, you know, as, as relative to our vision. Those things are super important to helping the team figure out the progress they're making and what tweaks and changes we might want to make along the way. Because as good as a strategy and a vision is, Certainly there'll be, there'll be iterations and changes over time. And understanding where you are in terms of measurements is super important. So that's, that's the, the value of a plan or the framework is the vision, strategy, execution, and measurement approach that I like to take. Now, when you come into a new organization, you're new, right? You bring an outside perspective. You're there for a reason. You're there because the company wants to chart a different path or they need to hit a different phase of growth. Or because they need a different philosophy or approach on leadership or team motivation or building a set of products, aligning with your customers. Whatever that big thing is, you need to align with the board and the CEO on what the changes are that need to be made. And then align with your peer group, align with the executive leadership team to get everybody on board with the new vision, right? And that vision may be a little bit different than what they've had in the past. It may be a lot different. But ultimately, if you're going to be successful, you've got to get the whole organization working on and believing in your vision. To marshal the resources of the business to get to that new state of reality. So I think of it in these, these three words: refine, define, and align. So you're not going to throw everything away. You're going to refine some of the things that have already happened. The companies that you're joining are— they're established in some cases, they're earlier in other cases, but they have things they've been doing that are super valuable in the market. So you want to keep some of those things or many of those things and refine them a little bit. You want to create a tighter definition around what success looks like. As I think about our business, you know, the things that we are prioritizing are different than what we prioritize in the past, and they're not different than what many of you may be dealing with. An environment that was growth at all costs to one that is we have to grow in a smart and intelligent and durable way. And so we've got to redefine what success means and do that with your leadership team and then make sure they're aligned to make sure that all of the, the resources that work underneath all of your peers are aligned to the vision that you have. And in our case, again, that durability is super, super important to our business because that is the thing that's going to provide the foundation for growth for us in the future. Customers are, they have a higher bar on consideration. They have a lot of tech sprawl. And so we have a platform approach that allows our customers to, to get a lot more value out of buying and using the entire platform. So for us, that required our teams and customer success and product and all those sorts of things to get aligned around the vision that we have around building a more durable platform that folks are going to use all of versus just certain parts of. And so that requires a bit of a step change for all of our teams. And, you know, I'm delighted to share that our teams have embraced that message and that new definition of success in a great way. But that's a really important part of making sure that you're successful as a leader as you join that new company. I think step 4 around communications, and you could probably argue that this one may be step 1, uh, but it's, it's certainly in here and it's, it's very, very important. Communicating, sharing your vision, letting people know who you are. They all want to get to know you and want to get to know what you think and your ethos and philosophy on leadership. And that, that is a really important part of getting, getting them on board with, with your leadership, making sure you have empathy for the changes they may have gone through. But ultimately being really transparent, clear, and direct in where you want to take the company and why you need to get there. And for us, that's really important because all of our, all of our folks are super smart, capable team members who've been with us for many, many years. I mean, we're charting a new path. So communicating that path in a way that is, that resonates with our company values, that resonates with their, their roles, whether it's in product or sales or success, is super, super important to make sure that everybody's bought into the strategy and the plan. And that they're going to give their all every day. The last thing you want is, is to avoid the communications or miss the opportunity to share the vision or where you're going or what your expectations are on execution, and then find out that your team isn't fully bought in. So communicating and being consistent with the team is super important, but also listening. I do a ton of roundtables, do monthly leadership meetings. I do daily skip levels with different members of the team. I do peer-to-peer conversations, discussion with our board. All those communications are super important because it allows allows people to get to know you. It allows you to share your vision and message with them, and it allows for that push-pull that has to happen as you build or chart a new path for the future and make sure you're getting people on board. So another aspect of this change management piece is around communications. I think about, you know, executing and adjusting. And I mentioned earlier when I was talking about this framework a little bit, somebody once said to me, and at first when I heard this, I didn't know that it was a compliment. He said, you have strong strong beliefs, weakly held. And it took me a minute to quite, to quite understand that. Found out it was somebody famous who said it originally, but that, that to me was a really important sort of concept to understand. To have a really strong belief, to have a perspective is really, really important because folks want to know what you think. They want to know what your philosophy and beliefs are, but being willing to adjust that and be flexible is super important because we are better as a collective. It's rare that one person is able to divine the right answer in any case. It's much more the case that, that teamwork, that collaboration, that consideration of multiple points of view are what gets you to the right answer. So, so having a firm point of view to start with is super important because it allows us for a jumping off point, allows folks to know who you are and where you are in terms of attacking a problem. But being able and willing to adjust that over time is super important because again, And it's rare that one person's able to divine the right answer. It's much more often that the collective wisdom of the crowd is gonna get you there. So being able to execute, but also adjusting that process along the way, has been a really strong hallmark in my style of leadership over the past number of years. And then in terms of some, you know, maybe tips and reminders that I think about, you know, the place that I love to go to get the answer to many questions is customers. If I don't speak to customers, you know, once or twice a day, maybe a day or two after not having any customer meetings, you know, I start to get a little itchy. I, you know, I need that. I need to hear and listen to what the market says. I need to understand what they're feeling and thinking. I need to understand how our products and our messaging and our vision is landing. So one tip for me is try to talk to at least one customer a day and hopefully you talk to 5 or 6 a day, but at least on the off days you're talking to one customer a day. That, that to me is super important. And then, you know, for us, our business is also reliant on ecosystems, and many of yours is. But talking to partners is probably, you know, in a really close adjacency to talking to customers. And so spending time with those partners, they're, they're a force multiplier for you in many cases. They'll share things that you otherwise might not hear from customers. They might be a little more honest with you in some cases. They might give you a different point of view or share with you what maybe a competitor or another company that you might not think of is doing that gives you that right idea or that right point of view on how to reframe an issue or a challenge. So talking to partners is probably a super close adjacency to talking to customers. Spending time with your peers, I think, is a really, really good one as well. And then find your people, you know, find the handful of folks that are going to be the ones inside the company that are going to give you honest, straightforward feedback and kind of, kind of tell you the way it is. I find that to be super, super helpful. When you enter a company in a senior role, a lot of folks can tell you what you want to hear. I would find those, you know, it could be 3 or 4 or 5 people that are going to be really honest with you about what's working and what needs to change and where the organization may be on the change curve that you're driving. So find that grouping of folks and treat them like gold. Because you need that outside perspective as you're shifting and shaping and guiding the strategy as you go forward. So those are some things I think about in terms of making sure that you're doing your best at work. Before that, or outside of that, you know, I've been given this advice over the past number of years and it's become really, really important to me. But spending time outside of work, whether it's being contemplative and meditating or exercising, I find that when I do those things, I'm better at work. I'm better able to focus. I'm better able to think and be more open-minded. So that's not oftentimes advice I hear in discussions like this, but I think it's a really important tip that I've embraced. But, but make sure you prioritize those things because oftentimes for most of us, they make us better. And I find that to be a super, super helpful element to, to my job, especially to travel so much, making sure you carve time out for that. Is super important because that can become really, really draining on folks when you're on the road constantly. So those are some tips, reminders that I would consider as you go forward in this type of a role and bring your best to the team every day, because at the end of the day, it's your perspective and your vision and your strategy that's going to— that the company is there to benefit from. And these things will help you execute better and get to your end goal much, much faster with a whole lot more collaboration than otherwise might be possible. Those are some things I think about. I think that's it for the presentation. I'll just kind of go through some of these as well in terms of the— some of the reminders. You know, you're going to have to make some hard decisions, right? You're going to have to make some tradeoffs and you're going to have to maybe let go of some beliefs that maybe you or the company had previously. Those things can, you know, can oftentimes be difficult decisions. But you're in this role to make those tough decisions. And so know that not everybody's always going to be happy with every one of those decisions. And so that's just a fact of this type of a role. You know, give and take, you know, learning. Again, I talked about in terms of flexibility or being willing to change is super important. Making sure that you're able to take your strong belief and adjust it as your team provides feedback and as the market tells you different things. Again, finding your people, you know, find that team that's going to be honest and give you guidance and feedback is super important. You know, figure out the benchmarks, right? One of the things I love about, about these jobs is, you know, doing things that, that weren't previously possible. And by nature, our jobs as CROs or sales leaders is to do things that weren't possible or hadn't been done before. At least we think about our roles and, or measure our roles and comparisons of year over year. Well, if you, if you did X last year, you got to do X plus something this year. You're always going to be setting a new benchmark or blazing a new trail in terms of what's possible. And you're going to look for those breakthroughs in these roles to figure out, hey, the biggest deal we did before was, you know, $25K. How do we do a $100K deal? How do we get our customers to consistently spend, you know, $300K or $400K a year with us? Those things will all happen. They're natural, but you've got to continually push for that new benchmark. For what you can achieve in terms of growth, if that's the case. In other cases, for us, it's in terms of the, the, the development of our talent. So making sure that we are continually growing our talent. You know, previously we had, we have, we have great talent every year. We got to make that talent better. It's not necessarily through acquiring new folks, but it's making the folks we have better and raising the benchmark on our team. And that's something we're really proud of here. But ultimately, then letting people choose their own path. Sometimes you'll have sales folks who love the sales role and want to continue doing that until, you know, throughout their career. In other cases, you'll find folks who want to get into leadership and management. In some cases, they'll want to leave sales altogether and move into a sales-adjacent role or a different role altogether. One of the best salespeople I've known started out his career as a sales engineer and was super empathetic with customers, was wonderful at understanding his products and listening deeply to customers. And it made him an absolutely amazing salesperson. But he started out as an engineer and he chose his path. We were pushing him to become an engineering leader, and I was hoping he would be my, my partner in crime in that role. And ultimately he chose to be a salesperson. He became my partner in crime in another way, but he chose his own path and that was the right one for him. And that was a really powerful example for me to observe that, making sure that people can pick the job that's right for them because things are— everybody views things a little bit differently. So those are some tips to remember and considerations along this path. So I think at this point we're going to open it up for questions and see what questions folks have out there and hopefully I can answer them.

Amazing. Hey, Mark, it's Jason M. Lemkin. Could I jump to the head of the queue?

Yeah, please.

Of course. So thanks. By the way, I was an early pre-revenue investor and advisor to Salesloft in the early days. So it's great to see the company still thrive in its second decade. I think, I think somebody might have been founded like 2012 or something like that, right?

Could be. I don't know.

So, hey, two things. Since you're looking at the relatively new in the seat, couple questions I had. One, I just can't figure out for the community, why of all the categories in SaaS the last 18 months is sales like the hardest hit? So let's take the best public comp, which is ZoomInfo, best CEO, great comp, you know, competition, sure, but everyone uses ZoomInfo, right? How could ZoomInfo? I still don't get how they could go from 45% growth to 5%, from 120% NR literally to 85%. I don't believe it's seat contractions because the economy's growing. There are some layoffs, we see it, but if someone lays off 300 people at Microsoft, they've still got 50,000 and they're still adding people. So why is this the hardest hit category? I get that it's hit, I get we spent a lot in 2021, but why so friggin— why so much stress in this category when you need sales, when you need sales, right?

I think it was— I think it's primarily because one of the things I mentioned, low consideration purchases. I think folks bought more things than they necessarily needed and didn't take advantage or maximize the platforms that they invested in. And so they have bought one product that did one thing, another product did another thing, and you cobble together those capabilities inside your organization. And then when interest rates changed and capital became more expensive, folks realized, hey, you know what, I actually have 85% of this in one platform. I'm going to move everything to that platform and I'm going to get rid of these other two things or three things. I think that's one of the big issues that has driven this, this, this challenge. It's been low consideration purchases and sort of, you know, if customers were a little more diligent on the upfront of, hey, do I really want to use all the capabilities from this platform or do I want to just use one part of it? I think we probably experienced more growth than we deserved a little bit in that period because of consideration rates.

But I see, and maybe that's just the answer, but when I look at other categories, like I look at folks like Datadog, which own a lot of DevOps, right? They, there have been cuts there and consolidation on vendors. There's consolidation in DevOps and security, but not at the level of sales. And so what I just don't get is my brief stint as an SVP at Adobe, Sales came first. Sales got the first budget. You didn't mess with sales at Adobe. Even when I was at Adobe, Adobe wasn't even growing. It was before, right before the cloud move. You didn't mess with sales. Okay? You could mess— then you didn't mess with finance. That was number 2. And then everyone else came below. But I feel like this got inverted because clearly developers and product are not experiencing the— they say there's levels, but if we look at the public companies, it's not as rough at DataDog or Mongo as it is at ZoomInfo or Salesforce. And I can't just be that we bought too much, because I think we bought too much in every category in 2021. This is my point. We bought everything. We bought way too many tools and measurement tools and instrumentation, and we bought 11 product management tools too. Like everyone got their own, but maybe you don't have the answer, but this is a mystery to me why I don't— I get why it's hit. I don't get why it's hit so freaking hard.

Yeah, there's probably a confluence of factors. It's the platform sort of analogy or answer I gave initially. Maybe it's also maybe some roles are shifting and changing in sales, right? Maybe we're not investing as much in the XDR role as we once did during the pandemic.

That could be a big piece of it, right? We just don't care as much about that XDR role, right?

Could be. You know, I see that. I see the platform consolidation piece as the most stark example on my day-to-day, and to me, that's why that's the answer. But there's probably a confluence of answers outside of that that are all kind of coming together to provide compression on this, on this space that is a little bit more than everywhere else.

And then maybe another one you've seen at the field about in the overall category, are things getting a smidge better? We had Amit from Gong at SaaS Europe a couple of months ago and he said at Gong last year was just brutal and that things are about 20% better this year than last year. But then I look at Mark Benioff They're predicting all-time low growth next year. He said Salesforce is getting even harder, that they're still seeing downgrades on renewals, even at Salesforce, which I don't totally get either at this point. So what are you seeing in the field? Are you seeing any of the gong slight bounce off? Are you seeing the Benny Hoff Debbie Downerism? Which one are you seeing in the field?

I would definitely orient more to the things are turning around. We are We're certainly seeing more stability and durability in both the types and styles of deals we're doing. Yeah, willingness and interest in renewing and expanding. And I think for us, you know, our, our discussion around that platform approach has been a really strong hallmark to the growth we've been able to capture. So we've changed our messaging, we've changed our approach. Our head of product has built some amazing products and we've trained our salespeople to go sell those products with a little more vigor and a little bit more focus. So I would definitely orient more to things are turning around and we're getting better at telling our story. And moving from, you know, when you invested in Salesloft, it was a product-led company, it was a product orientation. We're now much more of a platform orientation, and that shift takes a little bit of time. And so our folks have done a great job in starting to make that shift. So we're seeing a lot more— I'd say I orient more to Amit's view than Mark's, certainly, especially my first 6 months.

But that was brutal with Salesforce, don't you think?

It was. I was there for it.

Brutal.

It was a tough, tough run for a little while. It's a great company. I'm sure they'll do just fine. But it's, I don't know that they'll go back to the go-go days that they once had.

Yeah, it's just, all right, maybe two more, then I'll do that. I'm just, because I have you, then I'll let other folks go. A tactical or sales question about AI, because obviously it's the conversation, right? Do you think for Salesloft and others and just in the broader category, Do you think AI is a true differentiator or do you think— I think 2025 will be the year of AI parity. Like we have all of great engineers. A lot of this is API driven. We will see someone launch something very cool. It will take us a quarter to react, but we will throw our team and build this on top of the OpenAI API or the Anthropic API or whatever. I view AI in our world, in the B2B world, becoming a world of parity rather than differentiation. But I might be wrong. I'm just curious how you see it in the field. Can you win deals on AI? Or do you— let me put it differently. Can you win deals in AI or can you only lose deals if you don't have parity?

I think it depends. I think broadly in the market, I think that's the— I think AI, like, like all these sort of seminal technologies, will become standard and expected. You know, mobility is an example, right? Everybody expects mobility now. Now, some companies do mobility different and they think about it differently and they provide a different differentiated and better experience. I think the ult— I think everybody will experience a lift from AI and become sort of normalized through all of our products and services at a level.

Yeah.

Great companies will take those capabilities and put their special, you know, sauce or special analytics or their own AI models on top of them and provide a real differentiation. But I think that will become a differentiation for some of the best companies. Everybody will get a lift from AI just like we all did from mobility and the internet and things like that. But the best companies will figure out how to make them special and different, differently than the standard company out there for sure.

Cool. Okay. One last one. Very, just very specific to what you've learned from the new role. When a new CRO comes in, it's great, but there's also anxiety. There's change. I want to boil it down to one question, but you can take it wherever you— how much of the team ends up staying, the leadership team, when there's a new CRO? My rough rule is it's usually 50/50 by default. Sometimes it's higher. Sometimes a new CRO comes in and it's rough, but you have to clean house because there's bad attitudes or there's atrophy. But how do you, how do you, how much of the team ends up staying one way or the other when you bring in a new CRO?

Uh, well, I think over time, you know, you have normal attrition rates anyway that are gonna happen over time. And so, and, and those things sort of wax and wane. So it depends on where the company is in that point.

Um, yeah.

And how much that new leader comes in and changes and what their point of view is and what the state of the company is. You may see some more disruption or folks leave earlier on. But over time, I think it all normalizes out pretty much to where, you know, to where the folks that are on board with the vision will stick around. Some of them may realize early on they're not and they'll pop out and that may happen sooner for some folks. But over time, hopefully your CROs will be able to capture the best folks that are there that believe in the vision, that want to be part of that change, and that will endure throughout. It's hard to say on an average what the right answer is. I think for us, our company is changing. We're going through a shift from a product-only company to a platform. That's a more complex sale. It's harder.

It is different. It's different, right?

All the things about it are different. It tends to be more durable, more sticky, and all that sort of stuff. That's not free. That comes with harder sales and you're going to lose some deals and cycles will be longer. And some of those things are frustrating. And sometimes you need leaders who have done that before. Most times, yeah, have done that before that can see their way through that change. It's oftentimes, you know, hard to do that if you haven't done it before. So I'm bringing in some leaders that have done it before, and we've got a wonderful core of existing leaders who are super open-minded and ready for that change. So I've been very fortunate that my leaders are ready for the change, and I've brought in a handful of folks who've done it before who are helping to sort of force multiply the team we have. So I feel very lucky for that. I don't have a bunch of folks who are saying, hey, man, the way we did things is the only way and this is not the way. That is not what we have. We've got a bunch of folks saying, hey, we know there's a new path for us. We're super psyched to be part of it. And they're really embracing some of the new leaders and partners we've brought in and they all see it as a way to get better. So I'm super lucky in that situation.

If you're, if you're on the other side, if you're one, one or two levels down and a new CRO comes in, should I know in 30 days whether I'm the right fit for that new regime? If I don't know, should I ask? And did you, do you know 30 days in who's going to make it and who isn't on the new team? Have you, are you able to fully evaluate the team?

I, you know, sometimes you can make a quick decision or a quick analysis on somebody. My experience though is it takes a little bit of time and sometimes folks are a little bit slow to open up and they need to see the proof points a little bit before they get comfortable. So that's why I think it's important, you know, to do as many in-person discussions as possible. Personally, I'm much better in person than on video. So sorry for for this, but I tend to—

Most of us are, it turns out.

Right. Like, and so, you know, you got to kind of handicap that for the fact that we're in a Zoom-led world, but get out and see the folks and get to know them. You know, you find different people act and operate different in different scenarios. And so, you know, I think you probably need more than a month or so to get a sense, especially as you got a multivariate calculus going on here. You got the market shifting and changing. You got the company shifting and changing, you got people's own careers shifting and changing. And so there's a little bit of— yeah, you got to account for that multivariate calculus and understand, you know, are these good people? Do they want to be here? Are they willing to work through some of the things? The folks who don't, that you'll figure out pretty quickly. And that we actually saw a bunch of folks pop out early, which we were happy for. The next tier of folks is the ones you got to work with a little bit more, get to know them, let them get to know you and see if they have an interest in participating long term. And making, you know, making the journey with you. In our case, I think we have, you know, the team that we're going to have going forward. And so the first 6 months, you know, we lost probably about 3 or 4 of our leaders. And so about 25%. And I think we're going to be pretty stable after that.

That's helpful. That's a good— that 25%, I think, is a— it's a good sign, right? It can't be zero or something's— something's off. That's a good learn. Let me steal one last one because just so of the moment, then I will let Taylor— then after that, Take a couple from the team. 2024 capacity planning. Are you planning in advance, in arrears? You know, it's like you have a— Salesforce is big enough, you know, you need X reps to hit the plan, but we are in tighter times and we also want to focus our leads more on the performers rather than just throwing them at a wall like we did in 2021. So how much extra slack are you defaulting to fewer reps? And giving them more opportunities, access? How are you thinking about how to do capacity planning in today's world? Because it's different, right?

Couple different things. One, previously we had really two segments, two businesses, commercial enterprise, and that sort of didn't contemplate the totality of the market that we served. And so we've broken our market down into enterprise strat, mid-market, and commercial. And so we've got a lot more, double the segments. So we are adding more folks to each of the segments because each of those segments need a certain amount of heft and sort of, they do work, right? You couldn't have a Strat business with 3 people in it. It's not really a business. So we are going to be, and we are planning to invest more in the different businesses we've built, whether that's mid-market or Strat. Those are the 2 newly carved parts of our business. So we will be adding capacity there. In other areas, we are, we're going to, we had a little bit of wait and see kind of approach and seeing how those markets develop. But I think by and large, we're looking at this as adding for folks into FY25, you know, as we, you know, as we kind of place our bets on enterprise, strat, and mid-market, we are definitely seeing our customers pull us upmarket and ask for our capabilities at some of the biggest, most iconic brands in the world. That wasn't the case, you know, maybe 3 years ago here. So the market's pulling us up and we're going to build to serve that part of the market.

Got it. But you're not— it's, you know, we did at our Miami meetup in February, we had Sam Blond, who was CEO of Brex, who said biggest 2021 error for him was just hiring too many people. Just like he would rather have a leaner, hungrier team today, hitting more attainment with more money. But yet you're at scale, right?

So my personal belief on that stuff is constraint is a mother invention. I want constraint. I'm not the kind of leader that would overhire in general. I want folks to constrain. I want folks to complain a little bit. Once they're complaining and screaming—

I can't take it anymore. So I'm very impressed with you. I've exhausted my complaints in my entire lifetime.

You kind of need that. And I think that's an important part of this business is that we're sort of running with constraint. You know, my first job out of college, I'll offer you this. I worked for ADP and this woman had a zip code in New York City. It was a couple of blocks. She made her, made her number in 6 months. The next year they said, hey, we're going to shrink your territory. You're just going to have the State Building. And she said, what, are you crazy? I'm never going to make it. She made her territory, made her number in 6 months. The year after that, they said to her, we're going to cut your territory in half. You can pick the top 50 floors or the bottom 50 floors. What do you want? She made her number in 6 months. So that constraint and constraining folks down to that, to that, to that territory or that market segment of that ICP. Ultimately, I think what helps people be successful. And so again, that constraint is important. But adding salespeople without constraint, I think, is a— it can be a bit of a tough exercise.

It's a good way to put it. Okay, cool. Thank you. Sorry, I just wanted to get a few questions when I had you. But Taylor, what else we got? We're running out of time.

No, thanks, Jason. We have some great questions, Mark. A lot of them are pretty tactical about like what you've been doing in the— and what you did to prepare before the role. So Bill Langdon has a question for you about the prep before the role. So Bill, are you still there to pop up? I'm going to add you right now.

I don't know if you can see me. The question I had, did you do a 30-60-90 plan when doing interviewing and how is that holding up? And I'd be interested to hear from a bonus from Jason M. Lemkin, whether he uses those and he thinks that's a good indicator for people he interviews. Uh, not exactly. Um, we're not necessarily in these roles looking for results in 90 days. It's a, it's a couple year kind of, you know, view on things, 12 to 24 month view on things. Um, in terms of tactical, like what was I going to do in the first 100 days? Certainly. Uh, it's a lot about listening and learning and observing what some of the sort of obvious changes are to make. For instance, how we forecasted and talked about our business and instill the concept of commitments and those sorts of things that just hadn't been hadn't been done at the level of rigor that I knew were important. Some of those things. But beyond that, not a ton of 100-day planning. You know, for me, the first week I spent with our CEO just one-on-one for the week at his house. And all we did was talk about the business, listen to calls, talk to customers, talk to team members without any distractions, without being in the business, so to speak. So that was a super important part of my onboarding and getting to know the business without all the sort of day-to-day pressures of, you know, answering questions and meeting the team and all that kind of stuff. So for me, that was the most important part of onboarding.

Yeah, if you want, I want to learn from Mark, but Bill, if you want my opinion, it's really interesting. Here's what I've learned, and I have less experience at the scale that Mark does than, than Mark does. But the more you're at scale, the more you're at 9 figures of revenue and you have an established brand and you hire a true CMO or CMO, someone like that. The more listen and learn is when you start, the more it is important. There's almost nothing more important than spending, doing a road tour. That's what you hear from the best executives. They go out and meet with half their time as customers and half their time as the team. And it was funny when Gusto was scaling, I remember Josh Reeves took it to an extreme and he's like, I won't let anybody do any work their first 60 days. They just have to sit in the office and they're not allowed to do anything. I thought he was, and I love Josh, but his approach to a lot, you can't wear shoes and everyone has to wear slippers with 1,000 people in the office. There's some fun quirky things, but he was really just taking this idea to an extreme. But I don't know, but that was when he was hiring his high-powered management team, his C-level folks. Okay. So I think you have to be really careful. I think this is a great approach at that scale, and I think it's an F-minus in the early days, an F-minus. You do not, you, there's a lot of title inflation out there, and every VP of sales joining at $2 million wants to be a CRO. I say give it to them. It's not worth the battle. Okay? I have very different views on title inflation than when I started as a founder. You just don't want the battle, but you need a hands-on sales leader. And so when you're hiring your first sales leader, not only does there need to be a 30, 60, 90-day plan, you need to believe in it and they need to start executing it before they start. Before they start. Right? And I literally just caught up with a VP of sales I've known for years. I really loved him. Talked to him about his new company didn't work out. I asked what happened. He's like, well, I thought I would take 60 days to listen and learn. I showed up to lunch the first day to listen and learn. No, like, I mean, it's just, it's the wrong toolkit. So I think there's a line when you'll get it, when this is what you do. The last, you know, you, and yeah, you want to listen to the calls on sales often, go through all this, but early stage, that's why you have to be careful when you bring someone with Mark's pedigree into a $5 million ARR startup. I don't know that Mark, we can ask Mark if he joined a startup at $5 million ARR. But there's a— what you do at scale and what you do pre-scale are not the same in the role. They're not even, and in fact, they're not even remotely the same, I would argue. Like they shouldn't have the same 3 letters of CRO. There's nothing in common between CRO at scale and CRO at subscale.

100% agree with that. I'm at a company that's, you know, well past that ARR and it's a very different job. But if I was joining a company at $5 million, yeah, you need to plan out every day. Because time is your enemy there. And you've got to make sure you maximize every moment to deliver. So very different than the scenario I joined in.

Thanks for your question, Bill. OK, I'm going to move on to— Mahara has a question. Mahara, I'm going to bring you up to ask your question to Mark. Hi, thanks for the talk. One question that I have is that You, you were just saying, and Jason was saying as well, that it's really important to meet with customers so you get ahead of where you're landing on your positioning and on the market as well. But how do you prioritize which customers are going to have like a daily frequency to talk? You can either jump on sales calls or customer success calls. How do you make sure that you have this on your agenda every day and with the right customer to get the insights that you're looking for?

Yeah, it depends. And maybe last question was sort of instructive in this is it depends on where you are, right? Where we are, we're, you know, good-sized business. And so, you know, I'll spend my time with our largest, most influential customers. They're oftentimes taking us to, you know, sort of pushing our capabilities to their extremes. We want to learn about that. We want to learn about what they're— what they like and what they'd like to see different from us. They'd like to learn what they appreciate about how we show up and how we present ourselves and what we can do better there. So So for me, I, I, I love to spend time with our largest customers. I also spent, love to spend time with our markets that, that we're looking at that we think we have opportunities to invest in more. And so as I look at our commercial business, I love spending time with commercial customers and we have different characteristics in our enterprise or strat customers. But for me, as I learn about this part of the business, I want to make sure we can drive scale into that business. And so the value I can bring there is, is by understanding that market and that's gonna come from a handful of, of of, you know, different customer conversations, which will give me a sense of how do we want to think about pricing and packaging and motivating our teams and aligning our resources around that space to maximize our investments there. So it depends a little bit on the problem you're dealing with. You know, in our, in our business, we want to drive scale and durability in commercial. We want to drive, you know, bigger, more enterprise-grade, you know, sort of larger strategic transactions in our, in our, in our strat and enterprise business. I mean, so you want to listen to both, both customers, but for different reasons. One of them is gonna teach you how to price and package and, and build scale into the business. The other one's gonna teach you how you need to show up to, to be able to do business with the most iconic brands in the world. And those two things are very different.

Nice. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mahara. Mark, we're moving on to a couple of questions about what you're looking for in a team, talent, this type of stuff. So Kareem, I'm gonna bring you up now. You have a question. 4.

Hey Mark, thanks, uh, for your presentation. So you talked a lot about somebody who starts in a new CRO role, and I'm sure I speak for a few of us here who might start out as an AE while thinking about the CRO role long term, or even just CROs who want to know what behaviors to promote from the bottom up. So in your role as CRO, what do you want to see from new AEs when they start in that new role? Maybe even if they're like a first-time AE in their first 90 days? And can you please just be real specific? I, I tend to really enjoy folks who are intellectually curious, and that is not curiosity just for the sake of curiosity. It's how do I learn to get better and learn to understand my customer more deeply, to learn from my peers, to learn from my leaders? Because when you're an AE, the value you have is you get to talk to that customer in detail. And in-depth. In my role, I get to see all of the AEs operating, so I get a view from the bridge of what works in different environments. And sometimes it's hard to see the label of the jar that you're in. And as a leader, you can see the labels of everybody's jars a little bit easier. And so the AE that's open-minded, that is curious, that is asking for coaching and guidance, but also that comes to the point of view of, I think this is what we should do and here's why, but then being willing to, to take some coaching and guidance on that. I tend to think those folks are super fun to work with, but also folks who have some, some, a little fire in the belly. We're in a, we're in a performance-based job that, that, that our scoreboard is, is, you know, gets put up every week, every month, every quarter. And you want folks to care about that. They don't prioritize it over everything else, but you want folks to really be conscious of the scoreboard and think about how they're, you know, how they're putting their points on the board every, every week, month or quarter. So it's curiosity, it's fire in the belly, and ultimately it's somebody who's a student of your company and a student of your customers. And so one of the things that's helped me over the time in my career is I became an absolute student of Cisco when I worked there. I became a student of Salesforce when I worked there. And now certainly Salesloft. That I think is probably the most important thing anybody can— that's not just a salesperson, it's anybody should be a student of their company and know that stuff deeply. To me, that's really important, especially because you want to be the person that is an expert. You want your customer to see you as knowledgeable, and you want to be knowledgeable. And so being a student of that company and of their company is, I think, to me, super important. Got it. Okay, thanks.

Thanks so much, Kareem. Mark, we have another question about hiring. This— you touched on this a little bit in your closing remarks and things to remember about knowing when people are selling to you. So Jessica has a question about hiring. Jessica, I'm going to bring you up. Yeah, thanks, Taylor. Thank you, Mark. Yeah, it's tough, right? Because you're hiring sellers and sellers usually know how to present themselves really well. They say all the right things. So how do you kind of cut through the bullshit? Pardon my French.

We interview in a particular way here that it's a little bit new to me, but I think it's fantastic. So we do a very structured set of interviews. And the last thing we do is what we call a top grade. And if you've ever been through a top grade process, it's new to me here, but, you know, we've done it for everybody we've met with. It really helps you cut through the BS, as you put it. It helps us understand how folks have made decisions in their career, why they've made moves, what kinds of relationships they've held. That stuff, the BS comes through pretty clearly when you have to talk in detail about why you made what decision, from where you went to go, where you, where you went to college and how you chose that major to every job transition you've had and the circumstances of the transition and the relationship you currently keep with the previous manager or team you had. We spend, I think it's about a 90-minute interview with two folks from our team interviewing the candidate in that regard. That helps us get a pretty good sense of, of, you know, kind of where they fit on our values and where they fit in terms of our culture. So that's the process we use here. I like it. Before that, I didn't do that. Before here, I didn't do that. I would rely on my own sort of, you know, process, which was a lot of those questions as well. I just didn't do it as a structured way as Salesloft does it, but I'll take this with me and certainly embrace it. But that top grade interview is pretty important for us.

Great. Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for your question, Jessica. We're going to close out with one final question from Billy. I am going to bring Billy up right now for you, Mark. Hi, Billy. Still there?

Hey. Yep. Hey, Taylor. Thank you. Thanks, Mark, for doing this. This is probably a general question and general on purpose. I know probably what Jason would say in all the articles he's written. But in this current state and given economy that we're in, if you're asked to double revenue without doubling spend, what do you personally have conviction on and what would you bet on? To double revenue without doubling spend, I would, and what I'm doing is I'd build a strategic accounts business that's gonna go after the most iconic brands in the world. Those businesses you tend to get a lot of leverage out of. Now you gotta hire the right people, motivate in the right way and give them the right leadership with the right support. But that's the mechanism I would use. To go double revenue without necessarily doubling spend along the way. And do you think for that, like, that's probably a 9-month-plus return, or at least seeing traction? It's at least a 9-month return, but it's, it, those, those efforts tend to yield very long-term payoffs that are very durable, and you tend to grow better with those customers. You also learn things about the other, you know, 99% of your customers that you have to work with. And that'll make your products better. It'll make your customer success team better. It'll make your rest of your sales organization better. You'll learn different styles and approaches. You'll create different assets. All those things will create a bow wave effect that allows or encourages the whole organization to come with, come with you. So you need a part of the organization that's going to be your trailblazers or going to be the folks that are constantly, you know, sort of finding the new thing that you can go do, whether it's whether it's size or type or style of deal, whether it's type or style or size of company. But you need a group that's always going to be doing that. And a well-organized, well-motivated strat team will absolutely have a bow wave effect on the rest of your organization. And follow-up question to that, how do you convince a board to give you 9+ months to see revenue in a brand new channel that you guys haven't done before? Like, what's the talk track there? It's rare that it's a brand new channel. Oftentimes you have some business in that space. And so it's not just a brand new group. It's oftentimes you're taking the high end of your enterprise and you're coordinating them off. Again, we're at a different scale. We're at a later scale than most of the folks on the call. But there's a grouping of customers that often have an enterprise that would fit into strategic, and it's a matter of coordinating them off, giving them some focus and changing the horizon on their goals. That's really the task. It's not a— it's not you're starting from scratch. When you're earlier stage, you want to probably start in the, in the market that has most of your ICPs and figure out what exactly your value prop is and go drive those customers. When you're at the scale and stage we are, we already have an established sort of run rate in the high-end enterprise. We want to continue to grow that, and you grow that with focus, has been my experience. Thank you. For sure.

Thanks so much for the great questions, Billy and Mark. Thank you so much for your time today. Amazing session. We've had so much chatter in the chat. So we are loving everyone's response. Thanks everyone for the great questions. Mark, again, just thanks so much for sharing your expertise and all your lessons learned from the past 9 months or so.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, we are back next week with another great CRO session. So Stevie Case, the CRO at Banta, is gonna be back sharing her latest sales tactics and why outbound isn't dead. So she's gonna have some great information for us. Exciting to have another great revenue-driven topic since we know that's been so popular with everyone. So thanks so much for all your inquiries and suggestions for content, and we'll see everyone next week. Thanks again, Mark.

Thank you.