20 Sales: Notion's CRO Olivia Nottebohm on How To Build Great Operations at Your Company, How To Use The Trust Equation in Hiring, How To Do Referencing Most Effectively and Whether To Fill Seats or Wait for the Perfect Hire?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
Olivia Nottebohm is the Chief Revenue Officer @ Notion where she leads the Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Customer Experience teams. Prior to Notion, Olivia was the COO @ Dropbox where she achieved the first 4 quarters of profitable growth. Before Dropbox Olivia spent over 5 years at Google including as VP Cloud GTM Operations and Global SMB Sales. Finally, before Google, Olivia spent a whopping 15 years at McKinsey & Company.
In Today’s Episode with Olivia Nottebohm You Will Learn:
1.) Origins:
- How Olivia made her way into the world of startups and tech?
- What are 1-2 big takeaways Olivia has from her 5+ years at Google? How have they shaped her operating mindset today?
- How does Olivia balance her love for analysis and data with speed and agility of decisions?
2.) Good vs Great Operations (Ops):
- What does great ops really mean to Olivia? What are the 1-2 things founders can implement today to improve their ops immediately?
- What are the core mistakes founders make when instilling ops for the first time?
- How does Olivia coordinate the global Notion team to be as effective as possible?
- What has worked? What has not worked?
3.) The Hiring Process:
- Why does Olivia believe all leaders will have to accept they will not have all the talent they need over the coming years?
- With that in mind, is it best to hire B players or always keep the bar high? If and when can the bar be lowered?
- How does Olivia construct the hiring process? What are the core questions she will always ask?
- What is the secret to great referencing? How does Olivia enable the other side to feel safe telling her everything they know about the candidate?
4.) Cross-Functional Communication:
- How does Olivia advise founders on the best way to get different functions working together?
- What works? What does not? What are some big mistakes Olivia sees over and over?
- At what point in company scaling does this comms begin to breakdown?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Olivia Nottebohm
Grow Fast or Die Slow: The role of profitability in sustainable growth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is 20 Sales with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Sales is the monthly show that takes you inside the mind of the best sales leaders in the world to unpack their tips, tactics and strategies to scaling truly world-class sales organizations. |
| 0:12.3 | Today, we're joined by a great. I'd heard so many incredible things from many different people. And so I was so thrilled to welcome Olivia Notterborn, Chief Revenue Officer Notion, |
| 0:21.1 | where she leads the sales, marketing, customer success and customer experience teams. Prior to Notion, |
| 0:26.4 | Olivia was the C-O-O at Dropbox, where she achieved the first four quarters of profitable growth. Before |
| 0:31.7 | Dropbox, Olivia spent over five years at Google, including as VP of Cloud Go-to-Market Operations |
| 0:37.3 | and global SMB sales. And finally, before Google, including as VP of cloud go-to-market operations and global SMB sales. |
| 0:39.3 | And finally, before Google, Olivia spent a whopping 15 years at McKinsey and Company. |
| 0:43.7 | And I also want to say a huge thank you to Danny at Sequoia for the kind intro. |
| 0:47.3 | And then Akshay and Camille at Notion, some amazing question suggestions today. |
| 0:51.5 | But before we dive into the show today, Salesloft is the leading sales |
| 0:54.6 | engagement platform helping sales teams drive more revenue with the modern revenue workspace. |
| 0:59.2 | It's the one place sales teams can go to prospect, manage active deals and get the insights |
| 1:03.5 | they need to coach seller performance, forecast with accuracy, and find out what steps |
| 1:08.1 | to take to close more deals. Some of the world's leading companies like IBM, Shopify and Stripe, all love a new salesloft, |
| 1:15.2 | and so can you. |
| 1:16.0 | It's the new way to sell and find out more today at salesloft.com. |
| 1:19.7 | And founders, if you've got recurring revenue like so many of you have, there is a smarter |
| 1:23.5 | way to grow your business. |
| 1:24.7 | As a VC, this pains me to say. Pipe is a completely new way to |
| 1:28.1 | finance growth without taking on restrictive loans or diluting your ownership. If you have proven |
| 1:32.9 | product market fit, your recurring revenue streams could be your biggest asset. Pipe is the |
| 1:37.2 | world's first trading platform that turns your recurring revenue into upfront growth |
... |
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