00:27:33 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:27:33] S1: have been like, there's no way this deal is done, but we were able to save it. Nice. No. That's that's really cool. And how how exactly do you, like, train people on on doing discovery call because it's a it's a new product, and it's a it's a new way of doing things? [00:27:50] S0: Yeah. So we have a very, very structured onboarding process. Shout out to Elliot Greenwald, who is our head of go to market operations. He's done an incredible job with our enablement. And then, we have this incredible leader. Her name is Lily Wang. She kind of runs our enablement. And essentially, what we do is we, have the, you know, cohort of sellers come on-site to our corporate headquarters in San Francisco, they spend a whole week together going through every aspect, every detail of our selling motion, how we prospect, how we run proof of concepts, how we do discovery, you know, how we pitch Sierra. They all have to certify, so they have to get in front of their peers and present the first call deck. And then we do ongoing training. So we have a very, very tight enablement process to make sure that we get people productive fast because we've got to hire a ton of people, we're growing really fast. The worst thing that we can do is bring on an AE and it takes them a while to get up to speed. So we spent a lot of time building out like a really, really stringent enablement process to get people productive fast. And like By the way, g, I I had to certify too, man. So
00:29:01 · Guillaume Moubeche
[00:29:01] S1: And what's, like, the the conversion rate from people you hire to people, you know, like, who actually certify and are able to to join? Because I know in sales, like, one of the challenge is obviously, like, making sure you have, like, great sellers, especially in enterprise. Because as you mentioned, you know, you want people who are, like, curious, like, who can essentially, like, talk to, as you said, like CEOs up to project manager. So how do you make sure, you know, that the person is ready? And also, like, apart from the onboarding, what's kind of the conversion rate from, like, first hire to you're gonna be a full time hire, and we we know that you're good for as long as as you wanna stay?
00:29:46 · Reggie Marable, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:29:46] S0: Yeah. So we've implemented thirty, sixty, ninety day checkpoints, And and shout out to Stephanie Evans, who's our, head of HR. She's my business partner. So we've created these checkpoints. So at thirty days, you should be proficient in all of these things here. Sixty days, you should be proficient here, and ninety days here. So we know pretty quickly if someone is gonna be successful at Sierra. Do they have... Are they able to keep up? Do they understand, like, the complexity of what we're selling, and are they hitting those milestones? Very happy, g. We we we have a very low AE attrition rate. Obviously, we're still growing. We're still a young company. But I think it's because we do a great job of hiring incredible sellers. And then when they get here, they... We set them up for success by getting them productive fast. And then we have an incredibly fun collaborative selling culture where, you know, we have nicknames, we we do a lot of recognition. There's high... There was accountability and high standards, and there's clear expectations, but we have fun, man. This is a fun place to work. It's a fun product to sell. So if you can get great sellers, you can get them productive fast, they're making money, people stay, and and they really enjoy being a part [00:30:57] S1: of what we're building. Can you walk us through maybe, like, what, like, a a typical week looks like to make sure that your team is is the most efficient ever?
00:30:57 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:30:57] S1: of what we're building. Can you walk us through maybe, like, what, like, a a typical week looks like to make sure that your team is is the most efficient ever? [00:31:09] S0: Yeah. So what's real... Really fun is every week's different, which is cool. But we have a we have a pretty... Very cons... Very consistent cadence. Very consistent operating cadence. Shout out to Aileen Wu, who's my business partner for go to market operations. So we we have very... Like Monday, we have a a company all hands, which is hosted by our co founders. We have a senior leadership meeting. And then on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we have, what's called customer reviews, where for each industry, we have industry leads. They'll meet with the entire team to go through all of the deals, all the industry trends. And then I hold a forecast call every Friday, and we go through every deal in the quarter. We look at the pipe gen metrics, and then we also look at the following quarter. So there's a lot of accountability built into our business, very consistent motion. We do consistent one on ones. [00:32:00] S1: We do consistent team meetings. So that's kinda how our operating cadence works. What's the best way to build, like, accountability within the team? Like, have you seen things that work really well for everyone to be accountable?
00:32:00 · Guillaume Moubeche, Reggie Marable
[00:32:00] S1: We do consistent team meetings. So that's kinda how our operating cadence works. What's the best way to build, like, accountability within the team? Like, have you seen things that work really well for everyone to be accountable? [00:32:14] S0: I... I've seen things work really well, and I've seen thing... Things work not well. I've also seen accountability on steroids where it doesn't feel good to be part of an organization. So I try to find the middle ground, and really, it just comes down to setting clear expectations. Everyone is comfortable and understands how we're being measured and what would the success look like, making sure we're on a consistent operating cadence. You're being transparent, there's no secrets, there's no gray areas, there's dual coaching. And if you do all of those things... And then also creating an environment where people feel comfortable telling the truth. Like I always say, good news should travel fast, bad news should travel faster. If there's an issue with your forecast or with the deal, let us know. We'll swarm it, we'll help you. But you want to create an environment where there's high accountability, high inspection, consistency, but also people feel comfortable telling the truth. They're not going to get beat up if they make a mistake or something goes south and they're looking for help. So in my humble opinion, that's kind of how you do accountability and that's how we do it at Sierra.
00:32:14 · Reggie Marable, Guillaume Moubeche
[00:32:14] S0: I... I've seen things work really well, and I've seen thing... Things work not well. I've also seen accountability on steroids where it doesn't feel good to be part of an organization. So I try to find the middle ground, and really, it just comes down to setting clear expectations. Everyone is comfortable and understands how we're being measured and what would the success look like, making sure we're on a consistent operating cadence. You're being transparent, there's no secrets, there's no gray areas, there's dual coaching. And if you do all of those things... And then also creating an environment where people feel comfortable telling the truth. Like I always say, good news should travel fast, bad news should travel faster. If there's an issue with your forecast or with the deal, let us know. We'll swarm it, we'll help you. But you want to create an environment where there's high accountability, high inspection, consistency, but also people feel comfortable telling the truth. They're not going to get beat up if they make a mistake or something goes south and they're looking for help. So in my humble opinion, that's kind of how you do accountability and that's how we do it at Sierra. [00:33:20] S1: Do you have, like, specific example of things that happened that made you think, okay. Now I feel like everyone's really accountable with with what we're doing here?