#CRVPluggedIn: Best Practices for Building a Strong Go-To-Market Culture and Organization — A Conversation with John McMahon, Author and Legendary Enterprise Software CRO
By Izhar Armony
Since 1970, CRV has invested in more than 400 startups at their most crucial stages, including DoorDash, Airtable, Patreon, Drift and Iterable. Founders need more than capital to build a great company. It takes a partner who understands the entrepreneurial journey and knows what it takes to win. Our #PowerToThePerson Speaker Series connects founders and their teams with luminaries in the tech industry and beyond.
During our most recent session, CRV general partner Izhar Armony spoke with John McMahon, a legend in the enterprise software business about his latest book The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five-Time CRO. John was an integral part (either as a board member and/or an early advisor) of companies like SnowFlake, AppDynamics, BazzarVoice, GlassDoor, Hubspot, MongoDB and SumoLogic. As an operator, John held senior GTM roles at several successful startups that had big meaningful exits including Ariba, BladeLogic, GeoTel and PTC. Several of John’s protégés have gone on to lead successful sales teams of their own at fast-growth companies like Okta, Snowflake and more.
Their candid conversation covers common themes they observe with founding teams’ Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies, best practices and ways to build an enduring, strong GTM culture and organization.
An excerpt of their conversation can be found below, but you can also watch the full discussion over on CRV’s YouTube channel.
Izhar: Most of the time management is not using QBR (Quarterly Business Reviews) the right way. Talk a little bit about that.
John: Managers are using their power of position in some ways to intimidate the reps. Where they’re just asking and hammering them with questions, but the managers aren’t truly listening to what the rep is saying and the manager is really there to coach the rep.
Izhar: What advice would you give a leader, that is not from sales, about hiring their sales leader?
John: A lot of times you’re going to come up with that ideal profile …and it may look like you’re looking for a unicorn. The main thing you want to do is, you want to limit your risk. So, if the person is missing multiple knowledge areas, multiple skill areas, then you know you’re taking a really big risk. The final thing is matching the stage of your company to the characteristics of the person that you’re trying to hire. So I see a lot of times, like, guys are starting companies and it’s a software product and they think sales is sales, so this person sold $40 million deals at Cisco, so they’re going to be able to sell my software product. No they’re not. ’Cause when they were at Cisco everybody has Cisco, so they never had to break into new accounts.
Izhar: You’ve had one of the most successful careers possible in enterprise sales. You’ve done awesome. What do you think made you a strong great sales leader and sales person?
John: I’ve always thought of myself as an introvert. I grew up in the streets of New York City, so one thing that you pick up there pretty quickly is your ability to gain intuition and figure out what’s going down here really quickly. So I think that that always helped …and I never thought of myself as the greatest presenter. I never thought of myself as the fastest talker and that’s kind of what you associate sales people with. So, I did think, and I still think, that I’m maybe one of the most persistent people that I’ve ever run into. So if I had to get to a VP of engineering, I’d stand you know in the parking lot right where those bumpers used to be and they’d say, “VP of engineering” and I’d stand there with two cups of coffee and I’d wait until he pulled in. Now talk about having to have your elevator pitch ready? I had to have my elevator pitch ready. So, I think that’s what made me a good sales guy, because I also thought to myself if you were going to beat me you better get up early and go to bed really really late, because that’s what I’m going to do.
Did this discussion resonate with you? Comment below or use #CRVPluggedIn to share your favorite key learnings and quotes from John McMahon’s session with us over on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
