20Sales: How to Build Vertical Sales Teams, Why No Customer Success is BS and Everyone Needs it, How to Hire, Train and Retain the First Reps and Lessons Scaling to $2.1BN Revenue and 1,300 People with Larry Schurtz, CRO @ Genesys

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4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Larry Shurtz is the Chief Sales Officer at Genesys where he oversees the company’s global go-to-market strategies, including commercial activities, field sales and partner ecosystem operations. Larry has nearly three decades of experience in the software industry, from leading Confluent to delivering more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count as Chief Revenue Officer, to scaling a 1,300-person team at Salesforce to $2.1 billion in revenue.

In Today’s Episode with Larry Shurtz We Discuss:

From Robotics Student to $2.1BN Sales Leader at Salesforce

How did Larry lead 1300 people to $2.1 billion revenue at Salesforce? What were his takeaways?
What did Larry learn about building vertical sales playbooks at Salesforce?
Which framework did Larry learn at Salesforce that he still uses at Genesys?

Mastering Sales Leadership

What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make on prioritization today?
What are Larry’s “3 Rs” to master prioritization?
What does Larry think are the most common reasons fast-scaling teams break in sales?
Has Larry ever caused bad culture in a sales team? What did he learn from the experience?
Does Larry think sales is more art or science? How does Larry blend the two?

Building the Best Sales Team

How does Larry structure the hiring process for a new sales hire?
How big should your recruitment team be?
What are Larry’s most commonly asked questions when interviewing?
What were Larry’s biggest hiring mistakes? What did he learn from them?
How does Larry structure the comp? How does he get it right? What do most new hires care about today?

The Onboarding: The Dos & Don’ts

How does Larry structure the onboarding process?
Why does Larry onboard new hires with big customers? What is the buddy system?
How does Larry tell if a new hire is bad? What are the biggest red flags to look out for?
What does Larry mean when he says “You can make all the physical errors, you cannot make mental errors?”
Does Larry agree with Max Levchin @ Affirm that “When there’s doubt, there’s no doubt?”

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you can't forecast accurately, either you don't truly understand your business. You
0:04.7	aren't truly doing the amount of diligence with customers and opportunities. You don't have
0:10.2	enough opportunities to be able to balance out some of the riskier things with some of the things
0:14.0	that look better. And we might not even be asking the right questions and we're likely not
0:18.3	talking to the right people. This is 20 sales with me, Harry
0:21.3	Stebbing. Now 20 sales is a show where we sit down with the best sales leaders in the world
0:25.5	to discuss starting and scaling sales teams. Today, we're joined by a sales leader who scaled
0:30.9	a team at Salesforce to 1,300 people and over 2.1 billion in revenue. Following that, he was the CRO Confluent, delivering
0:40.3	more than 60% revenue growth and doubling customer count. And today, he's the CRO at Genesis.
0:46.3	It's time to get the notebooks out. There are so many granular tactics in this one.
0:51.3	But before we dive in, have you ever wondered why spending company money is so broken?
0:56.0	Employees want to follow the process, but they're confused and frustrated. It takes forever to get
1:01.4	anything approved. It's so tedious to get anything paid. And folks in procurement, finance and other
1:06.6	stakeholders are just as frustrated too. Duplicate spend, unauthorized contracts, surprise vendors,
1:13.0	late invoices, missing receipts and documentation. It just doesn't end. Altogether, it makes
1:18.6	the spending feel out of control, wastes time and money and increases risk. It shouldn't be
1:23.8	this hard. It doesn't have to be. Airbase makes it easy. Airbase is the only
1:28.2	procured a pay software that beautifully combines enterprise with employee-friendly ease of use. It
1:33.7	orchestrates upstream intake requests all the way through to the downstream processing of
1:38.3	invoices, expense reports, credit card transactions, and reconcile that seamlessly in your ERP.
1:44.7	Replace a complex maze of tools, forms, emails and spreadsheets with an interconnected
1:49.5	collaborative platform.
	...

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