Grit

Many successful LinkedIn alumni have been welcomed as guests on this podcast — and this week, the insightful LB Harvey will be joining those ranks. After starting her sales career as a Sales Executive at Corporate Executive Board, LB spent six years as an account executive and sales leader at LinkedIn before moving to Intercom to work in sales leadership. Now, LB serves as Chief Revenue and Succes...

Dan O’Connell’s career is an impressive display of how hard work can catapult a person from the bottom of the sales hierarchy to the very top of business leadership. Having started as an account coordinator at Google AdWords in 2003, Dan has climbed the corporate ladder — eventually becoming the CEO and President of TalkIQ in 2017. Now, Dan serves as the Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Revenue Offic...

When it comes to building a profitable business, Amanda Kleha has learned by doing.  Amanda’s seven-year tenure in multiple senior marketing and sales positions at Zendesk saw the company make an IPO, grow from 12 employees to 2,000, and go from $1 million to $300 million in revenue. Now, as Chief Customer Officer at Figma — a company recently valued at $10 billion that is creating collaborative d...

When Steve Rowland studied at Texas A&M University to get his degree in engineering, he likely wouldn’t have expected that his career would shift into one of an extremely successful sales leader. Over his 20+ year business career, Steve’s built successful teams at technology companies such as BMC Software, Appigee, and DataStax. Now, Steve serves as Chief Revenue Officer of Okta, a company sel...

Take one look at Renu Gupta’s resume and it’s immediately clear that she is a talented — and successful — sales leader.  With experience at companies such as Google, Dropbox and Slack, Renu has led large sales teams and produced results. Now, Renu serves as Vice President of Sales at Thrive Global, a company founded by CEO Arianna Huffington, that seeks to end workplace burnout with behavior chang...

When Jan Zeman was hired as a sales development representative in the early 2000s, he had a unique background in management consulting and venture capital.  Jan has since risen through the sales ranks, having helped his previous company, Responsys, grow from $25 million in ARR to $200 million, among other successes. Now, he serves as SVP Sales, America at Iterable, a company creating a cross-chann...

Not many people can say they’ve held leadership positions in marketing, sales, and HR during their business career. Well, maybe except for Rachael Powell, who has done all three and says it’s just her “natural curiosity” that brought her on such a path.  Having worked for over 25 years at digital and technology companies, Rachael now serves as Chief Customer Officer at Xero, a company creating clo...

Ryan Barretto knows all about what it takes to successfully scale a business. After an impressive 10-year career in sales leadership roles at Salesforce, Ryan took a role as SVP of Global Sales at Sprout Social — a business creating social media management tools — where he helped grow the company from $30 million in revenue to $170 million.  Now, one IPO later, Ryan is President of Sprout Social —...

Erica Anderson had never carried a bag before she was promoted to Vice President of Worldwide Sales at GitHub in 2019.  With a successful career as a sales operations leader under her belt, Erica has since been promoted twice at GitHub — most recently to Senior Vice President of Revenue.  On this week’s episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin and Erica talk about the lessons Erica has learned about...

Growing up in a farm town in Pennsylvania with a population of just 183 people, Harry Ault had big career aspirations. After working for CitiGroup in management positions, Harry built a successful career as a sales leader in the tech industry. As a go-to-market guru, Harry now serves as the Chief Revenue Officer of DataStax, a data management company. On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin...

Laura Palmer will never forget the first big technology sales deal she ever closed. Having only worked professionally as an inside sales rep, Laura took a leap of faith early in her business career and negotiated a half-a-million deal with a customer while “kind of knowing what I was doing and kind of not knowing what I was doing,” she says.  So when Laura stood up for herself by telling the CEO o...

Throughout his over 18 years working for the Golden State Warriors, Brandon Schneider has held several positions and seen it all. From the depths of rarely making the playoffs, to the heights of making it to the NBA championship five times in a row with three wins, Brandon has held 10 titles at the Warriors — most recently, the role of President and Chief Operating Officer. On this episode of Go t...

By her own admission, Kayti Sullivan was having a “quarter-life crisis” when she realized the jobs she could get with her Masters degree in Early European Art were not careers she had envisioned. What followed for Kayti was the start of an incredibly successful twelve-year run in sales leadership at Yelp — where she traveled the globe and rose through the ranks. Now, Kayti is Chief Revenue Officer...

For Thomas Hansen, chasing a passion was key to unlocking the path toward an impressive career. An avid windsurfer, Thomas started his professional life managing a small windsurfing company in Denmark — an experience where he learned what it takes to succeed. Now, Thomas serves as Chief Revenue Officer of UiPath, a growing business that develops software for robotic process automation — freeing up...

Marcy Campbell knows a thing or two about taking risks.  Over her almost 40 years in business, Marcy’s worked at 11 different startups — building several sales organizations from the ground up. Now, as Vice President of Global Professional Services at PayPal, Marcy employs grit on a daily basis as she leads sales teams on the newest company products. On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin a...

In 2008, when Ryan Longfield took a contracted account executive position at LinkedIn without any prior sales experience, he knew he had to be “all-in.”  “‘I’ll sleep under my desk if I have to,’” Ryan remembers telling a recruiter who asked if he was worried he won’t be able to hit $50,000 in sales in only three months.  Now, after an almost 10-year run at LinkedIn where he worked in five differe...

When it comes to building startups from the ground-up, Brendon Cassidy knows it all: Having held some of the first sales leadership roles at LinkedIn, Echosign, and Talkdesk, Brendon helped position each company for success.  Now, Brendon consults startups on go-to-market operations as founder of his own consulting firm, Cassidy Ventures.  On this episode of Go to Market Grit , Joubin and Brendon...

As Chief Revenue Officer of cloud content management and file sharing company Box, Mark Wayland and his team have taken on a “land, adopt, and expand” business model to attract new buyers across various industries and locations. This strategy seems to be paying off — according to Box, 68% of the Fortune 500 currently use the SaaS company’s products. On today’s episode of Go To Market Grit, Joubin...

Impossible Foods has a mission to eliminate the use of animals in the food system by 2035. With the growing success of the company’s plant-based meat products, such as the Impossible Burger, this vision is becoming reality. Feeling as though the company was “aligned with my own personal mission,” Dana Worth, former VP of Sales at Impossible Foods, joined the company in 2015 before it brought any o...

Just take it from website security industry executive Chris Merritt — the internet was not designed with security and performance in mind.  As President of Field Operations and CRO of Cloudlflare, Chris and his company are dedicated to fixing this problem by protecting websites for a more secure and reliable internet.  On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Chris discuss how Cloudflare’s...

After 18+ years working in multiple high-level sales positions at Salesforce, Mike Wolff knows what makes a good leader.  On this week’s episode of Go To Market Grit , Mike and Joubin talk about the leadership lessons Mike learned as he rose through the ranks at Salesforce from a sales development rep to the company’s Senior Vice President of Global ISV Partners. In this episode, we cover: How Mik...

Leadership is in Peter Kim’s DNA. Since he got his first management job running a Subway on the weekends when he was 14-years-old, Peter has built successful sales teams at companies such as LinkedIn and Advent Software. Now, Peter works as Senior Vice President of Sales at Relativity, a company that is transforming the legal discovery process by streamlining the collection, processing and review...

Dave Justice knows a lot about crisis leadership. Over his almost 21 years in sales, he’s successfully navigated through the dotcom and housing bubble crashes — and now, the COVID-19 pandemic.  After 18 consecutive years working in various sales roles at Cisco, Dave became Executive Vice President of North America Enterprise Sales at Salesforce before transitioning in 2020 to his current role as C...

When Matt Heinz took a quota-carrying sales job in 2011 after having worked in sales leadership, he knew that “it was a step back, from the way that you look at it on a piece of paper.”  But in the end, Matt saw success as he helped turn a company doing $11 million a year in revenue to one that sold for over $5 billion. Now, Matt serves as the Chief Revenue officer of Amplitude, a leading company...

If a customer doesn’t understand how a product will provide a positive impact to their business, will they buy it? It may seem like a simple question — but for Jay Snyder, identifying and communicating such areas of value to customers is a crucial aspect of keeping a business growing. On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Jay and Joubin discuss ways to build respect as a new leader, how to effecti...