AJ Tennant: How to Build a Sales Machine and Where Most Go Wrong

20VC

Oct 23, 2024

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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?

  • How quickly do you know when you have made a bad sales hire? 

  • What are the signs of a bad sales hire? What goes wrong first?

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© 2024 20VC. All rights reserved.