Fivetran's Lauren Schwartz: Must-Ask Questions to Identify Potential Sales Talent | 20VC #939
9Lauren Schwartz is Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Fivetran, the leading platform for modern data movement. She has helped scale Fivetran’s enterprise business from its infancy to a team of nearly 100, while more than tripling enterprise revenues. Previously, Lauren spent close to 4 years at Segment where she started as the first female AE and ultimately built and led sales teams in enterprise and growth. Lauren earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business after 6 years at Google where her enterprise sales career began.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:15 Journey into Sales
3:10 Biggest takeaways from working at Google
4:45 What to tell a first day sales rep
6:40 Does outbound sales still work today?
8:03 When do partnerships become viable?
9:30 How to turn sales insights into marketing
11:00 How to think about the sales playbook
13:06 PLG or enterprise, do startups need to choose?
14:25 How important is “multi-threading”
16:10 How to instill urgency in sales
20:10 Hire sales rep or head of sales first?
21:55 Do you play reps off each other?
23:00 How do you hire sales reps?
25:25 How do you define attribution in sales?
28:49 Do you do case studies when interviewing?
30:48 Biggest mistakes you’ve made in hiring
32:11 How do you do onboarding?
35:45 Indicators that a new sales rep isn’t performing well
38:03 Deal reviews
41:49 How do you create an environment of safety?
44:40 What deal are you most proud of?
45:25 How have sales tactics changed over the last 5 years?
46:04 Advice for new sales leader starting today
46:15 How to increase diversity in sales leadership
46:55 Hardest part of role with Fivetran today
47:53 Secret to a successful comp plan
49:29 What makes the best sales teams?
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In Today’s Episode with Lauren Schwartz:
1.) How Being Rejected as an Eighth Grader Can Lead to World Class Sales Leader:
How Lauren made her way into the world of enterprise sales with Google?
Why, for a while, Lauren wanted to get away from the label of a salesperson? Why “salesperson” does not do the job of sales justice?
Why does Lauren believe that one of the core traits the best salespeople have is being able to cope with rejection? How has Lauren been rejected? How did she respond? What changed their mind?
2.) The Sales Playbook: What, Who, When:
How does Lauren define the term “sales playbook”? What are the nuances?
Does Lauren believe the founder should always be the first sales rep? What are the core signs that a founder is now ready to bring in their first sales hires?
What are the 3 biggest mistakes founders make when they hire their first sales reps?
What are the core traits that the best early sales reps have?
3.) The Hiring Process: Building the Best Sales Team:
How does Lauren structure the hiring process?
What are the most unconventional but useful questions Lauren uses to determine the depth and quality of potential sales hires?
What are glaring red flags that Lauren looks for in this interview process?
How does Lauren use case studies and deal reviews in the interview process to determine the quality of a candidate?
4.) Scaling the Machine: The Onboarding Process:
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when onboarding sales reps?
How should sales team onboarding be structured?
What materials should the founder have in place for the sales team to learn from on Day 1?
How can sales leaders ensure new sales team members engage across functions?
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