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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20Sales: The 3 Profiles of a Sales Rep, How to Negotiate in a Sales Process, How to Sell to a CFO & How You Should Shift Sales Messaging in a Downturn with Frank Fillmann, CRO @ Salesforce Australia

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

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

4.4637 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Frank Fillman is CRO/Country Leader Australia for Salesforce where he is responsible for responsible for the overall strategy, execution, success, and growth of the $1B+ Australian market across all industries. Prior to Salesforce, Frank was SVP/GM @ Tableau where he was responsible for the strategy, execution, and growth of Tableau's Top Accounts. Over the last 10 years at Salesforce, Frank's accomplishments include $500M+ new revenue closed in 5 years and $1B+ revenue managed. As a result, Frank has been awarded #1 Sales VP of the Year, North America, 3 times! Huge thanks to Zhenya Loginov @ Miro for the intro to Frank today.

In Today's Episode with Frank Fillman We Discuss:

1.) From Selling Kitchen Utensils to Leading $1BN Revenue Line for Salesforce:

  • How did Frank first make his way into the world of sales selling kitchen utensils?
  • Why does Frank believe, "how you handle tragedy defines you"? How did it define him?
  • What does Frank know now that he wishes he had known when he started in sales?

2.) Build and Execute the Sales Playbook:

  • How does Frank define what a "sales playbook" is today? What is it not?
  • Literally, what are the first steps to building a sales playbook? Is it the founder who does it?
  • What does a good playbook have? What does a bad playbook have? What makes the best?
  • What tools should founders and sales leaders use to create their playbook?

3.) Enterprise Deal Dynamics 101:

  • Why does Frank believe that you should never start with the price or "send over numbers"?
  • How can enterprise sellers create urgency in a deal cycle? What works? What does not work?
  • How does Frank advise sales teams on the use of discounting?
  • How open should reps be in communicating the win for them as well as the win for the customer of closing a deal?

4.) Building the Bench:

  • How does Frank structure the hiring process for all new sales reps?
  • Why does Frank believe that all sales leaders want to be super reps?
  • How does Frank rank high potential vs high experience when hiring reps?
  • What matters more; the exec have experience in the sector you are selling into or the deal size?
  • What are the single biggest mistakes founders and leaders make when hiring sales?

5.) Setting Quota and Deal Reviews:

  • How does Frank advise founders on setting quotas? Why does Q1 set the tone for the year?
  • How does Frank conduct deal reviews? How often? With who? What is the agenda?
  • What is the one question that Frank always asks when a rep says, "the client told us it was not a priority and so it slipped into next quarter"?
  • How does Frank advise founders and sales leaders on multi-threading large enterprise accounts?

Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:

Frank's Most Recent Book: The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea

 

Transcript

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0:00.0

I think the biggest mistake is when you just send a price over, and then you end up arguing about numbers.

0:04.0

So if it's me, my preference would always be start with a blank canvas, find your buyer and spend some quality time.

0:10.0

And I think you'd ask questions of her like this.

0:12.6

Number one, how are you measured?

0:13.9

What are the metrics that you as an organization as individual are measured by at the organization level?

0:19.1

And you start to really unpack how they define

0:21.0

value and values and what their priorities are. And then you go like a level deeper.

0:25.2

This is 20 sales and today we have a master of the sales world joining us. Our guest today has

0:29.5

been awarded number one sales VP of the year for North America three times. His accomplishments

0:34.7

include $500 million of new revenue closed in five years and a billion

0:39.7

dollars in revenue managed. With that, I'm thrilled to welcome Frank Fillman, CRO and country

0:44.5

leader for Australia Salesforce. Prior to this role, Fran was SVP and GM at Tablo, where he was

0:49.9

responsible for the strategy and execution and growth of Tableau's top accounts.

0:55.0

But before we dive into the episode today, finding your next customer is hard, but it doesn't have to be.

1:00.0

If you're wondering how to drive more revenue and find the accounts that are looking for your solution right now,

1:06.0

Zoom info is the answer.

1:08.0

Zoom info handles the full revenue pipeline from marketing to sales, even

1:12.2

ops, all based on the number one ranked business data. It's the single best way for B2B

1:17.7

professionals to find their next customer, close their next deal and streamline their operations.

1:23.4

Best of all, it's all in one place, so your revenue teams can collaborate easily and close

1:28.3

deals faster.

1:29.3

Customers include the lights of Snowflake, Workday, PayPal, Dropbox, and thousands of startups

...

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