YouSaid · the spoken record

Dannie Herzberg

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50
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2022-02-02
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2022-02-02
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  1. “You so much for hosting me, and thanks for hosting this show. I've been very, very avid fan, and I'm grateful to be here.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Family first was the very first thing that we talked about here. I had moved to Boston to take care of my mom, and it was a no brainer decision. Family first is the only way that I operate. Having kids at home, first of all, back to being respected versus liked, it reminds me of what's important and the only unconditional love I need, which is from them and from Jake. It also makes me a master prioritizer of my time, and it helps me unplug from my phone and be super weird and super silly and just sing and dance and crawl and play. And it is the best feeling in the entire world. And lastly, I would say like, you know, people ask about mom guilt. I work seven days a week. I work all the time. And I have two daughters. And I think in hope that that will make them very, very proud of who their mom is and any impact that I can hopefully make on the world. So I think a lot about how am I spending my time to be a good role model for them and build a better future for them to live in.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Okay, it's the opposite advice that I would give to any sales rep where you say be thoughtful, customize it, do your research. I thought, Danny, you have a really good intuition. You know your type. So I went on Tokyupid and I looked for who met that criteria. Witty didn't hurt that Jake was holding a guitar in his opening photo. Kept it simple. It was something like a Hey Hazard weekend broke the ice and, you know, one marriage, two kids later, it's going very, very well. So I would say know yourself and go for it. Like worst thing if someone doesn't respond, they probably just didn't get the message, right? It's not like they're rejecting me personally. So I had literally nothing to lose.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “All the best things come from having a vision and making it happen. So I sent my husband cold outreach, an OK Cupid in 2013, and that was the best decision of my life. I wanted to help build slack, so I pitched a role that didn't exist, and I eliminated all the competition from my interview process and got the role. My second goals every single year, and they pushed me to reach higher, execute faster. And sales just gives you this outbound first proactive mentality, which helps you in all facets of your life and your career.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I got the job at HubSpot because I was a waitress. I think I told you that. Waitressing is the longest chapter of my career so far, six years, and it teaches people skills, empathy, earning each dollar through pure meritocracy, and it teaches you that over tipping is always the right thing to do, which is a critical life score.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “To know the customer, meet them where they are, fly out, see where they work, understand the full context and show them that you care.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Wait way too long the higher revenue ops and sales enablement teams to make the team successful. So they invest all this time and money into hiring a sales leader, maybe some sales reps, and they don't have the support systems to set them up to thrive and scale.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Slide decks no hour long slide decks they're boring, this is a world where people want to see the product, feel it, see it customized to their context.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “It is a critical relationship, and I think my answer here is the same answers I would give for any ideal relationship, which is there should be a sense of trust and a sense of mutual respect. Presumably the founder is really, really good at something, and the CRO or head of sales is really, really good at something else, and they built their careers in two very different lanes. And so it's a really inquisitive relationship and really important foundation to set is that one isn't at odds with the other. I wouldn't set up the head of sales to have to be defensive or only paint a positive picture about everything going up into the right. Work hard to invest that sense of trust, encourage that sense of experimentation, and communicate regularly by regularly, I would say, weekly one-on-one feels good to me. And if I'm the head of sales, I'm also bringing in the CEO, first of all, to customer conversations, let alone to sales off sites, sales QBRs, et cetera, so that they become ingratiated with sales chair.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Hybrid product teams into every single sales QBR, and I bring product teams into customer calls and they love it. Customers love it because they get to hear the product roadmap. Product folks love it because they get to hear frontline feedback from the get-go. Employees love it because it's an excuse to build a bridge between two functions that don't have to talk all the time.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Number one incentives should be aligned if it's a product led growth company, then product essentially owns the pipeline number, and you may have a CML, but I would want the chief product officer to have a constant sense of what the self-serve funnel looks like levers we can pull and feel serious accountability. And I want them to have a hire who is exclusively focused on growth and setting up product momentum for the specific ICP that you're going after. So it's not enough, for example, to have product momentum in the SMB if you're a company that wants to march up to the enterprise. And then alignment-wise, it means just human engagement 101. Meet regularly, create an opportunity to have”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “That and let the person own it as part of their personal brand so that they keep letting their guard down and having more and more swagger on these conversations.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Part of it is the culture that the founder sets and that the CRO sets within the company. So if there is a culture where experimentation is welcome and failure is okay, someone doesn't have to feel perfect when they hop on that first Zoom call with a customer. If you can give a new rep some really small business leads to go after, so folks that don't have a jaded, you know, head of IT who's going to be really strict in negotiations and really tough and guarded, that could be a really good place to start. Set them up for success in some of their first conversations as soon as they run their first call. Ring them into a Zoom room or bring them into a conference room, recap and celebrate what went well. I am personally like much more of a positive reinforcement versus motivate through fear kind of person. So I think genuinely celebrating anything that they rocked in that interview process, even if it was building non-transactional rapport, like going deeper than just asking about the weather, I would sell.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “In front of a customer, if he or she was sitting in virtual or physical conference rooms for their first two months and wasn't talking to one new customer at minimum every single week, that is a major flag for me about customer orientation and the health of the org that they were going to build. On the seller's side, you want someone who's going to jump in. You don't want someone who's doing research forever and looking for every product signal. You want someone who is diving in, like I was saying earlier finding some users to interview some leads to call upon or manufacturing some proactive outbound opportunities and going in head first so that they can start working out the kinks and figuring out how to sell things.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Product led growth company, a rep and a leader have to be very well versed in the product because prospects come to you, very well versed in the product. They may have been using it for free for months or years before you talk to them. So signal number one is actually in the interview process. A good candidate will use the product and perhaps deliver some of the interview unprompted by utilizing the product itself just to show that they know how to geek out in there and that they've taken the time to understand the user journey. Once you're on the other side in red or yellow flags when you're onboarding a new wrap or a new leader, it's kind of biased toward action. So I did talk about the listening tour for a leader and on the leader side I would look to see whether they've developed a point of view about what are the one to two things that are most important to deliver on over the course of this year and what's their action plan for doing that. And that comes from a combination of learning from the founder during the interview process and hearing from customers directly. If a leader had not got”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Remember what we talked about as the number one trait of a 10x seller they love to sell. Loving to sell does not mean sitting back in your chair and waiting for product qualified inbounds to fall into your lap. Yes, the beauty of being a sales profession at a PLG company is that you get to talk to customers who are already warmed up and teed up and hopefully effusive about the product, but you have to be really proactive. So a good seller within a PLG company is kind of like an extroverted user researcher. So they may have talked to 10 different users on the front lines who are effusive about the product. And then they're synthesizing those user interviews, putting those into some sort of an email that they're going to send up to the CIO saying, here's what I've learned about how your company operates. And here's a unique insight that you would have never gotten on your own that I'm serving to you as kind of a carrot for a live conversation together.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Find a pool of discarded leads. Maybe the company focuses up market, but there's a bunch of SMBs who have raised their hands and we don't bother selling to them. Take that pool of SMB leads, start calling them, and just practice a discovery, practice the pitch, and that way you start working out the kinks and you feel really, really good when a good one lands on your lap or when a good proactive opportunity makes its way into your pipeline.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Okay, so month one as a sales leader is about listening and engaging. So a sales leader should go on a customer tour. Ideally meeting some of the customers in person and that person should wonder where do they work. How does your tool get used in the wild? What do people love? What do they hate? And you are listening, listening, listening, codifying, and then communicating it back to the founder, back to the company. Note to founders, investing in sales should equate to creating a culture of understanding and serving the customer. And this listening tour of a sales leader is step one in that. And then on the rep side, the ideal onboarding, frankly, if I'm a rep onboarding and I would listen to as many recordings as possible of what it sounds like when someone sells. And I'm listening for customer engagement, customer questions, common objections. Does the competition come up? And then I practice. The faster you dive in, the better. You can't just sit in that listening hole forever as a rep.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Do you mind if we talk through sales leader onboarding first? I'm happy to walk you through rep on boarding as well. They're similar.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I guess Harry, a better way to answer the question is think about someone who loves you unconditionally. I'm sure you have many of those people in your life. Those are the people who we need and want to like us. And when I want to ask a really gorgeous question,”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “What we didn't talk about, Harry, is that I broke into tech, but what I really wanted to be was a therapist. I just needed to be able to pay off my college loans pretty quickly, so I really appreciate this question. I think if you make it a priority to be respected versus liked, it will inch you in that direction, and especially if you have an accountability partner. So this is silly, but when I was age 24 at HubSpot, I had taken the sales assessment that said, you want people to like you too badly. And my boss at the time, Pete Caputo, was the one who saw the results of that assessment and he put a sticky note on my cubicle, which was next to his that said need for approval. And every time he could hear me gratuitously complimenting someone or avoiding asking a hard question, he would point to the sticky note and it was so nice to have an accountability partner where it almost tapped into my desire for him to like me probably, but I would want to prove that I could be respected over liked for the sake of working on this course.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, Harry, I would hire someone if I didn't like them. And I would hire someone so long as I respect them and they can earn the respect of other people around them. I have plenty of friends. I have a loving family. I have lots of people I like. And in a dream world, I'm getting joy out of everyone I work with. But that joy doesn't have to be from connecting with the person through a sense of like, if that makes any sense. And frankly, it's something I've worked on a lot in my career, especially in the early days. My number one priority when I started in sales and started at HubSpot was to be liked above all. I thought being everyone's best friend was the key to success and the only way to live life. And what I realized is if you're striving for people to like you, you don't have the courage to say hard things, to challenge your peers, to challenge someone you work for. So for that reason, I'm totally okay hiring someone who I don't like per se so long as I respect the way that they think and I think that they are a high integrity human being.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “If your intuition is saying, I had a good connection with this person, I've heard plenty of good things around them, and sure, they may have frustrated one person or been a really bad employee in that stage of their career, who knows what was going on in their personal life. Fine, trust the intuition again.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Go back to earlier in the conversation, we talked about what makes someone a 10x sales hire. A 10x sales hire, in my opinion, breaks glass. So if I got a reference from someone, for example, that said this person was not a joy to work with 100% of the time. In fact, sometimes he or she was a bull in a china shop. But let me tell you this person was very effective. And once you broke into their inner circle, they're extremely loyal. You know, something like that, like that's okay. That's not an unequivocally positive reference on all dimensions, but it fits the spec of my criteria. I also want to hear holistic references and not every spiky individual gets glowing references from every single person. So if I hear 10 glowing references and I hear one negative reference, I decide whether the red flags I heard are absolute deal breakers. Maybe I'll do even more references vetting into that. And I'm comfortable ignoring it at times. So there's another thing, Harry, which is like your intuition matters. References are critical, but they aren't everything.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I think giving a reference is a tricky thing. You never want to inhibit someone's career. So, first, I give someone a chance to brag about the candidate or say good things about the candidate so that they can feel good about themselves. So I'll probably start by saying, tell me about some of the highlights about working with this person. I wouldn't be calling you if we didn't have some good conversations already. And I let them do that. And then I say on a scale of one to 10, how likely would you be? Or, you know, how strongly would you recommend hiring this person or a VP of sales role? And if they say anything under 10, I say why. And sometimes I add the word blindly in there. So I'd say on a scale of one to 10, would you blindly recommend this person into a VP of sales role or even into a sales rep role? Usually someone pauses when you say blindly and they go, hmm, and I go, tell me about that pause. And if they tell you about the pause, it's kind of their way of giving you the nuance for what context they do or don't thrive within. And I think that helps you understand where to take the rest of the reference.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “The most important thing is digging into references. And I'm saying this because I was on a reference call recently for someone who was getting hired into an executive role at a publicly traded company. And the reference was conducted by the search firm, and I was totally floored. There is no more important step in the process than understanding what it was like to work with this person. And if they don't have effusive references, be it from peers, be it from people who worked under them, be it from people they worked for, that's really, really meaningful signaling. So it's a step that I don't want to be like a, you know, a check the box at the very end confirmatory step, but it's probably the most important step in the entire interview process is understanding what it's actually like.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Answer that question. Can I add the most important thing for hiring a sales leader or hiring a sales rep that I didn't say?”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Are they getting the gist of who your customers are? Have they done their homework? Have they watched YouTube videos, podcasts, et cetera?”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Now, I want to see what it looks like when they are in their absolute comfort zone, and I want to see them rocket in their comfort zone. So I would say, pitch me your product, or let's do a discovery call because I think that's more telling than a pitch, and help me understand who am I as the buyer, what are the most common objections you hear? And you only need like 30 seconds of prep on it. And then ask them to run you through a discovery call and what you're listening for is do they ask open-ended questions when you give them the objections that they just told you they hear all the time? Can they handle those with thoughtful questions? Can they dig in? Can they avoid going straight to discounting or any sort of transactional interaction? So I would put them in their comfort zone and let them do their thing and hopefully they can shine there. And perhaps if it's light prep, you can have them try pitching your product to them. But when you're evaluating them on that criteria, just be reasonable with the bar because you're the expert in your product. They're not. What you want to look for there is craftsmanship or putting together one or two slides that don't have any type.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “For sales executives, I encourage founders to invite them to work through an actual strategic question that they're facing. So how should they segment or should we build a sales dev org? Or should we market next year? And if so, how? Sit down with that person and actually work through the problem to see how they think about trade offs.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “So, if you're at a stage where you have a recruiter, I'd have the recruiter ask some of the transactional questions so that the hiring manager or the founder can ask some of the deeper questions. So recruiter might ask, you know, about performance, about quota attainment, all of that. The first opening phone screen is a get-to-know you. You're buying and you're selling. You can understand who is the person, what motivates them, what's propelled their career. The next step is a deep dive into how they've made decisions about each step in their career. And what I really want to hear there are patterns and who's invested in mentoring them, how self-aware are they, do they know their own blind spots? Any chance to doubler triple click into stories to get the raw version rather than the polished one line answer is really good. So I try to make that conversation an hour even an hour and a half. And then the next step in the process should include some sort of a work sample for the job to be done. So for a sales rep, I want to hear what it sounds like when they sell.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “So, the questions that uncover whether someone has an attribute give you a sense of how that person thinks in an unscripted way. So let's say that a core attribute is business acumen. Let's say we're selling a really complex product, a very intellectual buyer, and someone needs to understand how the business works rather than just going through a simple bank qualification. If I'm testing for business acumen, I might ask the person, what's a company that interests you deeply? Or what's a company you've been following? What is it about their business model that interests you? What do you think might hurt? What would it take for them to 10x in terms of their own growth? And I go deep to see, or they reading, are they thinking? Are they curious? You know, you do that for each of the attributes that you're looking for.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Founders, as you know, have a background in product or engine, so they've nailed these tech interviews, they have no idea where to begin for evaluating salespeople or sales leaders. And on top of that, you know what's really tricky about interviewing salesfolks? Well, they are very good at selling. So if you ask hypothetical and behavioral questions like, what's your 30, 60, 90 plan, you are going to get really articulate, well-scripted answers that do not help you vet the candidate in earnest. So when I work with founders on creating a sales interview process, we start by creating a scorecard. That scorecard has no more than five must-have attributes and skills. And we figure out what those are and then we start structuring with the questions around them.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Showing any flexibility. And my hunches, they're going to be a playbook person. Takes a carbon copy and brings it from one place to the other. They need to be thoughtful about what's not going to match the new culture they're stepping into.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Well, I talked about this concept earlier of giving away your Legos. I said it was a hallmark trade of the hypergrowth phase at Slack where I was there. I think you need to make that a part of each employee's personal brand. And if you're not familiar with the concept, this amazing woman named Molly Graham wrote an article talking about giving her away Legos, which basically meant add a hypergrowth startup. The company is changing so quickly that you need to take pride in being the person who stands something up, allows it to run pretty well, and then hands it off for someone else to scale it. And so I would imbue that into the culture so there are no surprises when you make senior leadership hires from the outside. And also, I would interview the prospective sales leader to figure out what worked for you lets you Salesforce as an example. What worked for you at Salesforce that fundamentally will not work for you when you join us here at Insert Name of the Company, Linear Loom, Figma, whatever. And if that person cannot name what won't fit a new culture as opposed to what worked in their old one, they're not.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “What's coming, bring in a second layer of senior leadership is going to help run the engine. And it's just hard to do that from within. So should you create a culture of promoting within, yes. Should you always be aware as the company grows of how many hires are coming externally versus internally? Yes. But for first senior leadership hire in sales, should you necessarily do that from within the company? No, not necessarily.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “I do and I don't agree with that. There's two elements of what you're describing one is what company they built their career in or what companies they built their career in, and number two is at what level did they end up at that company. So do you need the CRO of publicly traded high growth, hot, hot, hot company to be the head of sales at your very early stage startup? Probably not. That might not be the right spec for the first head of sales hire. Do you want someone who has seen what good looks like and seen what really high caliber talent looks like, seen rate of rapid change, seen really good processes in action? Yes. So you may just go one to two clicks under that CRO, and that's a perfectly acceptable hire. That said, you said another part of it, which was do I need to promote from within in order to have successful head of sales or perhaps to emphasize a positive culture? For me, for this key role, the answer is not necessarily no. It's too important of a role. You need someone who can see around the corner.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I have non obvious traits for ahead of sales, and I have non-obvious traits for hiring a sales rep too. So for a head of sales, number one is that they love to sell. And you may say, Danny, that's a very obvious trait, but there are just some ways that you should vet that out and test it. Like, is this the kind of person that when you text them, they pick up...”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “You need a CRL when you're past the zero to one phase. So the sales formula is working. It's time to scale it to the next level. And personally, I like to leave room for someone to grow. So if you're in earlier stage company, let's say in the low tens of millions, I would hire a VP or an SVP so that they have something to grow into. We with sales DNA are very internally competitive, so it's always good if there's something to work toward. And if you're at a leader stage company, you can hire a CRO who's seen the movie for the next stage of growth. And the one thing that I would say is the CRO is going to significantly influence the DNA of your sales war. Good folks see people follow them into a new gig. So you want to be really, really thoughtful about which company is culture and DNA. You want super infused into your own when you are making that hire. It's a very important decision.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Yes end, a little bit sequential, say the first head of sales is the founder, like we said. The next one could be a player coach who can roll up his or her sleeves, do the selling while simultaneously taking the lead on hiring the next four account executives. Often we see that. We look for someone who has led a team before so they are thinking company first, not just individual first or quota first, but they're not so, so senior that they're not ready to go do the work. And we look for that person to carry the bag, hire a few others. And then at that point it's probably time to bring on a more official head of sales if this person isn't really ready to stretch and step into that role. And by ready to stretch and step into that role, that's a two-way conversation. That's not just they feel ready, but it also means CEO and founder believes that that's what gives them the best chance of succeeding.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Such a good question. So, the founder needs to sell the product before anyone else can. So day one, founder equals head of sales. And I'm less concerned about a playbook per se, but here she needs to find a way to get in front of customers, understand what makes them light up, understand what hurts without their product, understand the objections that come up, and feel that experience of asking for money and managing a timeline. And after selling the first 10, 20 customers, the founder will number one have a really good sense of empathy for the first official salespeople that he or she brings on. And number two, we'll learn that selling is one of the most important input mechanisms for product direction too. So I just think it's a really, really healthy first step for the founder to wear that hat before hiring someone else to professionally wear that hat going.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Return on investment of time to put together a retrospective. So I was that person who was insistent on off sites, insistent on coming together to number one, bond. Number two, see what's around the corner. And number three, look back to a certain extent to understand if we were successful at something that we did, what was the why and how do we do more of it.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “So rather than fight it and credit for our impact and pound our chest, I kind of acknowledge this and acknowledge that this is the world's luckiest job as a sales leader. On the business lesson front, there's probably some people here who are curious about what is it like to build sales at a PLG company. And business lesson number one is essentially what I was saying. People are everything. And specifically in PLG, product is the most important component of the top of the funnel. So I became very close with my counterparts and product in a way that you don't always see between product and sales. You usually see it between marketing and sales. Number two, expansion dictates most of the sales driven revenue, which means that sales and success need a work in lockstep with one another, which means you need to build customer relationships for the long run and figure out how to engage exec sponsors, even if a customer's wrought in through a more junior buyer. And then number three, another cultural one, zooming out is hard. It always feels like you're too busy to do so. But what I realized at Slack is that it was always a good.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Yeah, the number one takeaway I'll get into some business priorities, but my number one takeaway from Slack nothing matters more than people. So we were in hypergrowth all four years. It was messy. Things were constantly changing. People were constantly being asked to give up their Legos. And my personal priority, and I think and hope what became my personal brand there was to create bridges between functions and develop personal empathy for each colleague. So when I started, sales sat in a separate building for marketing and product. We were growing so quickly there just wasn't enough space to house the growing sales org. So I would walk over for half of every single day and sit in the non-sales building and I'd hang out in the cafe and I would have these impromptu conversations in the hallways or working on and I even built friendships tonight, for example I'm going to meet Tamar, the chief product officer for coffee. That came from personal interactions that we had that led to really productive professional ambitions as well. To be honest, there was a bit of style around sales in the beginning at Slack and I totally got that.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “It's a great question. So let's take notion as an example. Notion is the first company that I've partnered with since joining Sequoia, and I've known Ivan and Akshay for almost four years. If you go on YouTube,”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “And they were betting their entire careers and entire businesses on HubSpot, and they were connecting with one another and supporting each other along the way. And there's something about the combo of those two things, like the effusive community and the very intentional culture that has now graded my mental framework for what makes for a great company.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Yeah, so HubSpot created the spec for my future career decisions, both as an operator and an investor. And I was alluding to this earlier, but I'm now looking for companies that have nailed culture and community. So they have this magnet for attracting and retaining talent. And they're also a magnet for engaging in effusive community of prospects and of customers. So you can visualize it on the culture front, Darmesh was extremely intentional about culture. So he created this culture document that codified the attributes and behaviors we aspired to live and breathe at HubSpot. We treated culture as a product. So we were constantly shipping new features. It had a budget. It had resources. There was even a senior leader to make sure that we got it right. And then on the community front, this part is particularly compelling. We have user conferences where you could feel the buzz of energy when you were there. It was this thriving ecosystem of resellers and hub experts and people drinking the cooling.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Final round. I'm sitting with Brian Halligan, who's then CEO, now executman of the company, and he looks at me, and he looks at my resume, and we both acknowledge that I have zero sales skills whatsoever, or zero formal sales training whatsoever, let's say, but he decides to take a bet on me and he tells me the bet is for two reasons. It's because I'm showing early signs of high aptitude, high slope, basically went to a competitive school, did well while I was there, made the most of it. And then part two was I was a waitress for six years and I was a waitress at a little diner and his assumption was if I have mastered waitressing that I know how to sell and service customers. So through that job, I landed in tech, landed HubSpot, and it was the best career decision of my entire life.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Dad. And because I'm in Boston and because essentially I'm in the right place at the right time, I'm there just as this little company called HubSpot is getting started in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I land on the HubSpot website at some point during job exploration. I immediately fall in love with the company. Like it's a complete culture magnet before the word culture was even a thing that companies were talking about. If you're not familiar with what HubSpot was back in 2010, it was basically a media site with a little bit of a product. So it was basically like this massive blog that was constantly putting out content. And some of the content it was putting out was not just to attract customers. It was also there to attract employee and to build this movement around it. I find out the founder's co-writ a book. I order that. I read it the next day. I watch webinars. I'm basically like fully enveloped in the HubSpot pitch before I even get an interview. Interview comes. I want a job so badly I would take it for free. Fast forward to the final.”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Combination, like all good things of personal priorities, a little bit of serendipity, and I would say professional ambition in terms of what got me into tech in the first place. So the personal story is my parents moved here in the early 80s as refugees from the Soviet Union, landed in Pittsburgh, Jewish family services, welcomed them, gave them English classes, money, furniture, and eventually helped my dad land a job at Motorola. He was an engineer, as was my mom. And so family landed in Boston and settled down laid roots there. Essentially, my parents took this big bold risk to move themselves and their three-year-old daughter at the time to give us all the opportunities in the world. And so I go to college and understanding that that's in the back of my mind. Senior year of college, I unfortunately find out that my mom is sick. Immediately make a decision to move home after graduating penn. So when everyone else is moving to New York, I move to Boston to be a caretaker of my mom along with my”

    2022-02-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: How To Build Sales Teams with a Product-Led-Growth GTM, What is a Sales Hiring Scorecard and How To Construct Yours & How To Structure the Onboarding Process for all New Sales Hires with Dannie Herzberg, Partner @ Sequoia Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source