20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Slack from $6M to $1BN in ARR | How to Build a Customer Success Machine and Where Most Go Wrong | The Framework to Hire All Sales Reps: Take-Home Assignments, Hiring Panels and more with AJ Tennant @ Glean

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Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

AJ Tennant is the Vice President of Sales & Success at Glean, Glean has more than 20x'd its revenue and 100x'd its user base in the just two and a half years he's been there. Before Glean, AJ had incredible runs at Slack and Facebook. At Slack, AJ helped grow revenue from $6 million to more than $1 billion.

In Today’s Episode with AJ Tennant We Discuss:

1. How to Sell AI Tools in 2024:

Are we still in the experimental budget phase for AI?
How does selling AI tools differ to selling traditional SaaS?
What are enterprises biggest concerns when it comes to adopting AI tools?
What buzzwords get enterprises most excited in the sales process?
Will we see a massive churn problem when the first renewal cycle for many of these AI products comes?

2. Outbound, Discounting, Closing:

Is outbound dead in 2024? What does no one do that everyone should do?
How does AJ approach discounting? Biggest lessons and advice?
What can sales teams do to create a sense of urgency in a sales cycle?
How does AJ do deal reviews and post-mortems? What is the difference between good and bad post-mortems?

3. How to Master Customer Success:

What are the biggest mistakes founders make today in managing their CS teams?
Should CS be compensated for upsell? How should the comp structure of CS teams change?
What can be done to create a good handoff experience for the customer when handing from AE to CS?
What are the most common ways CS teams break over time?

4. Hiring the Best Sales Teams:

How does AJ structure the hiring process for all new sales hires?
What questions does AJ always need to ask when hiring sales reps?
What are clear signs of outperformers when hiring new reps?
Does AJ give candidates a take-home assignment? What does he want to see from them?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is 20 Sales with me, Harry Stebbings. Now, 20 Sales is the monthly show where we sit down with the
0:04.7	best sales leaders to discuss their tips, tactics and strategies when it comes to scaling both sales
0:11.0	and customer success teams. Today, we have one of the best in the hot seat, AJ Tenant. A.J. Tenant is
0:18.2	the vice president of sales and success at Gleen, where he's had more than a 20x
0:24.2	increase in revenue and 100x increase in user base in the two and a half years he's been at Gleen.
0:31.7	Before Glean, he had incredible runs at both Slack and Facebook. At Slack, most notably, AJ helped grow revenue from 6 million to more than a billion in ARR.
0:44.0	My Sales Enablement Platform is a waste of money. Ever thought that? You're not alone. Most revenue leaders feel this way watching their sales team struggle to keep up with market product and
0:54.4	competitive changes.
0:56.0	Reps burn hours each day, searching, digging, slacking, desperately trying to get the answers
1:01.4	they need out of their clunky tech stack.
1:04.0	That's why Speckitt's AI-powered enablement platform was purpose-built to cut through the noise
1:09.2	and meet reps in their moment of need.
1:11.5	Speckit uses AI to recommend the exact content your reps need to close deals in any tool like
1:17.5	Gong, Salesforce or Outlook. It's that easy. If you're ready to give your reps a personalized
1:22.5	enablement assistant at their fingertips, take five minutes and discover why leading investors
1:27.0	like Kraft and Felicit
1:28.3	are backing Speckett as the platform revolutionising sales enablement.
1:32.2	See for yourself at speckit.com slash two zero VC.
1:35.9	You have now arrived at your destination.
1:38.8	AJ, I am so excited for this, dude.
1:41.0	We got to do this in person.
1:42.0	This is so, because we were planning on doing it remote.
	...

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