YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Egan

lines on the record: 43
first: 2023-07-12
most recent: 2023-07-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I would press by Snowflake from afar. I've not been a buyer of snowflake technology. But my sense is that that company from the CEO on down has really great alignment and is customer-centric. And again, I don't work there, but I think it's probably a pretty intense environment and they're making it happen every day. So that's a company that if you look at the last five years, they've really made hay and hats off to them in terms of how much progress they've made.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the hardest part of the job at last right now is helping our customers with opinionated A to view on how to make them successful. And I don't think that's different than any other company. JIRA's been out there a long time. How are we helping engineering teams and broader companies ship better products faster and really getting into the weeds with them and providing an opinionated solution on how our services are helping them, I think is a pursuit that we're really turning up the investment on, but something that we're going to work every day to make happen.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's an opportunity with AI to use technology to help every sales rep understand the best next step for their customers and to show up with more great idea for their customers. In terms of change, I'd like to see more adoption of AI to help us do that.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I call myself and say every environment's different. Watch out for pattern matching from the previous company. Really get to know your peer group and the other side of the equation about being probably the engineering leadership to understand how they view their product and how their product solves problems. So spending more time with the broader organization and not pattern matching.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sales taxes that have died of death are really around withholding information. When I started Oracle to get a white paper, you had to email the sales rep and to get any technical documentation and so forth. Over time, that has changed dramatically. So withholding information has died of death. I think transparency across the board is the new normal.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Greg writing written communication that illustrates grasp of what the business problem is and how you're going to solve it illustrates the fact that you've got a plan and you can drive according to that plan.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hear it slipped to x4 order. What I'm looking for is did you commit it to this quarter and did you tell the company that it was absolutely coming in and it's actually slipped? Or was it something that you were pursuing that potentially you could pull into this quarter? Those are two very different things. If it was committed to the quarter and did not come in, then if I'm a startup, I would do a full deal review and understand why it didn't come in. And is it something around our pricing and our product or is it something around the sales execution? And I would be looking at those different sides of the equation to really dig into where do I have the problem.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deal reviews happening at different frequencies based on where you are in the organization. So sales rep's having a deal review with their manager with daily. I'm spending two to three hours a week just doing deal reviews. What separates good from break, I think Gray is organized using medic or medpic or some framework for how do we assess the deal, the people in the deal, the business value, and what are the drivers and how are we going to get across the finish line. And I think the best sales leaders that I've seen run deal reviews aren't so interested in why the deal is going to happen, but they're more focused on why the deal won't happen.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most stardos, if you're in with procurement and you're not selling through PLG and through the website and swiping credit card, so to speak, and you're in with procurement, that procurement agent know that you're a startup, knows that you are really keen on that revenue and that that revenue matters. And they're going to push you harder than they might other vendors. And what they're looking for is conviction on your side that you believe in the product, that you have an understanding of the business value and the ROI that it's going to provide. And they're looking for you to make a stand. So you'll face more pressure to discount, but I think procurement is looking for you to hold the line.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good discounting should originate from the office of the CFO, meaning the CFO knows the margins. They know what margins are willing to give away on products at what volumes. What should happen in most companies? The CFO should provide a discount matrix that the rep might have a few points to give. The ref's manager might have a few more points to give based on volume and then all the way up to the sales we paying and then at some level the exception would come from the CFO. So it should be very well organized and it should be with an eye towards what can the company afford to give based on certain volumes. If it's distinct or not tied into the CFO's office, then I think you're going to run in circles and have a lot of problems.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't discount. We try to work on terms that work for our customer, but everything's programmatic. So if our customers were to speak with any other customer, they know that they're in the same boat and that we're transparent and fair. At other previous employers, yeah, we would discount, but it was something that worked well for both the company and the customer.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the balance between hitting the quarterly number and building long term pipeline, if it's an early stage company who absolutely needs that deal, you're probably going to need your leadership and executive support as a seller on your side to make it clear in the right tone to the prospect that this is an opportunity that would really help the company at that time. But it needs to be done in a tone that works for the customer. Jamming deals at the end of the quarter is always kind of obnoxious, but it happens and does work, but sometimes there is a detrimental effects to kind of cramming deals in daily quarter. So in all this, the best reps are creating ample pipeline throughout the year. They create enough pipeline that they're able to hit their quarterly numbers without doing anything unnatural to get those deals in. Because if one falls out, they've got another that comes in. So it's around really generating enough pipeline throughout the year so you don't put yourselves in that position. Now, is that possible every time? Probably not, but for the most part.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it would be for CFO that is involved in your deal and they're spending time on that deal that tells you that you are strategic to them. So your responsibility to respond to that is giving them the financial or the value engineering, as it's called, on the ROI. And that is the job of the sales team to do that. Maybe they have resources in a value engineering team. Maybe they don't. But really giving the CFO crystal clear picture of what's the return, I think it's table snakes these days. I welcome it because it tells you that they're willing to lean in and work with these apartments.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the year 2023, I think Salesforce forecasting has gotten a little more difficult. Everything is on the table. Every company is looking for areas to trim or reasons not to spend. So as a rep or a sales team, you better be crystal clear on the business problem that your solution is solving and why the company would spend money on it and what are they expecting in terms of return. If you don't have those things, you may not have a deal that's forecastable.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think of feedback, Liz Wiseman's book, Multipliers really nailed it, is the feedback diminishing and is it overbearing and is it too frequent? Or is it just the right amount? And is it geared towards the priorities that we're trying to get after? So I think it's about frequency and making sure that it's not personal, but it's about how are we getting after it as a team.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think of direct feedback, I think of it in terms of a ratio. So there's the day-to-day work that we're trying to get done. There's the challenges that we're facing, and we should be enjoying those challenges and having fun with it. But there's also times where we need to get better or we have our blinders on and we need to be thinking more broadly. And it's the job of the manager to break that news, so to speak. But it is a portion of the relationship. It is not a constant feedback loop that's happening every day. It's a moment in time. People kind of sit up a little bit straighter, dust themselves off, and off we go. We're back to more of a congenial, fun working relationship. But again, you can't be afraid to provide that feedback. And I think the employees sense that and they are disappointed when they don't get feedback because it's something that everybody I've worked for is looking for.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they feel like you're doing the same job as them, then you're in trouble and the hierarchy is going to break down. So I think it's about how much work and responsibility that we're putting at every level so that people can be their best. And how do we ramp them into the next job and do the rate of appreciation for that there is a ramp? If they do, then I think hierarchy works and there's an appreciation. Secondly with hierarchy, I think you're not going to exercise hierarchy every day. But there are moments throughout the year where you have to be very direct for the employees on what the expectations are and if they're not meeting those expectations, you certainly need to deliver that when he was in Plainspeed and they need to know where they stand. So hierarchy also breaks down if the leader is not available or comfortable providing direct feedback.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The term hierarchy is an interesting one to get buy-in from your employees. They need to appreciate their manager is contending with a lot more issues and has more on their plate, which is requiring a certain level of skill set and focus and hard work to get done. As I look at my boss, Cameron, he's got more of his plate than myself. And they need to appreciate”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think on the journey of people joining a company in the early days, they want to have clearer expectations and you as a leader need to be a little bit more directive on what are the expectations and how you're going to get there. And then as they become competent and ramped up in their job, it's a little bit more of a partnership and we're going to do a more ideas from them on what they see as the next steps for the organization. So it goes from directive to more of a partnership. So I think that's an important element. the job and the manager employee relationship changes over time so that's one thing i try to focus on”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I'm closing a candidate, I'm interested if I'm giving them a fair comp plan. Are they really interested about the long-term journey at this company? Because this compl plan only represents this moment in time to the next year or two. If we're both successful, the company will increase in size. Our jobs will be different. Our jobs will be bigger. So how do they view the long-term journey at this company? Are they excited about the company of the journey or is it about the comp plan? Sometimes if it becomes too much about the comp plan, that then that's a red flag because it's really about a total rewards element. which is you're joining a rocket ship and you're going to love this job and it's going to really benefit your career overall. That's kind of what I'm looking for, but complaints certainly need to be fair if you're not providing a fair comp plan. You can expect to hire the best.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean by intellectual rage is this person, this initial sales leader is going to have a lot in their plate. They're not going to have a big marketing team that they can outsource all of the writing and the messaging to. They're not going to have all the resourcing from product management and so forth. So they're going to need to do a lot of different things. And so they're going to need to have energy and range to do everything from writing to messaging to closing and providing that customer feedback. You know, the voice of the customer back in the product. So that range as the companies become bigger and more specialized starts to narrow, if you will, but in early days, it's really about how much stuff are you willing to take on. And that's sort of referred to when I talk about range.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could absolutely see where the big logo ire does not work out. I think, again, what you're looking for there is intellectual range. And that often doesn't just show up from by the fact that they worked at Microsoft or King.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, going back to tithing, it does not pay to have coin operated sales reps in the early days. They're going to be overly focused on quotas and crushing their number to get to a certain outcome. The early days are really about who's creating the best connection between my developing product and my potential customer. But I think in the later years or as you build out your sales organization, well, I don't like the term coin operated. People do become more specialized as you get bigger as a company. And the specialization, the sales rope is to bring in customers and grow revenue. And they need to make a living. And so I would be concerned about coin operated early days, but not later.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not sure I differentiate so much on enterprise versus PLG. To me, it's a little bit more about the timing of the company. How old is the company and where are they in their journey? Early days of hiring reps, you're going to need Renaissance reps that have a very wide rad of skill sets who enjoy the building process. And as things go on, you start to scale your sales team, you're going to see reps that are there for really to make a living and are more concerned with what's the paycheck and what's the quota. That's a different rep. So I think it's, to me, it's a little bit over time how the reps change a little bit less PLG versus enterprise. But certainly as you go into enterprise and you've been there longer, that rep that is going to be successful there has more experience and is more focused on what are my set of accounts and how do I crush my number.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most curious part of the interview process is when they get through final interviews and you're assuming that they're just going to crush the mock scenario. And sometimes they'll just come in and it'll be a flop and you'll say, wow, I just never saw that coming. And that comes down to what's their comfort level being in front of a room, being in front of an audience that's going to throw up real objections. So sometimes you're surprised. Good versus great comes down to, are they consistent throughout the whole process, right? Do they crush the interviews and then just come in with a level of confidence during the mock scenario that just wins you over and makes a ton of sense? I'd say overall it's consistency when you start to see inconsistency across the different steps of the process. That's definitely a red flag.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Question. I think if they're selling you what they already know, then the audience should be delivering much harder questions and harder objections. I think you can accommodate for that in terms of the tone that you take in that meeting and some of the mock questionnaire.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I could go either way on that. At Salesforce, we gave them a fictitious company, a business set of business problem that they resolved using Salesforce.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Six different steps, and that stand in the deliver moment, I think, is important and tells you who can really command the conversation.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think hiring great salespeople is about process and it's about discipline. And when I was at Salesforce, I had the benefit of being a part of a process that came together that we really invested in. As Mark Bennyoff said, he wanted to see everybody have hiring fatigue. Everybody should be interviewing it all the time, whether it be for a job opening that you have today or one that you might have down the line. To hire well, you really need to put a multi-step process in to get to know the candidate, to get to know how they approach a customer, understand business problems, and then present to those business problems in a differentiated way. No hire that I've made at my past companies have gotten the job until they presented a mock scenario around a fictitious company and a business problem that they're trying to solve. So we really put the rep on the spot, so to speak, to show how they deliver in the moment. We're talking to a customer about how they'll uniquely solve their business problem. By the time a rep gets a job with one of these companies, they should have met with five or six different people on five.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do favor hiring two to three at a time if you can afford it. That is a great indicator of sales rep effectiveness and the compares on the reps is very effective and we'll tell you. Number one, can my reps accelerate? And number two, within my sales rep base, who's really carrying the water up the hill and making it happen?”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're doing an AB test. You have your market, you have your online channels, you have got chat, you've got your website, and you've got your e-commerce engine and so forth. So that's one channel. And then the other would be sales rep handle where you can kind of measure what they're doing through their activities in Salesforce and opportunities that are being created. So you simply have a cohort of customers that are managed through the web channels and another cohort that are managed through sales reps. And if you see outsized growth in the ones managed through sales reps, hopefully you do. And that'll tell you that you have strong effectiveness or you're on your way to affect a sales chat.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a PLG world, rep effectiveness, the best companies out there are doing a lot of A-B testing. Atlassian is famous for A-B testing. What happens if I put this account in the hands of a rep versus my regular online channels? And I'd say the most effective way is that testing.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think at first the sales team is obviously there for revenue growth, but almost even more importantly, providing customer feedback into the product group, giving the product team that they're working with a sense for why do these people gravitate to the service? What business problem is it solving? How would you down the line translate this into ROI for the end user? Early days is creating a major feedback loop, which you can build that repeatability on. Once you have that repeatability, then you can start to build sales teams that are more traditional with the EDR core sellers focus on just revenue numbers supported by sales engineers and so forth.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To think it's just a few features because, in fact, it is a lifelong pursuit to make sure that you're staying up with the most stringent requirements that are coming out of enterprises today.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think number one is stale and reliability. They need to know that if this becomes business critical, you're going to be providing the SLAs and the 99.99 uptime. There's data geography requirements around data residency. If I'm going to use a service in Japan or if I'm going to use it in Europe, I need to know that you have got local data centers, process controls. They want to know how your engineers control data, who has access to that data, what security protocols you use around that data. They have encryption requirements, data loss prevention requirements. It gets pretty deep. But I think the one thing to emphasize there is that there's no finish line. It's not like as a PLG company, you can dip your toe into enterprise and deliver these three or four features. It's a lifelong pursuit that you need to be in partnership with your customers. If you look at today and just the changes in the data requirements around GDPR, like that's a full-time job for someone to be looking at that and saying, okay, well, how are we running our service? And is it compliant in Europe? It's nice.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're a product that's generating enough end user value and it starts to spread within companies, you're going to get pulled in by those companies to enterprise and you're going to get to user cows that are so significant. You're going to get on the radar of procurement illegal and they say this many people are using this product, I want the right turns in place so that I can feel comfortable using the product. So you're going to feel a real pull if you're getting it right and that virality is happening within companies. And I think that's what happened at Slack. They had in some cases tens of thousands of users within single companies that said, hey, look, we need to come to the table and operate. You need to operate as more of a strategic partner than a Rome service that my end users love.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think when you listen to a founder speak to their product and how it solves business problems, it's the job of the sales leader to pull from that and codify it and put it into writing and explain that these are our sales motions. So I think it's the CEO, the founder's job to provide the inspiration and the high-level talking points and the kind of the idea matching as they were talking to other executives, but it's the sales VP's job to really nail it.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's an interesting question, Harry. I don't typically use the word playbook. Playbook to me seems like just a simple one, two, three, and you follow these steps and you're going to close the deal. I think it's more than that. When I think of a playbook, I actually just think of sales motions. I prefer the term sales motions. Understanding who is the buyer, what's the user persona that we're selling to, what's the industry that they're in, what are the business problems that they're faced with, and how does our product uniquely solve that problem. Talking in terms of the unique solution to that problem is where I think strong sellers really shine and not talking about product features, but really the solution that overall driving business value. So that's emotion more than it is a one, two, three playbook, in my mind.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think about Slack that power of Slack comes, the bigger the team and the more employees you can get engaged on that platform, the more value they drive to their customers. So Slack from day one had an appetite to work with large teams and large customers, yet they had an incredibly engaging platform. So that ability to marry end user love with the enterprise foster right out of the gates focused on large teams and all the security controls that were necessary there was something that was truly unique at the time and very enjoyable. It led to, as you said, hyper growth.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My biggest takeaway from Dropbox was the importance of getting it right. How do we provide a product that end users really love, but that large enterprises can trust from a security and operation standpoint? So the balance between end user love and enterprise security posture is a really difficult one to strike. And I think Dropbox was one of the first companies to go from a B2C company into the B2B realm and really work hard to get the enterprise posture, the security and controls right, which is no small task. And it's somewhat of an unsexy pursuit, but it's much necessary in order for large companies to trust you and to bring you in and allow you to expand within their domain.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Salesforce does not get enough credit for being one of the original product led growth companies. If you look at Salesforce and what BettyOff did in the early days, we were one of the first companies to ever allow companies for our potential clients to use a trial at no charge for 30 days. During that trial, the sales team was obsessed with one of the business problems that this customer is trying to solve. How do I help configure the Salesforce service to help solve those business problems? And it led to incredible conversion rates. The idea that if we're going to put the product in our customers' hands, we got to give them help in terms of how they solve their problems. That was an amazing element of Salesforce. And one, I just don't think they got enough credit for.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I was lucky to join Oracle in the mid 90s and I started in the data center at a technical support role and quickly made my way over to the sales engineering side of the house. Again, at Oracle in the late 90s in their DMD organization, which was a fast-moving, fantastic place to learn.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do favor hiring two to three at a time if you can afford it. In a PLG world, rep effectiveness, the best companies out there are doing a lot of A-B testing. Early days of hiring reps, you're going to need Renaissance reps that have a very wide range of skill sets.”
2023-07-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20Sales: Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source