20 Sales: How To Interview Sales People; The Red Flags and What to Look For, How Sales Leaders Should Change Goals and Quotas in Harder Markets and What Reps Can Do To Ensure They Hit Their Numbers in These Markets with Eleanor Dorfman, Sales Leader @ Ret

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Eleanor Dorfman is a Sales Leader @ Retool, the company that allows you to build internal tools, remarkably fast. Prior to Retool, Eleanor joined Retool when there were only three account executives and has scaled the sales org sales to over 30 AEs, many SEs, and an entire SDR team. Before Retool, Eleanor was at Segment, where she built out the company’s customer success operations team before pivoting to creating an expansion sales team, renewals team, and a new business sales team. Finally, before Segment, Eleanor made her way into startups, starting as an unpaid intern at Clever, just four years later, Eleanor was Head of Customer Success and Solutions Engineering.

In Today's Episode with Eleanor Dorfman We Discuss:

1.) Entry into Sales from Working with the US Education Department:

How did Eleanor get her first role as an unpaid intern at Clever?
What are 1-2 of her biggest takeaways from her time at Segment?
What are the biggest advantages of sales reps having experience in customer success?

2.) The Sales Playbook:

How does Eleanor define, "a sales playbook"? When does it need to be created?
Does it need to be the founder who creates it or can it be a Head of Sales?
Is it possible to run a PLG and enterprise motion from Day 1? How does this change your sales playbook?
How does Eleanor advise founders on when is the right time to layer on an enterprise motion, on top of a PLG motion?

3.) Who, What and When: Building the Sales Team

Should founders hire a Head of Sales first or sales reps first? If sales reps, should founders always hire sales reps in two's?
How does Eleanor structure the hiring process for all new sales team recruits?
What are the clearest signals of 10x sales hires? What are red flags in the interview process?
How does Eleanor use demo's and case studies to determine technical ability?

4.) The First 30, 60 and 90 Days: The Onboarding:

What is the right structure for all new sales hires to be onboarded?
Why does Eleanor believe you will always hire your Head of Sales Enablement too late?
What are the signs that now is the right time to hire your Head of Sales Enablement?
What tools, materials and resources can founders provide to shorten the ramp time for new AEs?
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make in the onboarding of new sales reps?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back. This is 20 Sales with me, Harry Stebbings, and 20 Sales is the monthly sales episode,
0:04.9	where I sit down with one of the leading sales minds to discuss their biggest tips, lessons and
0:09.2	advice to both scaling founders and sales teams on what it takes to build a truly successful
0:14.2	sales machine today. Now, today I'm thrilled to be joined by Alan Adolphman, sales leader at Retool.
0:19.3	She joined Retool when there were only three AEs and has
0:22.1	scaled the sales walk to over 30 AEs today, many SEs and entire SDR team. Before Retool,
0:28.5	Eleanor was at Segment, where she built out the company's customer success operations,
0:32.3	before pivoting to creating an expansion sales team, renewals team and a new business sales team. Finally, before
0:38.5	segment, Elner made her way into startups, starting as an intern at Clever. Just four years later,
0:43.8	Elner was head of customer success and solutions engineering. I want to say a huge thank you
0:48.1	to Jordan at Monte Carlo and Genua at Miro. Some amazing questions suggestions today really did make
0:53.3	such a difference. But before we
0:54.9	dive into the show state, now you've heard me talk a lot about product led sales on my podcast and on
0:59.6	LinkedIn, and that's because it's the future of how modern software companies go to market.
1:03.7	I first heard about it from a company called Endgame, and they're creating the product
1:07.3	led sales category with a new product you should know about. I was too late to get in on
1:11.4	their seed round, admittedly, and now they're doing really well, and I'm slightly kicking myself.
1:15.7	Endgame helps companies like Figma, Launch Darkly, Callanley, and Loom, find the right accounts to focus on
1:22.0	based on product signals, identify the users within those accounts that they should target,
1:26.6	and take action actions drive more
1:28.0	revenue faster. They're in beta right now, but if you use the code Harry, the team has promised to
1:32.9	give you an exclusive demo of the product. Check out endgame.io forward slash demo to see what
	...

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