SaaStr 177: Why Career Paths Are For B Players in Sales, How To "Rig The Recruiters" To Ensure The Best Talent Pipeline & Successfully Moving From Transactional To Enterprise with Bill Binch, CRO @ Pendo.io

Bill Binch is a leader and expert in the SaaS sales industry, currently CRO @ Pendo.io,  the startup that helps you understand and guide your users, creating a product experience they can’t live without. They have raised over $58m in VC funding from some of the best in their space with the likes of Battery Ventures, Spark Capital and Salesforce Ventures, all backing them. As for Bill, prior to Pendo, Bill was the Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Marketo for 8 years. He joined when it was a small venture-backed startup with a mission to reinvent marketing automation. It was his sales leadership and expertise that formed a critical component in building Marketo into one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies in the world, recognized through his being awarded worldwide VP of sales in 2011.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Bill made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be employee #18 at Marketo before making the transition to today, as CRO @ Pendo?
• Bill has said before that career paths are for B players. First, what is wrong with the current thinking around career paths? Why does that inherently mean that A players do not align with them? How can one determine when is the right time to step away from the career paths? What characteristics and attributes do those truly special opportunities have?
• Bill has successfully made the transition from transactional business to enterprise business many times, what have been his core learnings on what it takes to make this transition successfully? What are the biggest challenges in making the transition? How does the internal structure of the team change when making this transition?
• What does Bill mean when he says you have to “rig the recruiters”? What incentives can be placed in front of them that ensure you will be a priority for them? On the flip side, what incentives do you have to give the recently on boarded employees to encourage grassroots, word of mouth on the company brand?
• How does the company and sales cycle fundamentally change when moving from $0-1m ARR? What does that mean for the company policy on discounting and pilots? How does the company alter when transitioning from $1-10m in ARR? How can sustainable social validity be built in this stage? How does a company successfully move from $15m-100m in ARR?     

60 Second SaaStr?

1. What does Bill know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What keeps Bill up at night?
3. What does Bill mean when he says you have to check your ego?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Bill Binch

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