YouSaid · the spoken record

Kyle Parrish

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14
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2021-12-08
most recent
2021-12-08
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “You know, smoke and mirrors in terms of performance. But yeah, I think it's a healthy balance. The CEO is going to be there to support you, call you out, and be able to kind of drill into everything that you're presenting, but you need to give them something to react to. That's what I see work in best.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That I follow for all the people in my team is like the sales leader owns that agenda. The CEO is going to tell you what's on their mind. They're going to give you insight into what they're seeing. They're going to try and help you be more successful, but you need to build that structure and framework. And in a way, kind of manage yourself because you're teaching them things. I think if you ask any founder that's worked with a really good early stage sales leader, they've learned a ton from that person. So I'm bringing the metrics. I'm bringing the hiring profile, how we're thinking about it. I'm bringing in the challenges. I'm bringing the wins. You know, we can't hold and celebrate them too long, but what we learned from the wins, I'm bringing like the losses too. Again, we don't meet as a big team and talk about losses, but the leadership team and myself, we're reviewing the losses all the time as they pop up. And so I think coming with a framework that you own the agenda and you need to take the co-founder on a ride on how to think about a sales org. And then, of course, they're going to have people in their camp through investors, advisors, angels, whatever it may be, who are also going to give them feedback to making sure that they're not getting.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yeah, I will say I reported to Dylan for a number of months and then reported into Mandar Chief Customer Officer for the better part of three years. But I think what I learned and being close to Dylan and his role and working with Amanda closely is that early on as a founder, again, you've maybe never betted a company, never founded a company, never worked in sales in any capacity. You're aware of it. You watch all the videos, listen all the podcasts. You know, you're studied up, but you haven't lived it. And so I think I came in with the assumption that the founder was going to know what to ask me. what to test for. How to measure me, right? The revenue like again, we can talk about revenue and stuff that's very easy to use as a benchmark. But what if I'm hitting revenue targets but burning the community and our users and our customers and hiring people that just generally are toxic to the culture of the company? That would be a big red flag. So what I learned early that I think the founder and that sales leader should be meeting at least weekly is my expectation for an hour at minimum. I think going into that, and it's a general framework.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “We do. And we do lose accounts. So don't let me get off the topic here by saying this. We need to do more postmortems, but we do a lot of deal reviews. So we've got a bi-weekly deal review where we have a couple reps from all segments all the way to our strategic account segment down to mid-market and we're actually soon launching S&B. But we do deal reviews and we have kind of an outline that they follow and they bring it and they come and they talk with myself, our CRO, our sales ops and rev ops leaders, frontline managers and we just have a good discussion on all of the different things that it's going to take. So I think we spend more time doing deal reviews on deals we're trying to win not as many postmortems. And I guess thankfully we lose deals, but not as many where it makes sense to make that consistently part of the postmortem. But I think it's really valuable and it's on my mind to keep doing more heading into 2022.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That just for management sanity is for the entire organization. If Dylan wants to jump in Salesforce, which I don't think he does often, but he could actually see notes on where the account's at, what the deal scoped out to be, why we win, why we don't win. And so I think early on, if you see people that maybe haven't worked in a hyper environment and they're not used to kind of doing four things at once, and I don't mean to take away from focus, but you just need to be able to change on a dime, be super efficient, and move super fast. So we are looking at can you convert, can you sell, can you put up numbers? Of course, that's like everyone, but in hypergrowth, can you keep up with the pace? And that's something that we actually test for in interviews a lot. It's like, is the pace that Figma is growing at? Quadrupling, tripling, doubling. Is that going to swallow some people a lot? And they're not going to probably enjoy it. So it's not for everyone, you know, it's kind of one of those things. And, you know, I know you're one of the hardest working people I've met out there, but you've got to be able to not only put in the time, but be super efficient with your time because, yes, we're working a lot hours every day, every week, but we've got to make sure the output's there. And that's only.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, so I think some of the canary and the coal mines are definitely just conversion rates early on. Say, for example, you're doing a bunch of initial calls with customers, but you're just converting at a much lower rate. That would be an indicator to me or someone on the management team that there's something going on here. So call recording software is big, joining calls to shadow. I think sometimes that can feel a little having your manager on all the calls, both for the customer and the rep, of course. But I think what the call recording software, it's really nice because you can go and review. All right. So is he setting the agenda? Is he asking a lot of questions? Like what can we learn from that experience? I think that's really critical. And I think the other part is you start to see at a hyper growth company, can they move fast enough? There's of course the sales skills. Are they good at the job? Are they putting in the work? Is conversion there? And then it's about speed. Can you be efficient? You can't take two hours every day to close out. There's a bunch of clicks you got to do in these jobs. Convert this lead, create an opportunity, put notes for your manager, do all these things. We don't do that.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “It's more of a coin operated type of profile. But early on with Renaissance wraps and really across the board in hiring in those later stages, you're looking for people that have been through adversity professionally, personally. You just want to understand that they have as grit and determination. I think one way is like tenure. If you've been in a hypergrowth company for X number of years, you know they've been through a number of reorgs, a number of changes, a number of shifts in directions, good quarters, bad quarters, and those kind of people are the people that you want on your team. They've learned a ton. They're able to be a leader on the floor when you're going through change. There's a lot of people that, you know, change is happening. Oh, it was so good last year. Harry 2020 at Figma was amazing. You should have been here. And it's easy for those people to poison the wealth.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Message and I touch X number of contacts or accounts over this four hour period, I can reliably generate this much pipeline. And so that's like one thing where it just comes down to diligence. Like these people may have more open calendars than you or I, which is envious at times, but the really good sales reps, not only they're filling it with customer meetings, but they're also filling blocks with intentional time of what they want to do. I have to clean up my pipeline because with the forecast manager, call it my manager tomorrow. So I'm going to spend an hour to do that the day before. Not be that rat that sits in the one-on-one. Oh, Harry, yeah, something came up. You know, I meant to update that record in Salesforce and all of that stuff. Consistency, cleanliness, tension to detail, and being really thoughtful about how you spend your days and your weeks. And I think what really makes great people. The other big trait I want to say is I ask, especially for early stage reps, I love the article, the sales learning curve. It talks about early stage bringing in renaissance reps as you get later to the execution phase.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So, you know, for example, one thing is how do you set up your day? So if you're an AE, you could have sales development support, you could not have sales development support, but prospecting is one of those things that in an IC role as a salesperson can easily fall off the calendar. You can put all the fake blocks you want on the calendar. Oh, Kyle's going to go prospect for four hours this Friday. You know, you have a big Thursday night. That falls off the calendar. You're catching up on emails, getting dopamine hits, checking slack, whatever it may be. But the best sales reps, they treat that as like a customer meeting, right? I am going to show up to that prospecting block at 930 at 10 o'clock. I'm going to put the hours in. I'm also going to come prepared so I don't spend the first 30 minutes saying, who am I going to go after? What message am I going to send? How am I going to email them? They've already done that preparation the day before whenever that time is so that when they actually get into that blog, it's straight output. And those people know and they work with their managers and their leaders to come with this model that says if I know that I'm reaching the right people with the right”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, well, I think one thing that I always like to just ask is what have you learned in this role for the past couple years? Like, what is, you know, the playbook that you're taking away as a rap? I think we always talk about leaders and people building teams and orgs about, hey, what is your playbook? But every good sales rep, they develop a playbook at that company, at that role. When they're hyper successful, it's not a fluke. They're extremely prepared, extremely diligent, course motivated, but they have found what that playbook is. And of course, it evolves as the business matures and changes. But I think the really best sales reps can tell you exactly what their secret sauce was, what they learned to drive success not as a fluke, not one quarter, not one sales year, but consistently, time and time again.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Style was and incorporate that. And so keeping that growth mindset so that I could just get marginally better every day, every week. And I got to the point where, quite honestly, I was still working hard, but I was so efficient that it didn't feel like I was working harder. I was working smarter. And so the best sales reps, they put in the time. They're really hard workers, I think. But you get to a point of hyper efficiency. And then when I went to Dropbox, you know, I was learning all these key code shortcuts and we were just getting buried alive by inbound leads and they weren't all like, hey, let's buy. It could be your grandma yelling at us because, you know, the cloud storage provider lost her files or it could be ESPN or NBC asking about starting a pilot. And so we had to churn through such high volume that efficiency on top of the kind of just motivation and tenacity were key. So those are some of the things that stand out.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, no, it's a good question. This is something that the former COO at Dropbox kind of mentions when he talks about hiring me. And I don't remember it because I kind of, you know, the interview was intense and you get out of those things. You're like, what happened? I asked him this question. I go, why did you hire me in that interview? You know, what stood out? I was at ADP, this huge corporate company selling payroll and HR service as I come to this cloud storage company with 40 something employees looking to get a job here. And when he talked about like the leaderboard and what made people successful and he asked me, why aren't you number one? And my answer was like, these people that are number one and number two have been here for 10 years. They're lifers at this company and organization. And so I think what allowed me to be successful was tenacity, work ethic, and just always looking to get a little bit better. I would see little parts of every wrap around me, things that they did well, things I heard on the phone, prospecting strategies, how to think about customer meetings once you actually set up the meetings. And I would have just try and always be genuine to who I was as an individual, what my sales.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, and it's getting to the point where all of a sudden the CEO is trying to manage other key executives across the business and three individual sales reps. What happens is they start bringing in advisors, they start bringing in angels and fundraising rounds that have led sales teams, RVPs of sales, our heads of sales, other companies, and can give them guidance and advice, which is good. I think it's a good stopgap. It's a good band-aid in the short term, but long term. And I think part of that strategy is also to start recruit, getting the word out, sourcing talent. You need to bring in someone who just has more perspective in playbooks. I don't think it's about copy pasting what those people have done in the past, but it's about coming in, understanding where they're at today. And from first principles, starting to build a foundation of a repeatable sales team, not just prove that you can sell a product and bring in some revenue.”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, and so say you go the route where you don't bring in a leader. I think the one thing to call out is it's the cheaper route. You're not going to give away as much equity. You're not going to be probably paying these people in very early stage, high amount of cash. And so if you can find people that are really passionate about what you're doing and are energized about working with you and the broader team, then that's great. And that works for a lot of companies. I think you'll be able to get scrappy renaissance reps who can do a little bit of everything. You know, they can't only be pure play blinders on sales reps like you'll see at a publicly traded company or a really late stage org. They need to be able to work really well cross-functionally. You know, Harry, we've talked about this in the past, but if you bring someone in and they've only worked in a really formulated environment where everything's given to them, they got enablement and they've got, you know, a good frontline manager who's in the trenches of them every single day. They need to be driven. They need to be pushed. Those kind of people that aren't intrinsically motivated, they're just not going to do well. And so I think if you've got a few people that are in that role or do”

    2021-12-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source