10/10 GTM

Our guest for Episode 29  is Paul Snelson, SVP of Global Sales at SysAid. Before joining SysAid, Paul held leadership roles at Meal Ticket, TouchBistro, and Salesforce. He brings more than two decades of experience to the conversation. 

In this episode, Ross and Paul discuss why effort is not optional, the critical role of mutual plans, and the benefit of being the paranoid sales rep. 

In an era marked by market volatility, bringing in new business has become increasingly challenging. With larger buying committees, extended deal cycles, and stricter budgets, the landscape of selling has evolved. To navigate the complexities of this new world, there’s one essential tool in your sales stack you can count on: the fundamentals.  

In this masterclass, revenue leaders from SEON, Rev, and Sales Assembly share what sales teams need to do to close more deals in today’s challenging environment.

They cover:

Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!

Our guest for Episode 27 is Peter Borkovich, SVP of Sales at Yotpo. With a wealth of experience spanning two decades, Peter has held leadership positions at InVision and Salesforce before joining Yotpo.

In this episode, Ross and Peter discuss the why behind deals, the 3 levels of a sale, and how to make it easier for buyers to buy and sellers to sell. 

Our guest for Episode 26 is Chloe Stewart, Fractional CRO, and former CRO at Pilot.com. Chloe is an accomplished revenue leader who builds and executes GTM models for high-growth companies. She brings more than 15 years of sales experience to the conversation. 

In this episode, Ross and Chloe discuss the importance of being someone customers want to buy from, the necessity of holding yourself accountable to outcomes and benchmarks, and why you have to be ruthless with qualification criteria. 

Our guest for Episode 25 is Mark Wayland, CRO at Box. Before joining Box in 2019, Mark held leadership positions at Tanium, Salesforce, and Gartner, Inc. He brings more than three decades of experience to the conversation. 

In this episode, Ross and Mark discuss the importance of codifying deal excellence, partnering with frontline managers, and implementing effective strategies to measure, celebrate, and course-correct sales initiatives. 

Our guest for Episode 24 is Dan Wardle, VP of Sales at Noibu. Before joining Noibu, Dan held leadership positions at Vidyard, Salesforce, and Blackberry. He brings two decades of experience to the conversation. 

In this episode, Ross and Dan discuss Dan’s top three tips for operationalizing deal excellence across revenue organizations. They explore the importance of ironing out next steps, establishing mutual action plans, and monitoring and enforcing multi-threading. 

Our guest for Episode 23 is Dan Dal Degan, Co-founder of Talas. Dan brings 37 years of sales experience to the conversation, with more than two decades working specifically in SaaS. 

In this episode, Ross and Dan discuss the critical factors for closing more deals, emphasizing the importance of establishing your ideal customer profile (ICP), conducting monthly seller training sessions, and hosting weekly reviews of inspirational sales stories.

Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!

Our guest for Episode 22 is Cale Tully, VP Enterprise & Mid-Market Sales, at Sprout Social. Prior to joining Sprout Social, Cale spent 11 years at Salesforce working in leadership roles.

In this episode, Ross and Cale discuss three tips for operationalizing deal excellence. These include understanding the three 'whys' behind your prospect’s motivations, maintaining deal momentum through frequent communication, and calibrating deal risk to ensure success.

In 2024, just showing up on calls and going through the motions won't cut it. To come out on top, you need to up your game with solid planning, thorough research, and flawless execution.

And the best way to do this consistently is by creating detailed account plans. These plans cover everything from researching company priorities to mapping out stakeholders, aligning with executives, and devising creative strategies. 

In this masterclass, revenue leaders from Okta, Sailpoint, and Twilio share insight into how you can build account plans that arm your teams with the right information for their target accounts so they can land more meetings and win more deals. 

Our guest for Episode 20 is Jen Allen-Knuth, Founder of DemandJen. Jen brings 18 years of sales experience to the conversation, and has worked at companies such as Challenger and Gartner. 

In this episode, Ross and Jen discuss how to position products and problems to close deals.  They explore strategies for territory prioritization and identifying problem fits, alongside techniques to guide prospects in rethinking their assumptions.

Our guest for Episode 19 is Beau Brooks, VP of Sales & CS at Teamwork. Beau brings more than a decade of experience to the table. Before Teamwork, he held leadership positions at Factorial HR, Formstack, and Signpost.

In this episode, Ross and Beau discuss why it’s necessary to review pain on all internal deals, make deal stage progression transparent, and run team-level calls. 

Our guest for Episode 18 is Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner.com. Kyle is recognized as a top sales prospecting voice on LinkedIn. He brings more than a decade of sales leadership experience to the conversation. 

In this episode, Ross and Kyle discuss the importance of documenting everything, conducting dry runs before key meetings, and why you need to have a structure in place to scale your sales org. 

Our guest for Episode 17 is Nicole Brambila, CRO at Medely. Nicole brings more than a decade of sales leadership experience to the conversation. Before Medely, Nicole worked at Deputy, Eventbrite, and LoopNet. 

In this episode, Ross and Nicole discuss how to operationalize deal excellence by being curious and intuitive, and following proven processes. 

In this episode, Dustin and Ross discuss how to align incentive structures with business objectives that drive predictable, responsible, sustainable growth. 

Our guest for Episode 15 is Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital. Doug specializes in capturing and creating GTM strategies for Emcap’s portfolio companies and the greater SaaS community. He brings a wealth of experience to the conversation and shares practical tips for how sellers can get better at closing and forecasting. 

In this episode, Doug and Ross discuss why closing deals hinges on your ability to build consensus among stakeholders and align on a singular problem. They also explore the importance of identifying the ‘whys’ behind the deal and why what you don’t know will hurt you. 

Our guest for Episode 14 is Jeff Benson, VP of Commercial Sales at enosix. Jeff brings more than two decades of experience leading global business growth in multiple regions and sectors, including Financial Services, Retail, and Regulated Industries.

In this episode, Jeff and Ross discuss why the best sellers and revenue leaders take extreme ownership, maintain an iterative sales playbook, and are always qualifying opportunities. 

If you’re struggling to craft a compelling business case that will win the approval of even the most discerning CFOs, you’re not alone. In this challenging macroeconomic environment, financial decision makers are more critical than ever of new initiatives and their potential impact on the organization’s bottom line. With tighter budgets and increased scrutiny on every dollar spent, the pressure is on to present a case that is not only convincing but also backed by solid data and aligned with long-term strategic goals. 

In this masterclass, finance, and revenue leaders from Ada, Webflow, and Own Company share insight into how to build a business case that addresses these concerns head-on, providing practical tips on how to demonstrate clear ROI, mitigate risks, and showcase how your initiative can drive sustainable growth and efficiency.  

Finance is becoming more involved in deals as organizations shift away from growth at all costs, and focus on efficient growth. 

In this masterclass, CFOs from Figma, Sprout Social, and Vena Solutions share their thoughts on why finance involvement has shifted over the past few years, how to engage with finance teams on deals, and why conviction is important. 

Our guest for Episode 11 is Todd Caponi, an award-winning author of The Transparency Sale and The Transparent Sales Leader. Todd’s motto is ‘transparency sells better than perfection,’ and when he isn’t writing you can find him speaking and leading workshops for revenue leaders and teams. 

In this episode, Ross talks to Todd about his coaching and leadership journey, the five F’s to follow, and why you should rethink what you measure and ask for. 

Getting on-site with key decision-makers can mean the difference between closing a deal or losing it. Face-to-face interactions enable sales reps to develop human connections, uncover hidden insights, remove uncertainty in deals, and overcome hurdles. But building these relationships and earning the right to get on-site has its challenges. 

In this masterclass, revenue leaders from Box, Sprout Social, and CapIntel share insight into how they earn face-to-face time with champions and decision-makers, and why it’s so important. 

Our guest for Episode 9 is Tom Rowe, SVP of Sales at Chili Piper. Tom brings more than a decade of sales experience to the table. He’s worked at companies such as Caroo and Groupon, where he has held positions as an AE, Sales Manager, and VP. 

In this episode, Ross talks to Todd about how to drive repeatability in the sales process by setting a firm agenda, always demoing on the first call, and never discounting. 

Our guest for Episode 8 is John Barrows,Founder and CEO of JB Sales. With more than 25 years of experience, John’s mission is to enhance the performance of sales reps while elevating the sales profession. 

In this episode, Ross talks to John about how to master the science of sales by mapping out the buying and selling process, confirming and controlling the conversation, and leveraging a shared agenda. 

Our guest for Episode 6 is Nate Vogel, VP Global GTM Enablement at Gong. Nate brings more than two decades of sales experience to the conversation, with a background at Southwestern Advantage, Tableau, Salesforce, and Gong. 

In this episode, Ross talks to Nate about how data drives insight into adoption and why it’s crucial to train leaders first. Nate brings more than three decades of sales experience to the conversation, with a background at Southwestern Advantage, Tableau, Salesforce, Gong, and now Databricks.

It’s not enough to just show up on calls, go through the motions, and expect to win deals in 2023. You need rigorous planning and deal strategy on every major account to tilt the odds in your favor… no matter how great your product or pitch might be.

This means deep research on company priorities, detailed stakeholder mapping, strong executive alignment, and creative plays to set your team up for success – AKA: account planning!

We talked to revenue leaders from Databricks, Anthropic, and Salesforce about this topic to get their top strategies for driving elite account planning across your sales team. 

Leaders are investing in MEDDPICC, Challenger, and other proven sales methodologies – because nothing rivals a consistent winning framework on every opportunity. But too often, adoption is low and the investment goes to waste.

That’s why we hosted a masterclass with veteran revenue leaders Andee Harris (CEO at Challenger), Jeff Roy (Head of Sales at BioRender), and Jen Allen-Knuth (Community Growth at Lavender) diving into all things sales methodologies.

We covered:

Our guest this week is Alison Elworthy, EVP of RevOps at HubSpot. Alison’s career at HubSpot spans 12 years, during which she has successfully held positions in marketing ops, global customer success, sales ops, and rev ops. 

In this episode, Ross talks to Alison about why experience creates stronger frontline leaders, strategies for optimizing processes with a customer-centric focus, and tips for creating a strong partnership between rev ops and sales. 

Our guest this week is Maura Brady, Head of Verticals at 6Sense. Maura brings more than a decade’s worth of sales wisdom to the conversation with experience at 6Sense, Medallia, Oracle Marketing Cloud and Responsys (Acquired by Oracle).

In this episode, Ross talks to Maura about her three tips to improve deal execution and the importance of “the meeting before the meeting.” 

This season, we talk to legendary leaders such as 5x CRO John McMahon and execs from 6Sense, JB Sales, Gong, and Chili Piper about how to drive consistent sales execution – leading to predictable forecasts (and better sleep). 

Our guest this week is John McMahon, former CRO and author of The Qualified Sales Leader. John’s background is equally as impressive as his book, with experience at multiple startups turned public software companies (PTC, GeoTel, Ariba, Bladelogic, BMC). 

In this episode, John talks to Ross about simplicity in sales leadership, the importance of training and development, and the value of sales methodologies and process.

This season, we talk to legendary leaders such as 5x CRO John McMahon and execs from 6Sense, JB Sales, Gong, and Chili Piper about how to drive consistent sales execution — leading to predictable forecasts (and better sleep). 

Our guest this week is Sam Taylor, CRO at Endgame. Sam’s background is predominantly in sales, with experience at Dropbox, Quip, Salesforce, and Loom. But outside of the office, he prioritizes getting outdoors and spending time with his family. 

In this episode,Ross talks to Sam about leadership, strategy, and execution within revenue orgs. 

10/10 GTM is a podcast by Accord that dives into how B2Bs most successful Revenue Leaders win (no matter the product or market). Discover secrets from the best to achieve your repeatable revenue goals.

In this season, we talk to legendary leaders such as 5x CRO John McMahon, and execs from 6Sense, JB Sales, Chili Piper, and Hubspot about how to drive consistent sales execution — leading to predictable forecasts (& better sleep).

After an especially challenging 2022, sales leaders need a predictable path to hitting their 2023 revenue targets.

The key? A clearly defined sales methodology that ALL your reps can consistently follow.

In this masterclass for senior sales leaders, we covered how to maximize your reps’ productivity & drive repeatable revenue through your sales methodology – increasing your sales efficiency by implementing a proven process.

You’ll learn:

🔁 How to operationalize your MEDD(P)ICC methodology

💯 Tips for empowering your reps with a proven process

📈 Tactics for driving more revenue with fewer resources

Meet the experts:

Want more B2B sales content, best practices & events like this? Check out ourbi-weekly newsletter!

Our guest this week is David Barron, Global Director of Sales at HubSpot!

David’s background is a mix of product and sales – in his 8+ years at HubSpot, he went from sales, to launching Service Hub & Operations Hub on the product team, and back to sales, where he’s building a specialized global sales team to sell those products.

In this episode, he talks to Ross about how to build a strong sales team in 2023, the pros of team quotas, and more tactics for sellers & sales leaders.

In this episode, we're sharing a masterclass we hosted with leaders at CoachCRM, Elemy & Stripe – covering topics like:

Meet the panelists:

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Early in Josh’s career, he built a $1M book of business exclusively through cold calling and outbound selling. Later, he moved into sales leadership and led a 25-person BDR team at WalkMe, and now leads the Commercial Sales team at Lob. And in Josh’s spare time, he and four partners built SDRDefenders, a community of revenue professionals dedicated to elevating the role of SDRs, which was acquired by Pavilion in 2021.

Listen to the episode to hear Josh talk about why the bar for sellers is low today, how sales leaders can help raise it again, and his thoughts on where the future of B2B sales is headed.

Want more B2B sales best practices & content like this? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter!

In this episode, we're sharing a masterclass we hosted with leaders at UserGems, Ashby, and Craft Ventures – covering topics like:

Meet the panelists:

Want more B2B sales best practices like this? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter: https://inaccord.com/from-vendorship-to-partnership#newsletter

Our guest this week is Eric Ortner, VP of Sales at Handle!

Eric started his career as an attorney, and didn’t imagine that his path would eventually lead him to the sales world instead. He found an opportunity selling legal technology, so he could draw on his law background while applying it in a different way. Now he has over a decade of experience in sales and is currently leading sales at Handle, a YC construction software startup.

Want more B2B sales content like this? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter for insights from top sales leaders, events, and more!

Our Seller's Journey guest this week is Trent Dressel, Senior Account Executive at Qualtrics!

Trent started in software sales as an SDR, put in over 50,000 cold calls, and over the past 4+ years has moved up the ranks to his current role. He’s passionate about B2B sales and provides content and resources to other sellers via his LinkedIn, YouTube, website, and other social channels. 

In this episode, he chats with Ross about his biggest lessons learned, advice for building strong buyer relationships, and his thoughts on the future of B2B sales.

Want more B2B sales content like this, including exclusive events & tactics from top sales leaders? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter!

Our guest this week is Jonathan Press, Director of Strategic Accounts at Galley.

Jonathan definitely has one of the most interesting backgrounds of all the sales leaders we’ve talked to, with past experience as an actor, opera singer, and Paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces. But for the past four years, he’s helped lead sales and GTM at Galley, which helps food companies see the data behind their operations to empower them to make more profitable decisions.

He and Ross chat about aligning your sales team around a shared mission, partnering with buyers, and building repeatability into your playbook.

Want more B2B sales content like this? Subscribe to the bi-weekly From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter!

Our guest this week is Chuck Brotman, Co-Founder of Blueprint Expansion!

Chuck has been in sales and sales leadership roles for nearly 20 years, and pivoted his career to launch Blueprint Expansion in 2020 with the goal of helping companies recruit and hire exceptional GTM talent. He’s passionate about the problems Blueprint Expansion solves, especially for early stage startups, and chatted with Ross about how sales teams can up-level their hiring game.

Want more B2B sales content like this? Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, From Vendorship to Partnership!

Welcome back to the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, season 2 – Seller's Journey!

Our guest this week is Chris Bondarenko, VP of Sales - North America & APAC at Docebo.

He talked to Ross about trends in B2B sales, his experience in sales from small hyper-growth startups to an 800+ person org, and why creating an environment of constant learning is so important in sales.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on new episodes and more B2B sales content like this!

In this episode, we're sharing a replay of a masterclass on how to manage up as a sales/revenue leader – featuring sales & revenue leaders

The panel dove into best practices for setting expectations and aligning with execs, tips for communicating and getting buy-in, and how to stand out to your leadership team as a sales manager or leader.

Meet the experts:

Want updates on events like this one? Subscribe to the bi-weekly From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter!

Mutual action plans (MAPs) are a no-brainer for your sales team if you’re looking to make the most of every deal – especially if your sales are complex and involve multiple stakeholders. When you proactively align with buyers on a clear path to a buying decision, deal velocity and win rates increase!

In this masterclass, we dive into what great MAPs look like, how to implement them across your sales team, and how to get your reps actually using MAPs consistently.

Featuring sales pros:

Want the key takeaways from this masterclass? Check out this blog on Mutual Action Plan best practices.

Welcome back to Season 2: Seller's Journey! Our guest this week is Nick Casale, Director of Sales at Sendoso. 

Nick was an early sales hire at Talkdesk when his coworker, Kris Rudeegraap, began having success sending coffee gift cards to his customers and decided to start his own company. He talked Nick into joining him at Sendoso, and Nick became their first sales hire five years ago.

Since then, Nick’s seen Sendoso grow from a pre-seed company to raising their Series C round last year – and has seen himself grow from an AE to the Director of Sales. In this episode, he chats with Ross about how to start building your early sales process and the importance of knowledge transfer when your team begins scaling.

Want more content like this? Subscribe to the From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter for bi-monthly tactics, resources, and events for sales & revenue leaders: https://inaccord.com/from-vendorship-to-partnership#newsletter

Welcome back to the Seller's Journey! This week, we're talking to Conor Dragomanovich, Director of Commercial Sales at Productboard.

Conor joined Productboard in 2018 as a founding AE, and since then he's moved up to lead and scale the commercial sales team of 20+ AEs. He and Ross talked about common mistakes in startup sales, how to successfully partner with your reps, and future trends in B2B sales.

Want more content like this? Subscribe to the From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter for tactics from sales pros, info about upcoming masterclasses, and more resources for startup sales leaders today.

About Conor

Conor Dragomanovich is a Founding AE & Director of Commercial Sales at Productboard, an industry leading customer-driven product management system. Before Productboard, Conor was a Founding AE at Dealpath as well as a top performing rep at AppFolio. Before entering the world of Startups, Conor managed surf shops in Santa Barbara, CA.

It's our Customer Appreciation Week here at Accord, and since Stripe has been a big supporter of ours since the beginning, we couldn't think of a better episode to celebrate with.

Our guest this week is the incredible Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue & Growth at Stripe! Jeanne has helped build and lead the sales team at Stripe for 6+ years; previously, she led SMB and mid-market sales for GSuite at Google. 

Listen to the episode to hear her take on common sales leader pitfalls to watch out for, who you should hire as your early sales reps, and other tactics for early stage sales teams.

To celebrate reaching 100+ paying customers at Accord, we're putting our amazing users in the spotlight. Check out this article to learn how we grew from 0 to 100+ customers in a year, and see how high-growth startups are winning & onboarding customers faster with Accord.

About Jeanne

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser has nearly 20 years of sales & GTM experience, and is currently the Head of Americas Revenue & Growth at Stripe, where she has spent 6+ years helping to build and lead sales. Previously, she was the CRO at Dialpad, and led SMB and mid-market sales in North America, Latin America, and the Japan & Asia Pacific regions for GSuite at Google.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey.

This week, we’re sharing a masterclass we held with a panel of top revenue leaders on how to maximize NRR – the new startup North Star!

We talked about best practices to action expansion opportunities & mitigate churn, who should own upsells & customer relationships, and NRR tactics for different sales motions.

Get key takeaways from the masterclass here!

Meet the experts:

Brian Reuter, Director of Account Management at Figma – 10+ years GTM experience across the customer journey in sales, marketing, and CS

Alex Heller, Head of Account Management at NYSHEX – 10+ years in sales & leadership at Flexport, Athena Health, etc.

Connor Fee, CRO at Shortcut – 10+ years GTM & leadership experience at Clearbit, Winning by Design, UserVoice, & more

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

This week, we’re sharing a masterclass we held with a panel of veteran B2B sales leaders on how to hit your sales goals during a downturn.

We talked about making the most out of every lead and opportunity, managing timelines & stakeholders when budgets are tight, and positioning your product as a “need to have” in this challenging time for tech.

Get key takeaways from the masterclass here.

Meet the experts:

Renu Gupta, VP of Sales at Thrive – 15+ years sales leadership at Slack, Dropbox, Google, Cisco, etc.

Elizabeth Andrew, Head of Sales at Netomi – 10+ years sales & leadership experience at Skillsoft, Dropbox, Parley Pro, etc.

Jamie Wheeler, Head of Sales at MessageBird – 2 decades of experience (Twilio, Braze, Layer, etc) across sales, leadership, and founding startups

Mark Ripley is the VP of Sales at Mosaic, with 20+ years of sales and leadership experience. In this episode, he and Ross dive into how to effectively partner with customers and build better relationships by asking better questions during the sales process.

Want more content like this? Subscribe to the From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter for tactics from top startup sales leaders, invites to masterclasses, and more resources for high-growth B2B sales teams. Check out past editions and subscribe here!

About Mark

Mark Ripley is the VP of Sales at Mosaic. Mark is a revenue leader with 20+ years of experience in SaaS and Cloud Computing Software, with a successful track record building, leading and scaling high performance sales teams that consistently surpass revenue goals and grow market share. He has a reputation for building a vibrant culture and cohesive teams, united by their collective motivation to achieve ambitious team goals.

Our guest this week is Jill Rowley! Jill has over two decades of experience in B2B SaaS: she was one of the first 100 employees at Salesforce and employee #13 at Eloqua, and joined Marketo 11 months before it was acquired by Adobe. Now, she advises startups as a GTM Advisor and Limited Partner at Stage 2 Capital.

In this episode, she and Ross dive into common startup sales mistakes, how to build deeper partnerships, and tactics for making your solution "stickier" in your customers' world.

Get episode summaries & subscribe to get more startup sales tactics here.

About Jill

Jill Rowley has 22 years in SaaS, the majority in MarTech. Born Sales, Bred Marketing, Bleed Customer. Early employee at Salesforce (first 100) and Eloqua (#13). Former Chief Marketing Evangelist at Marketo. Been through numerous acquisitions, including Oracle ($871 million), Cisco ($270 million), and Adobe ($4.75 billion). One of the first Social Selling evangelists and professional speakers on the topic. Investor and advisor at various B2B SaaS companies, including Stage 2 Capital, Guild Education, Vidyard, Terminus, and People.ai.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Jared Robin is the CEO & Co-Founder of RevGenius, a community of 27,000 sales, marketing, rev ops, and CS professionals to get inspired, learn, and grow. Previously he worked in sales and leadership roles for 15+ years, including FedEx and various VC-backed startups.

Listen to hear Jared & Ross' conversation about partnering with customers, building RevGenius, and the future of B2B sales.

About Jared & RevGenius

Jared Robin is co-founder & CEO atRevGenius, Winner of Best International fashion Film Awards, homie of revenue professionals worldwide, and proud Ny'er.

RevGenius is a community of 27k sales, marketing, revops and cs professionals worldwide. Our mission is to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals. Before founding RevGenius, Jared spent 15+ years in various sales and leadership roles in both fortune 100 (FedEx) and early-stage VC-backed startups (Peter Thiel backed etc).

This week, we’re sharing a masterclass we held recently with an incredible panel of sales & CS leaders on how to use mutual action plans (MAPs) to win & expand more deals.

We talked about why every seller should be using MAPs to partner with buyers and get them to value quickly, so you can hit revenue targets and build long-term advocates for your product.

Get more takeaways from the masterclass here!

Meet the experts:

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Our guest this week is Swapnil Shinde, CEO & Co-Founder of Zeni.

Zeni is an AI-powered startup bookkeeping and accounting service. Swapnil is a 3x founder and led Zeni’s sales for its first two years, closing over 100 customers single-handedly.

Swapnil chats with Ross about founder-led sales, what to look for in your first reps, and his top book recs for startup/sales leaders.

Want more content like this? Subscribe to the From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter! Every other Thursday, we'll share conversations with top sales leaders, invites to masterclasses & other events, and more. You can check out past editions here.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

This week, we’re sharing a “jam session” we held recently with Marissa Fuhrer, Senior Manager of Enterprise Sales at Figma.

Figma has built a winning sales-assisted motion on top of their PLG core to move up-market seemingly overnight. One of the secrets to their sales success? Making the most of every deal through buyer collaboration.

In this jam session, Ross talked to Marissa live on Zoom, and sales leaders had the chance to ask questions about collaborating with buyers and building a scalable, customer-first sales process.

If you want to watch the session instead, check it out on YouTube.

For more content like this, subscribe here to get podcast updates and the From Vendorship to Partnership newsletter!

About Marissa

Marissa Fuhrer is a Senior Sales Manager at Figma. Prior to Figma, Marissa spent a few years at Dropbox, Scoop and BrightEdge, where she helped lead sales efforts in the Education space as well as public companies around the US. In her free time, Marissa enjoys spending time with her 4 legged daughter, Winnie.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Our guest this week is Clay Bentley, VP of Sales at Metadata.

Before joining Metadata two and a half years ago, Clay led sales at G2 Crowd for four years, and previously worked as an AE at several SF-area companies and startups. He told Ross: “Startups are my thing – they get me out of bed in the morning.”

Listen to the episode for insights & advice from Clay on common early stage sales mistakes, balancing priorities, and coaching your reps.

About Clay & Metadata

Clay is the VP of Sales at Metadata, and was formerly the VP of Sales at G2. His journey has taken him from SF → Chicago → Nashville, where he currently lives. Metadata automates paid campaign execution and strategy, eliminating manual and repetitive work for B2B Marketers.

Metadata is hiring! Check out their open roles here.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Our guest this week is Christian Borrelli, VP of Global Sales at CaptivateIQ! Christian joined CaptivateIQ as one of the first employees, and has scaled the sales team to 100+ since then.

In this episode, Christian & Ross chat about the future of B2B startup sales, what most people get wrong about sales at startups, and using data to iterate on your sales process.

About Christian:

Christian Borrelli leads the sales organization at CaptivateIQ, the leader in commission management software. Prior to joining CaptivateIQ as one of its first employees and scaling the sales team to 100, Christian held finance and operations roles at Siemens, Cybereason, and EMC. He currently resides in Austin, TX.

Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Our guest this week is Kevin Nothnagel, VP of Sales at Clockwise.

Kevin is a multi-time sales and revenue leader with a wealth of sales and PLG knowledge from his time at Dropbox, Productboard, and now growing the team at Clockwise. He and Ross talk about building playbooks, celebrating your losses, and other sales teams they look up to.

About Kevin and Clockwise:

Kevin Nothnagel is VP Sales atClockwise, and previously built sales teams at Productboard, Facebook, and Dropbox. He joined Clockwise to build the sales team and help organizations everywhere find more Focus Time to be happy & productive at work. Clockwise automates many of the everyday chores of managing your team's calendars and is used by over 10,000 organizations such as Netflix, Atlassian, and Uber.

Welcome back to From Vendorship → Partnership, Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

Our guest this week is the one and only Mark Roberge: co-founder at Stage 2 Capital, author of the best-selling The Sales Acceleration Formula, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, and former CRO at HubSpot Sales.

To say the least, Mark has a ton of incredible sales insights to share (way more than we could cover in 20 minutes!)

Subscribe for more content like this, and check out the Stage 2 Capital Accelerator that Mark mentions in the episode.

About Mark:

Mark Roberge is Co-Founder at Stage 2 Capital, the first VC fund run and backed by go-to-market executives. He is also Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark served as Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot where he scaled annualized revenue from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark is the author of the bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Inc. Magazine, Boston Globe, TechCrunch, Harvard Business Review, and other major publications for his entrepreneurial ventures.

Welcome back to From Vendorship to Partnership, Season 2: Seller's Journey!

Today we have a special episode: we’re sharing a masterclass with former Stripe sales leaders (and Ross’ former colleagues!) who are now leading sales at other top orgs & startups:

They talked to Ross about their experience building and scaling the Stripe sales team together, tips for moving into leadership roles, and other advice for startup sales teams.

For more startup & sales content like this, subscribe to our email list at https://inaccord.com/from-vendorship-to-partnership

Becca Lindquist is the Head of Sales at dbt Labs, helping to 10x Enterprise revenue and grow the sales team from 3 to 20+ in the past year. She enjoys figuring out the sales and GTM motions in the early part of the startup journey, and talked to Ross about all things early stage sales in this week's episode.

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Interested in learning directly from leaders who helped build & scale one of the most successful startup sales teams?

On Tuesday, April 12 at 2pm Eastern, we’re hosting a masterclass with former Stripe sales leaders (and Ross’ former colleagues):

We’ll talk about their experience as AEs scaling the Stripe sales team together, and their advice & lessons learned when moving from sales rep roles → leadership roles.

Save your seat for the masterclass here!

Welcome to the first episode of Season 2: Seller’s Journey!

This season, our host and Accord CEO & Founder Ross Rich talks to startup sales leaders – diving deep into their experience building winning processes, coaching & scaling teams, and partnering with customers.

Our guest this episode is Andrew Bothwell, SVP of Sales and Success at Spekit. Andrew has been scaling sales teams for the past 17 years, and is a Salesforce, Zendesk, Talkdesk, and WalkMe alum.

He and Ross chat about common mistakes from startup sales leaders, how to approach building your sales team in today’s competitive job market, and the importance of having a growth & learning mindset.

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In this bonus episode, we’re sharing a masterclass on How Today’s Revenue Leaders Win. Get tips from leaders at Figma, Metadata, and Scratchpad about successfully building & leading your sales org and collaborating cross-functionally. Get more takeaways from the masterclass: https://inaccord.com/blog-posts/advice-from-3-veteran-revenue-leaders-balancing-sales-marketing-cs-product

Season 2: Seller's Journey is launching next Wednesday, March 30! Subscribe to the podcast here or at https://inaccord.com/from-vendorship-to-partnership#podcast for the latest episodes and other startup & sales insights.

In this bonus episode, we’re sharing a masterclass on Selling to Modern B2B Buyers. Get practical tips and strategies for adapting to today’s shifting buyer expectations and creating a more transparent, collaborative sales process. Get more takeaways from the masterclass here. 

Exciting news – Season 2: Seller's Journey is launching in 2 weeks, on Wednesday, March 30! Ross will talk to startup sales leaders – diving deep into their experience building winning processes, coaching & scaling teams, and partnering with customers.

Subscribe to get notified about Season 2 launch and the latest episodes!

In this bonus episode, we’re sharing a masterclass on Building a Repeatable Sales Process for Early Stage Startups. Get practical tips on documenting your sales process and coaching your team, from top startup sales leaders at Rampd, Northstar, and Balance.

Get more takeaways from the masterclass here and stay tuned for more info on season 2 coming soon!

We have a few special bonus episodes for you while we get ready to launch Season 2: Seller's Journey!

This week, we're sharing a masterclass on How to Win More Deals with Mutual Action Plans. Our panel includes expert sales trainers Skip Miller & Alice Heiman, plus Figma’s top Enterprise rep, Aaron Cramer. We talked about why every sales team should be using mutual action plans for their deals, and shared tips for how to get started.

Meet the Experts:

Alice Heiman, Founder & Chief Sales Energizer

Starting her own company in 1997, Alice is nationally known for working with B2B companies that have exceptional growth potential to elevate their sales and increase their valuation.

Skip Miller, Expert Sales Trainer & Founder of M3 Learning

As President of M3 Learning, Skip has provided training to hundreds of companies in over 35 countries. He created M3 Learning to “make a salesperson better on each individual call.”

Aaron Cramer, Enterprise AE at Figma

As a founding member of the Figma sales team, Aaron has spent the last 3 years partnering with mid-market and enterprise customers to help them find value and be successful.

In this week’s episode, we’re changing things up a bit. Accord co-founder & CPO Ryan Rich interviews our host (and his brother) Ross about the key takeaways, lessons, and advice from our guests throughout Season One: Founder’s Journey.

Get the full roundup of founder advice on our blog: https://inaccord.com/from-vendorship-to-partnership/season-1-founders-journey-episode-13-season-recap

In the final founder interview of Season 1, Ross talks to Joe Garafalo, COO & Co-Founder of Mosaic! Listen for insights on Joe's founding story about building Mosaic, and his advice to his past self.

About Joe:

Joe is Co-Founder and COO of Mosaic, a software startup building the first Strategic Finance Platform. He began his career in the Big 4 with KPMG and went on to hold multiple leadership positions in finance at Palantir, Axoni, and Barkbox before founding Mosaic. Outside of work, Joe enjoys traveling, learning about capital markets and cryptocurrency, playing poker, and spending time with family and his dog, Coconut.

In this week’s episode of Founder’s Journey, Ross talks to Lauren Dai, COO & Co-Founder of Cocoon! 

After spending 4+ years building the growth organization at Stripe, Lauren started Cocoon to help simplify the complicated financial problem of managing employee leave: from compliance & guidance to claims & payroll. 

Learn about Lauren’s journey building Cocoon, including defining the problem to solve, winning their first 10 customers, and her relationship with co-founders Amber Feng & Mahima Chawla. 

About Lauren: 

Lauren is the COO & co-founder of Cocoon, the platform that makes managing employee leave instant, simple, and big-hearted for HR teams and employees alike. With Cocoon, employees can design their leave plan in private, notify HR when they’re ready, and rest easy knowing that all their paperwork will be submitted for them. Employers don’t have to lift a finger when it comes to compliance, claims, or payroll calculations. Prior to starting Cocoon, Lauren was integral to building the growth organization at Stripe.

In this week’s episode of the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross talks to Tyler Gaffney, CEO of ZenHub.

Tyler has spent more than a decade in and around startups, including running a consultancy to help early stage businesses figure out how to go to market. One of his clients was Axiom Zen, which had started ZenHub as an internal tool initially, but it ended up gaining a lot of organic traction and became its own business. Tyler was drawn to ZenHub’s exciting growth and leadership team, and was invited to join full-time as CEO about three years ago.

Listen to the full episode to hear about Tyler’s learnings from leading ZenHub and his advice to other founders, including paying attention to product-market fit over time, not falling into the trap of what you know best, and being willing to ask the tough questions.

About Tyler and ZenHub:

Tyler Gaffney is the CEO of ZenHub, Founder of Entrepid Partners, and former VP of Sales at WePay.

ZenHub enables software teams at startups and scaleups to build better code, faster by providing a developer-friendly productivity management platform. ZenHub is the leading team productivity management suite in GitHub and is trusted by teams at over 6,900 companies and open source projects to help them work together to ship great code.

In this week’s episode of Founder’s Journey, Ross talks to Bar Geron, co-founder of Balance, the B2B eCommerce checkout platform.

Bar met his now co-founder, Yoni Shuster, when they were both working at PayPal. Since he wanted to learn how to build things, Bar began (and ended) a couple of startups before he and Yoni landed on the concept that would become Balance – with the goal of turning the online B2B payment experience from painful to delightful.

Listen to the full episode to hear about Bar’s insights and advice, including the importance of relationships between your founding team, getting it right before you scale & add new channels, and feeling comfortable with thinking long-term.

About Bar: 

Bar Geron is co-founder & CEO at Balance, YCombinator alum, and a proud Israeli. 🇮🇱 Balance was built to make B2B payment awesome for the B2B eCom space. Prior to Balance, Bar founded Q.AI, a data infrastructure company to solve bottlenecks to see a physician, and spent 4+ years in fintech including PayPal and high-growth startups.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Lisa Wallace, co-founder of Assemble.

Assemble is a compensation management platform that enables companies to make strategic, equitable compensation decisions. Lisa started her career at a couple early-stage cybersecurity startups, where she and her now co-founder, Enrique Esclusa, were struck by how difficult it was to manage compensation even at a small company, and to ensure that everyone was being compensated fairly. That led them down the path to starting Assemble together.

Listen to the full episode to hear about Lisa’s journey with Assemble.

About Lisa:

Lisa Wallace is a Co-Founder of Assemble. Assemble is a compensation management platform that helps companies make systematic compensation decisions to attract, motivate, and retain employees while eliminating inequitable pay. Prior to founding Assemble, Lisa served on the executive team of Abnormal Security where she was the first business leadership hire. She started her career as the first business hire at Expanse (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and holds a B.S. from Stanford University.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of Remote.

A neuroscientist in his past life, Job eventually landed as VP of Product at GitLab, which was ahead of the game in working fully remotely. He experienced firsthand the challenges that come with hiring employees around the world, and that led to him launching Remote as a solution.

Listen to the full episode to hear about Remote’s fast growth and Job’s learnings along the way.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Kris Rudeegraap, CEO & co-founder of Sendoso.

During his time as a salesperson at Talkdesk, Kris wanted to differentiate himself when building rapport with prospects and customers. He’d send handwritten notes and quirky gifts from Amazon, and his prospects loved it – but it wasn’t scalable. So he set about building a solution himself. Sendoso is now the leading sending platform and integrates with dozens of marketing, sales, and operations tools.

Listen to learn about Kris’ journey building and scaling Sendoso, including:

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Gil Allouche, the founder of Metadata!

As a software engineer turned data-driven B2B marketer, Gil’s technical background fueled his idea of using AI and data to laser-target marketing. After sharing the concept with a group of CMOs who then all wanted to work with him, Gil knew he was onto something. He officially changed his LinkedIn title to “Founder” and Metadata was born!

Watch the full episode to learn:

In this episode of From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Pete Kazanjy, Founder of Atrium, a data-driven sales management platform that empowers sales managers to improve team performance.

After Pete’s previous startup was acquired he assumed going to a larger company that they’d have sales and GTM processes fine-tuned and instrumented, but realized that wasn’t the case. After many conversations he realized the problem was widespread: there wasn’t an easy way to use data to build a scalable GTM process. There was too much math and manual setup required, and sales leaders were relying on sales ops or other departments to collect that data. With passion for early stage GTM, he started Atrium.

In this episode Pete and Ross chat about:

In episode 3 of the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Alexa Grabell, CEO and Co-founder of Pocus, a product-led sales platform. Pocus helps sales teams harness product usage data without relying on engineering, so they can prioritize the best opportunities.

Alexa saw a need for something like Pocus while leading sales strategy & operations at DataMiner, where she built DIY solutions internally to provide sales with the data they needed. Then, while at Stanford’s business school, she dove deep into the customer discovery process, and Pocus was born.

This is a great episode for very early-stage founders or those who are just getting started with their idea! Alexa and Ross discuss:

In this very first episode of the Vendorship to Partnership, Ross interviews Scratchpad CEO and Co-Founder Pouyan Salehi. A serial entrepreneur, Pouyan draws on his deep expertise sharing what he’s learned from starting two companies creating software for sales teams. Pouyan and Ross cover a wide range of topics about the world of building a B2B SaaS company:

✔ How Scratchpad sourced their first batch of customers
✔ Why they opted measure user market fit before product market fit (and the difference)
✔ The evolution and nuances of product market fit
✔ Transitioning from doing everything yourself to letting go and working ON the business

In the second episode of the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Reprise Co-CEO and Co-Founder Bryan Stevenson.

Throughout Bryan’s two decades of experience as a software engineer, leader, and co-founder at several startups, he struggled with the same problem: a disconnect between what is needed to sell a product and what is needed to actually satisfy customers. So he started Reprise, a tool that enables sales and marketing teams to easily create interactive demos and product tours.

Now, a year and a half into the Reprise journey, Bryan and Ross talk about: