20Sales: PLG and Early Adopter Sales are Gone, How to do Sales Forecasting in 2023, Why You Cannot Do PLG and Enterprise from Day 1 at the Same Time and Which is Easier to Start, How to Onboard, Manage and Scale Reps with Rich Liu, CRO @ Everlaw

7 Jun 2023 · 51 min

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Podcast Summary: The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) - Episode with Rich Liu

Episode Overview

  • Episode Title: 20Sales: PLG and Early Adopter Sales are Gone, How to do Sales Forecasting in 2023
  • Host: Harry Stebbings
  • Guest: Rich Liu, CRO @ Everlaw
  • Release Date: [Insert release date here]

Guest Background

  • Rich Liu is a seasoned Chief Revenue Officer with a track record of scaling multiple tech unicorns, including positions at Everlaw, Navan (TripActions), MuleSoft, and Meta (Facebook).
  • Recognized as a Top 100 Global Sales Leader in 2021.

Key Topics Discussed

  1. Entry into Sales
  2. Transition from Engineering: Rich shares his journey from biomedical engineering to sales, driven by the desire to understand business leadership.
  3. Lessons from Early Roles: Insights from companies like Navan, Meta, and MuleSoft shaped his sales philosophy.
  1. Current Sales Landscape
  2. Sales Cycle & Price Sensitivity: Discussion on how economic downturns affect deal cycles and pricing strategies.
  3. Shifts in Software Purchasing: Companies are becoming more cautious and require clear value propositions to close deals.
  4. Impact on Customer Success: Renewals are more challenging, necessitating close ties between sales and customer success teams.
  1. Product-Led Growth (PLG) vs. Enterprise Sales
  2. Dual Approach Limitations: Exploration of the complexities and challenges of implementing both PLG and enterprise sales strategies simultaneously.
  3. Easier to Start: Discussion on whether to begin with enterprise sales or PLG, with Rich advocating for a focus on one strategy to avoid operational confusion.
  4. Sales Leader Qualifications: Different types of sales leaders are needed depending on whether the approach is PLG or enterprise.
  1. Hiring Sales Reps
  2. Structured Hiring Process: Rich outlines how to effectively hire sales representatives, including the use of case studies and structured interviews.
  3. Identifying Red Flags: Importance of assessing candidates' track records, coachability, and ability to generate their own pipeline.
  4. Role of Founders: Founders should be closely involved in sales strategy and playbook development to ensure alignment and effectiveness.
  1. Sales Forecasting in 2023
  2. Inspection of Sales Pipelines: Recommendations to evaluate the viability of deals in light of current economic conditions.
  3. Quantifying Value Propositions: Emphasizing the need for a clear business justification for purchases.
  1. Deal Reviews
  2. Framework for Effective Deal Reviews: Rich advocates for structured deal review sessions to evaluate the progress and potential of ongoing sales efforts.
  1. Common Mistakes in Sales
  2. Misalignment on Expectations: Importance of aligning sales targets between founders and sales leaders to avoid setting unrealistic goals.

Key Takeaways

  • Sales Strategy Clarity: Emphasizing a focused approach in either PLG or enterprise sales rather than attempting both simultaneously.
  • Hiring and Onboarding: A strategic hiring process is crucial, with a focus on candidates who can generate pipeline and effectively communicate value.
  • Sales Adaptability: Companies need to adjust their sales strategies to meet current economic realities, focusing on quantifiable benefits to secure buyer commitments.

Conclusion Rich Liu’s insights provide a wealth of knowledge for current and aspiring sales leaders, highlighting the importance of strategic focus, effective hiring, and adaptability in an ever-changing market.

For more information, visit [The Twenty Minute VC](http://www.20vc.com).

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00That early adopter that products let's sail does not work in a tight market. I'm not spending any money. Default is no. The only time that I'm going to spend something is if someone convinces me, this thing is not what you think it is. It actually is going to solve the most important thing that you're afraid of right now. This is 20 sales with me Harry Stabbins and 20 sales is the monthly show where we sit down with the best sales leaders in the world to discuss how they build and scale world class sales teams. Today I'm joined by Rich Liu, C .R .R .R .Evalo and a Unicorn Go -to -Market exec having scaled 5 multi -billion dollar unicorns across two IPOs a successful acquisition and numerous funding rounds from Meta to Naveil and MuleSoft.

0:40This man has seen it all and stay as an absolute masterclass. But before we move into the show's day, you might remember in our amazing episode with Maggie Hott she mentioned a tool she could not live without called Pocus. What is Pocus? focus is a revenue data platform that makes it easy for go -to -market teams to analyze, visualize and action data about their prospects and customers without needing engineers. Focus helps companies like Miro, Webflow, Loom and Superhuman focus their sales and success teams on the highest priority opportunities by surfacing insights at the right moment so wraps can take action quickly.

1:14Focus gives you a 360 degree view into product usage, empowering you to act on insights and fill your funnel efficiently. Sales teams save 10 plus hours per week, digging through data to surface millions of new revenue opportunities, learn more about why top PLG businesses trust Focus as their revenue data platform by visiting focus .com forward slash demo, and sales loft is the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales teams drive more revenue with the modern revenue workspace. It's that one place sales teams can go to prospect, manage active deals and get the insights they need to coach seller performance, forecast with accuracy, and find out what steps to take to close more deals.

1:56Some of the world's leading companies like Google, Shopify and Stripe all love a new sales loft and so can you. It's the new way to sell find out more at salesloft .com.

2:14Rich Mumman I have heard so many great things. I've been so looking forward to this. Some of the references gave me things that we could talk about in the show. Some we've just bonded about instead. But thank you so much for joining me today. Happy to be here Harry thanks so much for having me. Not at all the pleasure's mind. but I want to start with a little bit on you because he brought in some of the most incredible orgs in the last kind of 10 years of business building really and so I want to start with how did you make your way into the world of tacking sales first? First of all there's a lot of luck involved I think it's a lot easier to see things going back than looking forward but I started my career as an engineer biomedical engineer parents are both engineers were immigrants and so that idea of get a technical degree get a technical background and then you'll always have work to do It was a little bit of what I grew up with.

2:59But after finishing, I realized, oh, wow, I watched the movies, I see TV, and I really wanted to be some kind of a business executive. I didn't really know what that meant. And I thought, okay, this was during the .com bubble burst. So we're in a lot of jobs out there, and I was reading and doing my research and going, oh, it looks like a lot of these business leaders, these CEOs, they seem to have this like sales background. That's interesting. Maybe I should try that. And if I can't do it, if I suck at it, I'll go back and take one of these engineering offers I walked away from. My first job was, I was thinking, the base salary was like $20 ,000.

3:33It was like, well, if I can't make a good commission, I won't pay my rent anyway. Why don't we give this thing a shot per year? That was really it. I went into an investment company called Fish for Investments. That was really transformational at the time, really trying to get people from all money management being distributed through your financial advisor, brokerage house, to, oh, we're going to build this direct to consumer money management shop. What was junk mail, hold calling and later internet advertising, search advertising to sell high net worth asset management and institutions. And so it sounded cookie, right?

4:05Did I've got this image in my head of the Wolf of Wall Street, you know, and that's like garage and that like co cooling for product box. Yeah. It was not quite Wolf of Wall Street, right? It was perfectly legitimate. The company's now two three hundred billion in assets at center management, like 5 ,000 employees. We were probably like 300 employees at the time, like really trying to get this like direct mail, direct thing to work. And I was an SDR. I was going out there cold calling wealthy people that we got to fill out junk mail, reply cards for a little flashlight or a little booklet, call a winning 100 now.

4:39And that was really it. And then doing a bunch of outbounding to cold prospects to try to build this. Dude, that is funny. I want to pick one and can upload of areas of your career because as we said, transferable organizations, and we're going to do like a quick far in the beginning to get to know each other. This is why I'm single because I actually do this on dates too. So we're going to start with matter. What was your biggest lesson for me all the time with matter? And how did it impact your operating mindset? Oh gosh. One of the things I learned most about that company, and I know that sometimes it's right, it is move fast and break things.

5:09Like the idea that you don't have to be perfect, but sometimes especially in a fast -changing market. Speed is at a 10x premium. That was a lesson that was huge for me. Hey, everyone just try to do the right thing, experiment, move fast, break things, and maybe a few of these will work, and then we'll start doing more of that. To me, that was mind blowing, but I think that really balanced out a lot of how I think about scaling now, which is there are times when you want to really strive for, we got to do things right, we got one cut at this thing. It's a glass ball. It's not a rubber ball. If we drop it, it's going to shatter to, okay, how many things are actually that that if we screwed up, if we fucking it up, we can't go back and try to fix it.

5:46It's actually fewer than we think, especially when scaling because I know I'm not the smartest person in the room. If I don't have the best answer with all the data that's going to be right, why not have five more shots on goal instead of like, you know, waiting for that perfect shot. And I think that was actually a huge learning I had that even at a much larger scale than many startups. And I know that they don't often think like that now because it's a massive corporation moving fast, just trying a lot of things and really embracing that okay to fail mindset is huge. How do you create urgency in a sales cycle in terms of moving fast?

6:19Sales cycles are actually slowing now. How do you create urgency in a sales cycle? Yeah, I was just on a call with a number of other COO, CRO business leaders thinking like everybody sales cycle slowing, everybody is seeing harder to get the deal, no budgets, fill in the blank. That early adopter that products let's say does not work in a tight market. And that's not a bad thing. It does weed out the people who are disciplined and actually build a story versus not But in a market like this a couple things need to happen the default is I'm talking to my CFO I'm talking to my CEO. I'm not spending any money default is no Don't even spend the time.

6:51Don't even open the door the only time that I'm going to spend something is if someone Convinces me. Oh this thing is not what you think it is It actually is going to solve the most important thing that you're afraid of right now efficiency Sales productivity of any support utilization, whatever those things are for me as a business owner, unless you can speak to me in a very clear and concise way about why what you do solves that in a quantifiable way for the thing that I'm afraid of most right now, I'm getting nothing done. Now, the flip side of that is if I get to the person who actually owns that budget and owns that decision and can speak to that with that quantifiable thing, then guess what, I can break through that.

7:28I can get my sale done even in a world where it procurements, the enemy, ops is the enemy. Everybody's not executive has heard save money, save money, which means don't spend money on anything. We just had a large deal with the Amla 100 firm that we closed and right now, they're all looking to save money right now. It's tight times. And the sales rep and sales leaders got to the economic buyer and the CF and when it wasn't just one, it was like a CFO that had managed to partner the firm. And they'd been a customer, this was a large expand, for years. And yet they were not thinking about us as anything more than an awesome technology that applies AI machine learning to help them do discovery better and shrink the haystack of evidence.

8:06But instead that person heard, oh, wait a second, if I'm able to do this more effectively, I'm turning a cost center into a profit center. Wow, I can retain my employees better. Wow, I can pitch for business better in a more differentiated way. In a down market, that is a strategic business lever for me, not a capability that just helps me do something that I normally do. Before we used to rock up, show you the product and you go, ooh, shiny. And now it's cell to RCFO, cell to procurement. Does that mean we need to change? Doc -wise, team structure -wise, should we not invest in product or growth, should we invest in antipod sales?

8:41If I'm a founder, and that's the environment I'm in right now, and I advise an investor, a number of companies who are going through this exact same thing right now. Right? The sale is real different for sales automation, or whatever the technology is just six or 12 months ago. Right now, I need to figure out what is the problem my product solves and for whom? Getting back to that exact, okay, what is the problem I solve and for whom and how do I quantify that thing and how do I make sure that problem I solve is actually something that the CFO, the CEO, the CEO actually cares about right now. Cutting, cutting, running an efficient business, sales productivity, margin, I need to be able to make sure I can map back my narrative of what my product does to that big thing.

9:20And unless I can do that, I'm not going to get in the room. How do I map that back right now? So I'm sitting with Jonathan Friedman at DemoStack a couple weeks ago. I'm he's like, hey, we're trying to work on this thing. Great. OK, you have a tool that helps people create demos or you have a scratch pad that helps people shrink down the size of time spent. Right now, my CFO is going to, that's just some other piece of stack that the sales team wants to buy to make their jobs easier. Don't do it. Use the tools you have already. Do it in GDOS. Whatever the case is, use your CRM. I just need to figure out how I can map that story back to what is that CFO care about.

9:50operating more efficiently, sales productivity. If I actually invest in this thing, it's going to make my sales team that much more productive in a proven out way with these data points and with these sound bites. What else are you seeing with the CRO, COO discussions that you're having? Are you seeing a complete pullback in marketing? What are the trends you seeing in this new marketing fascinated? Yeah, I think right now every founder, every board member, every CFO is being push to say, okay, and this shift from grow to shift to productive growth, what is the operating envelope that we can play in right now?

10:22I think we're looking right now sales leaders, COO, CBOs, whatever the title is of the person that runs the go -to -market is being asked to say, hey, how do you demonstrate that you are building an effective and productive go -to -market on a per -ret basis on a per -seat basis? Whether it's my support org, my CS org, my AES, my SDRs, my partner people, I'm trying to figure out how to actually measure the effectiveness and productivity of that ore. Bookings per head rep, source dollars per marketing spend. If I can start to normalize those investments to metrics that actually matter and I can start comparing to each other, then I can start making a trade -offs of, wow, is my cost per booking or new booking customer or new booking dollar?

11:03Is that actually better or worse with an SDR lead or a marketing inbound or an AE outbound if I say they're going to spend a quarter of their time doing pipeline generation? That's the kind of effort that I think did just start having that conversation and actually making this trade -offs Even if you're start up to a late -stage private company to a public company that version of that conversation needs to happen And then we can decide for ourselves How do we make some decisions about where we want to invest and don't want to invest in the spirit of what's going to drive Efficient growth and productive growth?

11:31How are you finding renewals? I had Henry Shuckett zoom in from the show and he said they're actually having to change that all structure because of the challenge of renewals being so much harder. And so they're actually placing a lot more people in data and data kind of enforcement proving out that it's a really efficient tool to use within organizations before everyone just ups old anyway. How are you seeing renewals? And what's the impact there? Yeah, so a couple things right now though, the default is the same thing that happens on the pre -sale side is happening on the post -sale site, right?

12:02How am I rationalizing the use of this tool or the tool to this degree? What am I actually getting out of it, can we clean out a bunch of this SaaS proliferation across the company? That is coming across pre and post sale, and so the impact on renewals for the successful work is we need to have a true business justification if we're going to expect that customer to stay with us. Think about it as the converse or the mirror image of what needs to happen on the sales side and why the sales and success side need to be tightly intertwined. If a lot of these deals think about how we were doing deals like early days of trip actions to Vaughan or early days of EverVlaw.

12:36Awesome product. It's great. You sold to early days of MuleSoft, right? Sold to a developer who's using it for a project. See it, BojiCIO doesn't care about that, right? They want to centralize on a tool. They don't see its valuable, like they don't care who bought it and what lower level, mid -level person bought it. So how do you do that in the post sale if a lot of your customer base didn't buy that way? That means, ooh, we got to go figure out how to actually build that from the ground up, the bottom up. Oh, let's actually have a conversation about what is ROI? How do you measure it? What are the metrics that you think you should use?

13:05That we think you should use? And let's agree on what that looks like. Let's actually set the tone of what good looks like within that. Let's make sure your CFO or CIO or whatever it's going to ultimately say yes or no is bought into that as well. And so we almost have to like redo the sale the right way with the value message with the eB engagement. Then when we hadn't done it in the front, which is tougher, right? Are you using the account manager to do it? Are you using CSM to do it? Are you using AEM horsepower to do it? And then on this pure CS side, even if the profile of our CS rep is make them super successful, help support them, get them launched and implemented, service the admin.

13:38The question is, oh, how do we arm that profile of person with enough commercial mindset and tooling and playbooking to say, oh, how do I help map the org? How do I help ask tactical questions to figure out what our adoption is or isn't? How do I get some preview into other parts of the org that can be using us or that can utilize different parts of the stack, give them some of those plays that they can start to see that and actually build it from the existing potentially tactical relationship out. So I think it's a two -pronged thing, but either way, without tying clearly to value, quantifiable value, and agreement of what that value is, that relationship's going to be at risk.

14:11Speaking of that tactical roadmap within Ork, so I think we've jumped to step here. But if we go back into the question of a sales playbook, who is the person to create the sales playbook? Is it the founder, or is it the first head of sales or the first sales rep? If you're at that stage where you're still figuring out like that question of what is the problem my product solves and for whom right what industry what use case what profile a person what region if I'm still at that place where I feel like that's not a really repeatable motion and able to do at scale if I'm a product founder I gotta be close enough to help make sure that whatever is happening and whatever learnings we're getting is translating back so that that product led version of that product, marketer, product customer fit is lights out and tight, at least at the tightest ICP before you scale it out.

14:59If you're trying to go bring in ahead of sales to outsource that for you at that stage, that's pretty dangerous. Arielle and Navein was really involved with a lot of the early deals and knew the product knew the people really well to the point where he got a really clear view of, oh, this is our problem we solve for whom this is how we'll talk about it. And then at that stage, let's say the CRS coming in to actually help to scale that motion out. Now, if you have an early stage sales person, maybe it's an IC, maybe it's a team league, maybe it's a player coach, you got to be really close to that person to make sure those learnings are coming back because that's what you need to happen.

15:31The learnings are going back to help shape that product, your product customer fit. As you feel more or a component that is there, then you can step further away from that and outsource it to someone who can tell that story to that ICP in the way that you would and then build a team around it that's going to do that. Dude, if you don't know the problem, who you sell to and how you sell it to them, you shouldn't be doing this fucking company because you'll have zero luck fundraising, by the way, if you can't do that, you'll have zero ability to hire the right people if you can't do that because you've got no idea what you're looking at.

15:59One of my inspiring people about what's the story, right? And I met a lot of founders out there that they might have a big vision of the problem they want to solve and then it gets really murky after that. I don't want to go work with that founder unless they we've actually done a little bit of legwork to show there's some MVP of a go -to market of a something that works there and frankly I've also worked with founders who you said you can't raise money in the previous funding environment. I've talked to and have friends who are founders that actually did raise money and guess what they had a murky version of that maybe they might have had some initial product market or product customer some problem they were saw them for some people but maybe it wasn't big enough or maybe it wasn't meaningful enough.

16:32Maybe It wasn't going to catch in any market and guess what they start scaling a team around it and then six 12 24 months later They go oh, we're not in the right business. We're not in the right thing I can't go back now because I've already committed to this path What do you do that give the money back to the investors fold up shop pivot the question of our fears Okay, so we both agree that it should actually be the founder building out our playbook Then they kind of higher against it should they do hiring a sales rep to jack of all trades dog test it really just ask you don't know. But what should they have had of sales to build out team beneath them?

17:06Throw the title at the win -off for a moment. I think that first hire, when I'm looking at scale, I'm looking at scale me out as a founder. I'm trying to figure out how do I get someone who can continue to help me shape this message because it's not all done yet, right? I speak about it sometimes like it's binary. It's not to help scale and continue to refine the go -to -market and can give me some scale so that I'm not doing all the sales so that I have someone who's close enough to me that's given the feedback back so that we can iterate on that story on the ICP on the product market fit yet is helping me do more of those sales.

17:36To me, that could be a player coach. It could be a player who's stretching in a player coach. It could be someone who has that sort of creativity, but also can get out in front of the customers and help me continue to home that message. The next role would be the person who can probably run that first line team and continue to help shape that narrative, but also manage a few people to do that, right? And again, where you are in spectrum of you're hiring that first player to help you or that first player coach to help you probably depends on how much conviction you have that what you have is ready for that right jump in ahead from that first player coach or person to go do it with me to the first person who's like more of a coach than a player and going to have a team of people doing it I probably have to be comfortable putting those that amount of chips on the table I don't gamble but like I've been a Vegas I'm gonna put five chips on the table instead of one I gotta have enough conviction that But I have enough to go build those five reps around that's going to give me the momentum to go learn it faster, deliver bookings against it.

18:31The transition away from founder, that sales is I think the hardest thing in startups in many ways. Oh my god. Why were you do it too fast? One of the biggest fuckups that you see people make. Biggest fuckups would be one is staying too close. I speak sometimes with founders who have 10 sales reps reporting directly to them, makes no sense. Five sales reps reporting directly makes no sense. It completely impedes and then you also build this like sales model where like you are de facto head of sales or head of revenue And you're starting to play in territory that you might not be good at in terms of coaching and developing and holding accountability metrics compilates all that stuff So I think that to me is a hey, you maybe move a little too slowly against it too quickly would be at a couple flavors One is you hire someone who's like really large scale that has aspirations to be an early startup thinks it's cool to be in an early startup They don't really know what to do or they can't do it without hiring a bunch of other people to do it That's a tell -tale sign of this person's too far or has been too far from it for too long and either isn't willing or able To go step back and get their hands dirty to the degree I need done.

19:30Bill me a sales plan for scratch I don't have an FPN 18 or CFO. I got Google Docs Let's build a straight -up simple cop plan for your reps be able to play there and wants to play there and can readily play there Dude with the reps should we hire to a tutorial Jason Lampkins hired to at a time You'll see it needs good. Do we do that? Do we hire one of them? Yeah, I'm a big fan of two at a time, right? Again, this is the engineer me coming out. The two at a time thing, right? So much goodness comes out of it. First of all, if you don't have enough conviction in your business that you're hiring a rep that they'll go higher to, get it to the point where you think you have enough for two versus one because ultimately you're split in hairs.

20:04If you're like, oh, I think I can support one rep, not two, fundraise, get more conviction, the product, the story, whatever. But the two point is just so valuable because cohorting in in terms of ramping, the supporting each other, the ramping, the competitive elements of it. It's really hard to know is my product market fit fundamentally wrong is the way I'm telling the story fundamentally wrong, is the PG messaging I'm using fundamentally wrong? Or is it the rep that sucks or the rep that can figure it out? Having two helps to at least give you the minimum viable separate the two and give you a little bit of signal about what's happening, right?

20:35Now again, if you had or two great reps, awesome. You have two bad reps, maybe you gotta press restart and do it again, but at least it helps to neutralize from. Do you know what I see as a massive mistake? I see as a massive mistake people doing PLG and enterprise at the same time. They're almost too nervous to do one and commit and burn the boats on PLG or just be a top down enterprise org. For me, I think that's a big mistake. When doing PLG and enterprise, can you do both at the same time and what are the thoughts here? I would say it's for operational definitional purposes. Let's say enterprise meaning a couple $100 ,000, $400 ,000 sales rep in a long, protracted six to 12 month sales cycle and PLG will call sort of pure sort of online self -self -self -serve And then there's probably something in the middle of it which is like a velocity sales assist or Inside or inside outside hybrid model.

21:23So again, I agree. It's really hard to do both well, right? And it comes back to even how you design your product. So Facebook ads is inherently a self -serve platform, right? built self -serve first, you can use itself serve, you can now self -bomb board, and so the way that you built the people org around that Naturally is okay. Let's make sure we can get everybody self -serving and then using that as your funnel to figure out Oh, who are the bigger spenders who has higher potential spend who's doing interesting things that we can then build back into the product And then how can we use humans to augment the effectiveness those people are having to go extend them out?

21:55And that was what Facebook's mid market org did and had actually a lot of largest accounts in the earlier days Zinga, Play Down Living Social, right, Groupon, the performance advertisers, because they weren't out there selling Nike and Walmart and crushing that yet. They were helping the early advertisers find a lot of success doing that. That's a fundamentally different motion then. Let's go take someone a Super Bowl game, let's go build this great IO, let's go create this great creative pitch with the creative agencies to sell in. So that's just one example, but you build a product inherently differently and just start to say like, oh, we're going to do that well and have a really the enterprise ready product is really hard.

22:30You will solve something the other side of that, right? Heavy large enterprise integration, APIs work inherently better for larger companies that have a bigger need than sort of small startups when you think about sort of enterprise corporate IT. For a company that has not built a product that is meant to solve for like anybody can come and use it like Zapier type of citizen integrator to say, oh, let's all of a sudden think with a different DNA, think with a different go -to -market motion, think with a different marketing motion, you're not doing multi -touch attribution, lead gen marketing, you're doing consumer marketing, that's just such a different muscle from a product, engineering, go to market, marketing, success standpoint, that to do both well, you really have to have enough commitment and then DNA on the team and then resourcing to say we're going to do it well enough to actually win in both.

23:16What I see too often is people say we're going to do one and they don't really resource it. It's one thing to say you're going to do it. It's another actually do it effectively and they don't truly understand oftentimes because they don't even have the DNA experience on the team was built it to understand how different and hard it is. So I'm a huge believer of you, you got to commit to at least one and it's okay to evolve to the other, which is what going main stream often means, but don't try to do two or two. Okay, so you quit when we do about higher. So come wait for which one's easier to start in.

Read the full transcript

23:43It's a good question. The intellectual answer would be it depends on which space you're in and what your DNA is. If I'm building a security company doing enterprise security, I should probably start at the top of the market and and then go down because that's where the inherent need is biggest. And if I'm building like an ads business, right? It's an online ads business publisher like Facebook going bottoms up was absolutely right. So I would say a lot of it is depending on what space you're going after. If you're going to ask me personally, what I think is easier, personally, I think it's easier to start small and go.

24:12I agree totally. I also think it's because it's the product and growth mindset that's inherent within a PLG lead or whereas product first. Yeah. So difficult to be that in an enterprise or. and she tacky on enterprise sales into a PLG motion, not as hard as one thing. You get a Maggie heart of the world, she can do that very well. But just don't try to jump too far ahead of where the product is ready, where your success or your support, where your service is already. That motion if done right I think can be super. We're gonna hire some people now, okay? I had a freaking idea how to hire them. I'm a young first -time founder and you're a real bad advisor.

24:48So we're hiring ourselves first sales team members. How do I literally structure the hiring process? How many meetings? What are we doing the first? The second in the third. Help me. I take a lot of my hiring philosophy from MuleSoftable places. My wife was a long time Googler, who was famous for doing the other executive committee as they're approved every hire. The simple thing that I would say from my MuleSoft days and Greg Schott, if you're ever listening, thank you for the religion on this. People are the most, it's an adage. It's over said, it's a cliche. People are the most important thing.

25:18like that was what that company did better than anything else is figuring out. Not the product, not anything else, but hiring the best people and then figuring out how to utilize them. And how to do that is number one is what do you actually need to do in this job? Not just make calls or all that, but what are the like outcomes that you want this job to have? Help me figure out the narrative, help me break in a new customers in a evangelical sale versus a sort of a more tactical. We already know how we're going to sell it sale. Is it a product sale? I need someone to go spice someone up and get them to believe in the world around when everybody thinks it's flat What are those things you actually need done?

25:51And then let's actually break that down into skills that support it and then let's actually break down a process that helps us Bet for those skills in an effective way and interviews by the way if you think about it They're actually a pretty ineffective way to understand if someone's gonna be good at something right whoever interviews Well gets a job But that doesn't mean they're a great engineer and they're great the CSM or the great marketer They interview really well they're great in the room and I'm terrible in the room So that's why I say that. But what I need to do is design a process that bets for that.

26:16So say I decide okay for my enterprise AES I need really strong operational linear execution. I need strong coachability. I need great in the room skills Let's actually vet for that designing number one structured interview questions that vet for oh tell me how you had Driven situation action result, right? Tell me how you drove this type of Interaction what you did what was the result? How did you do it? Having those structured questions that have bet for those specific skills and then knowing what a good answer looks like What a bad answer looks like and then making sure to ask that question at every time and ideally with the same interviewer So that you can get some calibration between candidates That's really important So if you build out a light structured interview process say it's not not three interviewers one for track record of achievement one for This linear execution coach ability What happens in your coach when I see a track record I get it I go through meals and all so I go do matter Sorry, with your trip options.

27:09What was in coach ability? It had to actually vet for them. So again, I'll go to the other pieces, but track rick and by the way, a lot of people screw that. Like a lot of people leave a lot on the table for like, hey, how'd you do? I was a top rap, I was this day out there, and they stopped there. Everybody in me salesperson can tell you how they were the top. And then the question that don't get asked are like, oh, what were the metrics that you were measured on? Okay, how did you do on that? Great, how many other reps were there in that cohort in that region? I was the top of my region. I was the top five said, oh, it was the top of two reps.

27:37That doesn't tell me much right? I was atop one of 10 wraps on new business sales and the average attainment I did was 120 and the average attainment they did was 80 Oh, that's actually valuable asking those clarifying questions over what period what was the metric how are you measured how many people were in that cohort how well do the others do? So you can actually get a real sense of like repeatability quarter after quarter after quarter year after year after year roll out to roll out to roll That's actually really important so that we don't stop at hey, I was a top achiever cool done That doesn't give you much any great salesperson can ever be a pass that coach ability EQ Those are like hard to ask how do you do that?

28:12Tell me about a situation where you were stuck in a deal Why were you stuck what happened? What'd you do next? What'd you do to get help? Well, what what did how did you react to this? Don't lead them to what you need to get help help. I went to tones of stuff What's you doing that situation did they engage the manager did they engage in essay? Did they go talk to partners outside to go figure out how to go crack that open? Okay, then what happened then what happened? them happen. And you can design these questions to start talking about, okay, what is it in a real life situation in my role? What would I want them to do in that scenario?

28:39To see if they're, like, the classic one is, hey, what's, you lost a deal? What happened? I'm looking for a human. Yeah, you know, all these other things happen. You know, it wasn't built right and externalization, externalization, externalization, or I really should have seen this. I didn't do that. I learned that I should have gotten to the eb earlier. Okay, how'd you not go to the eb earlier? Well, I thought I had a great champion that we're to get the deal done. Oh, interesting. What did you do with that in your next deal? Did you do anything with that? Oh, that was a one off. That was a one off.

29:05Harry, it was going to happen. It was happening sometimes. Yeah, that's a very different response. And oh, I started to do things differently. I go work with my manager earlier to look at the deals and the deal reviews. I'm actually going to use these lines to go get to the eb earlier. And this is why. So you can actually, without leading, see how they respond. And when you ask them, but then what, tell me more, tell me more, you can get some more color. What a big red flag. And what you just said. So one for me would be like, oh, it was rich as full. And you just have total denunciation of blame.

29:33When you look at your career track record, like track record and coach ability, anything's way like Harry, when they say that, be worried. Yeah. Job changes, a lot of job changing huge red flag for me. At some point, everybody's got to get a reason. But if you say do one or two years stints for like several in a row, that's a huge red flag. You know, performance, great sales reps, no exactly how they did every year. Like I can tell you, okay, and in And this year, 2007, I did this and it made this amount of money. I was number one on the sales, but I was number two on the sales, where no three John Hollook beat me.

30:02Damn him. He's an awesome dude. But I missed out because of X like salespeople know their numbers if they can't like quickly rattle and tell you those things or they start to him and, huh? That's an interesting signal when you start digging in track record. It's a really interesting example. But again, the interview structured interviews is only half the story and don't actually give you much. Having an exercise that really, and you don't have to be a big company to do this, what What is something that they would actually do that mimics what they would need to do in the role? Hey, here's a scenario.

30:29Make a cold call to me, write a prospecting email, run this meeting, but do a prep to say what we're going to talk about, like how you would set up a meeting and then go run that meeting with me and how you pitch, maybe our product, maybe it's your own product and do that mock version of it. Super helpful and actually rate that. How did they show up in the room? How did they do at setting the tone for the meeting and running it? How do they do at doing discovery? How do they do at actually commercial teaching? How do they do it closing for next steps? How do I make sure I can quickly design at simple extra You see how they're doing at that and it can be two parts, but it should be part of the process I have to ask do you do it on your company and so you have the domain knowledge that you can judge from the value of them against What do you do on that company where that operating from a situation of safety and domain experience?

31:14Yeah, I've done both obviously with your company You can see if they can quickly do the research which assimilate all the information they get with how to pitch it, figure out the product and pitch it back to you. If you do their product, you can demonstrate more about how they would run the meeting, how they would do the discovery, how they would practice these core sales skills. So it really depends on what you would want to get out of it more. And actually I might do either one depending on, do I have questions of if this person's either smart enough to do my sale or motivated enough to go do the research or is putting together the pieces or it can actually help tell my story in a way that's better that I haven't thought about yet?

31:48But if I have questions on core salesmanship or salesperson ship, I might have them do theirs and I can play into their role. Or am I doing a little bit of that? We're going to spend 15 minutes on a meeting here and then we're going to do like a quick five minute if you're prospecting and doing PG. How would you help PG. We to take a meeting and go do our product. But that exercise is super important. And then finally, like references and back channels, I know sometimes people do the back channel thing is some, you know, has mixed emotions out there. But I would say like if we know someone who we trust that has worked with that person's obviously not gonna blow them up That I trust in my network.

32:20I sure as hell want to figure out some signal references You can easily give someone who's gonna sing my praises tell me if Harry's good or not. Hey, Harry's awesome Cool, thanks. Bye. What does Harry do well? What are the areas that you were coaching Harry in? What are the ways that others worked with them? You know, what are those things that actually get it out? And I set it up by saying hey, I want to make sure this person set up for success here that we're the right fit for them so that we don't put them in the wrong type of company. So the more direct you'll be with me, the more open you'll be with me, the more we can figure out that for this human who I know you love and like and trust, that's the best fit for me.

32:51Someone once gave me the best advice on referencing me. They said people will 99 % of the time never tell you that real weakness. And so you say, hey, if I was hiring someone to work alongside or beneath rich, what skills would they have? And they go, oh, that'd be super rigorous. That'd be very operationally focused, because not need to be so creative, but there'd be very much kind of by the book and driven and numbers went operation. And you're like, okay, you've just told me that Rich is not operational, but he's very creative. It's a really good one. Tell me man, we need to give these guys an offer and girls an offer now.

33:25Well, it's been some big lessons on compactages for sales teams. How should I do it? I would say number one is sometimes I hear founders say, oh, that person's like getting it off of her so and so. They're competing with so and so, I gotta compete with this and to get over anchored into throwing the kitchen sink and giving out the company to go get them. There are some good benchmarks out there for any role, AECSM, marketer, partnerships person, ops person, strategy person. So trust that, all VCs, all the town folks and recruiters will give you that. The bigger question is also trying to figure out, is the person actually at that level and with that experience that you are comfortable making that offer to them?

34:04I think a lot of the call it offer inflation out there that we had seen the last few years was like, okay, anybody can be a VP sale, CRO, CRO at a series A, whatever company, the whole titleing thing got thrown out a whack because the inflation is out there. Another thing is, okay, do the job for a year, does that make me a great COO? Because I got the title now at one place, at a company that may or may not be similar, similar scale, similar problems itself, that doesn't necessarily qualify me for the job. So I would be really clear around like, let's make sure what you need in the job is like based on I need to solve this end of the journey.

34:39Build the first sales or go from first to second -line leadership, take us from early adopter to mainstream as we were doing at Nevan when I joined. These are the things I need done. Okay, great. What scope of person do I need for that? And what is the right titleing for that and what is the comp for that? Be really clear about that and then make sure that the person you are hiring actually fits that description, titles aside, experience aside, and that's what you want to use your interview process to go solve for. We've had people who I've hired. Hey, this is a let's call it strategic sales director RVP role And that person might have that title at another company or a bigger title and they're saying no I should be an SPP Okay, great you can go with them on that or you could say well based on the word you're doing based on scope as it translates to us It's this role this title and it's okay to say look I recognize you can get that SVP CROCO offer somewhere else This is what this offer is.

35:29This is why I believe it's meaningful. The vision that we're selling, the future that we're going to create, the opportunities you'll have to grow and learn, opportunities to work on me, whatever those things are, to be really clear what they're getting there. But don't get caught into the like, I got to do this title of this offer just because somewhere else. And if you do, do so knowingly, I'm trading off that I'm giving this higher title to someone, some person that I might need to up love a later, because now I can't bring someone on top because I've given this title, I've given this cop. I think that's really important to keep in mind and sometimes it's easy to say, okay, I just need to do this to get someone and there you go.

36:02And I'm a huge proponent of being intellectually honest and bringing the people around you if you're a founder to help you do that, right? Your advisors who no go to market your investors, the executive recruiters who again might have a bit of a conflict of interest in some ways. I want to talk about some of the art of sales, so which is a quarter kind of doing it well. and I'm gonna paper you with questions. Number one, discounting. Do you do discounting? How do you advise founders on discounting? What is the model I'm trying to run, right? Every approach has trade -offs. To crowd erase, it's a knife fight.

36:33We got to capture share. I'm gonna do the lowest that I can possibly maintain from a margin standpoint to capture that share and do it efficiently, then raise the prices. Is it a, hey, we think we built even in a crowd space, the best product, it's at a premium. I can clearly tell a story that is defensible and differentiated when I get into that room with the CFO and tell them why it should be worth more. Those are pretty different approaches. A lot of the founders I speak with will probably tell me, hey, we, and ever lose the same way, we think we built the best product, we think we have the best team, we demonstrably get in the room and people say, yep, you guys are the best product, you built the best thing by far, then it becomes a question of how much of a premium can I charge for?

37:09And that premium depends on how well I can tell the story, quantify the value, have proven results for delivery. Rich, that may also be a very direct question. Do you discount? Yes. Okay. If I'm running a PLG, don't waste your time getting into these cycles of discounting and not. But if I'm running like an enterprise sale, I like to hold a high list and then figure out how I need to discount to still protect a premium and get the deal done. I'm going to discount aggressively if I need to break in a new space and market. But I need to know why I'm doing that in the trade off of me because now I'm eating cat effectively.

37:40it's deal reviews. How often do you do them? What makes a good deal review versus a bad one? How do you structure them? Yes, we do them. Bad deal review is everybody again in a room. Let's go talk about the DLC. What happened? Great deal review. Let's actually go through and use a framework, any framework, MedPick, you build your own, right? Command of the message, create negative consequences. What's the pain? What's the negative consequences? What are the outcomes? You want one of the after scenario and positive business outcomes? Use a framework, But be religious about actually using it so that you're not just getting in there.

38:10All right, how's it going on with the deal? And it's sometimes doing that for all the key deals that are not necessarily just going to close in a quarter But that you need to go evolve from whether it's 10 or 25 % stage to the 50 % 90 % stage that's actually where the impact is driven by when we're looking at the deals that are supposed to close this quarter It's like all right, you have a close plan. You have access to the eb You have to quantify the metrics that we've done the validation steps It's actually that cohort of deals that's like going whatever you call it that we've done the demo there's something here we haven't actually built it into like a verbal commit yet.

38:41That's actually where the deal review is the most valuable And I'm trying to grab those deals at recorder and make sure that either me or head of sales or head of America's whoever it is is actually doing that deal review with that set of deals at recorder You get through them rich. How often do you do deal reviews weekly at least I weekly at least got you who comes to the deal review the rep Frontline manager and an executive of the VP sales, the SBP sales, me, someone should be there. What are the most common reasons that you don't get deals over the line? I think there are a few places that comes up.

39:13Number one is you never had true buy -in to start with. You didn't do the deal the right way yet. You're trying to prosecute and just go through the sale stages. I'll send out contracts. Boss, I got 10 contracts out. All right, are anyone going to sign? By when? By what? Actually trying to do the contracting and the like operational sale without actually getting over the hump with your champion, with your economic buyer, with a business case that matters. That's a huge issue, particularly right now in a changing market. A second one is not getting to the economic buyer and actually selling to them.

39:44Right now, the, oh, I got the e -be in the back behind the scenes. That's not a true champion. You don't have a deal. Those are probably the things that are hurting deals the most right now in this current environment, in this changing environment. What are the biggest red flags in the first month of a new sales rep joining. They don't do PG number one. They don't generate their own pipeline. They won't make the calls. They won't actually get out there and get their hands dirty. So being PG is pipeline generation. Correct. If they are not doing, if they're not doing it early in their tenure, that's a sign.

40:12If you've set up an expectation that they should be doing it, to me, that's a big one. And how do you tell a lot of you looking, pop drive and see? Do you look in that? Call and doesn't see that email. Yeah. There's as tactical as activity. But if you could set of basic sales force reporting on how many ops they're generating. Good role of thumb is like an AE in my book should be generating at least a new op a week by themselves without SDRs without marketing, helping them in an enterprise software sale out on sale. Are you at least doing one off a week? If you're not, okay, are you doing activity?

40:38How are you doing it? Do you actually know how to do it? That's the hardest part of selling it. They don't have either the appetite or the skill to do that. You better get it fast because you're not going to work here. And granted, we should be vetting for that in our hiring process going back to what we just talked about. That's number one. Number two is when they just don't seem to grok the product. If I don't, if I can't grok the like talk track, how to talk about it, how to use the product, how to share it. Yes, we talked about not going straight to a product let's say a driven sale, but if they're not showing that at a pretty fundamental level and quickly grappling onto those sound bites, talk tracks, that's usually a big red flag for me.

41:10So between those two, those are pretty early because those are the precursors to can you actually get pipe, can you actually build late stage pipe, can you actually do deals? It doesn't matter how good they were in the room because they might not ever get there. One of the biggest fuck up you've made is a self -leader -ish. This is one where probably good advice for founders and for sales leaders and heads of sales are just getting really aligned on expectations on what's possible what's not. So number one is I talked to a lot of early -stage go -to -market leaders and early -stage founders who will tell me the flip side of this same question which is like what's possible?

41:40It's talking to a founder and he had just turned out ahead of sales. I want to push them hard, I want to make sure that we're striving and we're you know this is like a 10x type of year, we should be running five X this year. I believe the product is so good that it should be doing that. His sales leader didn't have that belief. His sales leader is like, hey, I think this is like a two X year, one and a half X year, 5 % growth year. Here's why. And there was that gap between what each side thought was possible. And instead of solving that and figuring out a target, the CEO founder sets a target that's like crazy high.

42:10Sales leaders like, I don't have the confidence to push back or bring this to a header lead and takes that. And we'll bend over backwards, try to make it happen, see what happens and then even if you get to 90 % of that crazy stretch target, man, it feels like, oh, we burned ourselves ragging, we still didn't hit it, you know, maybe the board's like, ah, you have come, you didn't hit this target. And meanwhile, growing 4x of on a 5x target might have been freaking amazing, taking all the weird expectations out of it. I've certainly fallen into that camp. That's one of the biggest things that I've done as a sales leader.

42:38So I think it's just so important to get no daylight between what we think is possible, what the appropriate amount of stretches so that we set the expectations around the right way. We motivate the team the right way. They have the right feelings of winning. We set the board expectations and company expectations the right way. And most importantly in this environment, we're investing the right way because the worst thing is I invest for a 2x growth year and I grow one half x and I took the cost to grow 2x and a group. What would you advise sales leaders in terms of accurate full -costing in 2023.

43:08Now is the time more than ever to go inspect what is real and what is not because things that might have been a deal that you could feel 50 % 75%, 90 % confident a year ago might not close at all this year or might get delayed this year. So like the difference between deals pushing deals not closing at all or deals coming in way smaller is do I have direct access to an eB do I have a real business case or am I selling it off of a cool this is a nice product we'd love to have if I'm doing that kind of inspection for troop business case, direct access to EBE. Do I have a closed plan in front of them or an evaluation plan that we've talked about?

43:43By this date, we will do this. By this date, we will do that. You are looking for these three things to go make a decision. These are who the people are who are going to make the decision by this date. And this is what we will show them. If we don't have that, even if it was a good deal last year, it's probably not going to close this year and it's definitely not going to close on time. So that level of inspection of your mid -stage pipe and what are the things in your sale you need to have a deal right now and take a fresh look at it. That is what but I think everyone should be doing in your entire mid -stage pipe and building into your early qualification deal process or sales process if you don't have it.

44:14Those are the things I'm seeing like in different sales and different industries and different velocities, it could be different things, but that's the thing that's gonna keep us from getting surprised around, hey, I had this pipe and I had this great pipe coverage. It turned out it was like fake pipe and just slipped out. I can talk to all of them, my friend, but I wanna move into a quick firearm. So we're gonna start with what sales tactic have not changed over the last five years. I would say a huge fan of force management and that the value framework, you know, whether it's force management, whether it's like, challenge or selling that idea of needing to attach, do enough pain -based discovery to figure out what are the most important problems or worries or fears or existential threats that company is facing, that the CEO is facing, that the economic buyer in your org is facing, like doing that level of pain -based discovery has not changed and actually getting to that true, I don't know, sandwich called like level three pain of like what is the true business pain and figuring out how to map what you do your service your platform really back directly to that in a quantified way that has not changed.

45:13Well sales tax it has died of death. I would say for me right now having that perfectly crafted email hey I did agree with the UI now it's two paragraphs I've done a lot of research or I've done the cheap thing where it's like hey you went to you know you're the captain volleyball team what do you think about you volleyball this year Rich like those types of like pure right the perfect email and you get a response like that's not going to work right now. I would say like multi touch and VR and SDRAE like multi touch. I don't get a lot of calls. I won't take a lot of calls, but I will say like send me the text.

45:46Leave the call, send me the text. Hit me on the voice about 70s of video video like figure out how to get through to someone. I think needing to actually be creative and multi touch. I'm always shocked at how many reps don't do the click video or don't do the LinkedIn or don't do the Twitter or don't do the g chat. What is the use mistake found as mate when hiring sales team. The biggest mistake I think is hiring ahead of what you actually have conviction to do. You think you are ready to scale and you're not ready to drive efficiency. The second is just hiring a leader that is not really well suited to what you need done in terms of what you need to accomplish in the next 12 to 18 months, not 24 to 36 and not moving quickly enough to go make changes if it's not working.

46:23What one piece of advice would you give to a sales lead starting a new role today? Be quick in identifying and driving alignment with the CEO or founder or your boss. What are the most important things we can get done this quarter? What are the one or two metrics that I need to show you to show that we're doing this right? What would you most like to change about the world of sales? Oh gosh, more people get into it instead of feeling like, when I got into sales, I was a gangly engineering student from Yale and I had this understanding that it was for like slick, well -spoken white guys that could tell the story the right way.

46:57And I had that chip on my shoulder. And I would say that I would love to see more people consider it as a career coming out of any major with any background because it's an amazing career. I've learned a ton. I've met some really cool people doing it. And the reason I'm still doing it is because I keep learning and I keep figuring out ways to do it differently. And in an environment where maybe AI is going to take our jobs, ability to go connect with people in a real way. The ability to go show value. The ability to go do deep -disco. I think that's at a premium. And sometimes slick, well spoken white guys are very good at this.

47:26Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I was like, I was like, I was doing that in the future going, oh, I feel judged. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. I mean, I'm like best friends are that I don't live in. And then, oh, my ego is sufficiently inflated anyway. I will be fine. But I do want to finish on my favorite actually, other than Avalor. What one company sells strategy have you been most impressed by recently? It was a wild back, but I think one of the plays that I think really helped me even during the pandemic. So we bought people AI during the pandemic at trip actions to bond. And it was initially to go get like contact capture so we can build our database to go track activity and go go better do marketing to those folks.

48:03And they do this thing where they did the like, hey, we know you don't want to buy this expensive analytics offering. But we think it can give you some insights. And I'm like, no, I got a great analytics team CKC use the best on the plane. You know, real hold the size like amazing. Like we got our own stack. We're good. And they were like, well, we'll give it to you for free for six months. Just try it out. Like, will help you implement it and stand it up. And if it's anything other than amazing, like you don't have pay for it, but they built it in the contract. So it was like premium in an enterprise software sale.

48:27They built a premium thing into the contract. They worked with us to stand it up and make it successful. And sure enough, we signed the check to do the broader platform by after that was done, despite a lot of skepticism on my part that it was valuable. Now that's not to say that's the only way to do it. But in a world where we're trying to drive more bundle size and basket within our customers right now, to keep them sticky in an environment that is going to be more friction around buying and keeping pieces of hardware software, thinking creatively around how to actually build that expansion, that cross -sell into your sale upfront.

49:00I think that was a great example of that. And you got a travel company to buy more software during a pandemic and the revenue went down to zero. I think it's a pretty cool thing. Dude, I love this. Thank you so much for putting up. It's Friday afternoon, so I've been more casual than I normally am in my straight -unit language box. But I love this. It's been so much fun. You've been fantastic, so thank you so much for joining me, stay man. Oh my gosh, Harry, much enjoying at my side, always a pleasure and I hope you have a wonderful week. Well, I mean, that was a free -flowing discussion, which really put up with the way we'd schedule there.

49:32If you want to see more from us, of course you can on YouTube by searching for 20VC, and I always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, you might remember in our amazing episode with Maggie Hot. She mentioned a tool she could not live without, called Pocus. What is Pocus? Well, Pocus is a revenue data platform. The amazing easy for go -to -market teams to analyse, visualise and action data about their prospects and customers without needing engineers. Focus helps companies like Miro, Webflow, Loom and Superhuman focus their sales and success teams on the highest priority opportunities by surfacing insights at the right moment so wraps can take action quickly.

50:08Focus gives you a 360 degree view into product usage, empowering you to act on insights and fill your funnel efficiently. Sales teams save 10 plus hours per week, digging through data to surface millions of new revenue opportunities, learn more about why top PLG businesses trust Pocus as their revenue data platform by visiting Pocus .com -flash -demo and sales loft is the leading sales engagement platform, helping sales teams drive more revenue with the modern revenue workspace. It's that one place sales teams can go to prospect, manage active deals and get the insights if they need to coach seller performance, forecast with accuracy and find out what steps to take to close more deals.

50:49Some of the world's leading companies like Google, Shopify and Stripe all love a new sales loft and so can you. It's the new way to sell. Find out more at salesloft .com. As always I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an amazing episode this coming Friday.

From the publisher

Rich Liu is the CRO @ Everlaw and a unicorn GTM exec having scaled five multi-billion dollar tech unicorns across two IPOs, a successful acquisition, and numerous funding rounds. Prior to Everlaw, Rich architected the GTM motions for companies like Navan (TripActions), MuleSoft, and Meta (Facebook). As a result of his incredible success, Rich has been recognized as a 2021 Top 100 Global Sales Leader.

In Today's Episode with Rich Liu We Discuss:

1. Entry into the World of Sales:

  • How Rich made his way from biochemistry into the world of sales?
  • What is 1 takeaway from his time at Navan, Meta and Mulesoft that has shaped how he thinks about sales today?
  • What does Rich know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of sales?

2. Sales Today: What is Happening?

  • What are the biggest sales leaders saying today about price sensitivity and deal cycles?
  • What has changed in the way companies buy software with the macro downturn?
  • What do companies need to do to get deals over the line today?
  • How do startups need to change the way they message to enterprises in order to sell today?
  • How has the renewals process changed? What does this mean for customer success teams today?

3. PLG vs Enterprise: When and How?

  • Is it possible to do both PLG and enterprise at the same time?
  • Is it easier to start with enterprise and move to PLG or visa versa?
  • How does the type of sales leader you need change dependent on the motion?
  • When is the right time to move from founder-led sales to sales team?
  • How does one know whether to hire a junior jack of all trades or a senior sales leader?

4. How To Hire The Best in Sales:

  • How does Rich structure the hiring process for all new reps today?
  • Does he use case studies to determine their depth and ability? Is the case study of the company they are interviewing at or a fresh company?
  • What questions does Rich ask every candidate for a new role?
  • What are some of the biggest red and green flags in how candidates talk in interviews?

More from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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20Sales: PLG and Early Adopter Sales are Gone, How to do Sales Forecasting in 2023, Why You Cannot Do PLG and Enterprise from Day 1 at the Same Time and Which is Easier to Start, How to Onboard, Manage and Scale Reps with Rich Liu, CRO @ EverlawThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 51 min
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