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

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

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?