Insight
Lindquist biases toward hiring former college athletes for sales roles
“And like, obviously I bias towards having college athletes because they've learned how to work hard. All you gotta do is teach them how to work smart. If you teach them how to work smart, it's really tough to teach someone how to work hard.”
Insight
Lindquist: Outbound sales will never be dead
“Outbound will never be dead. You can't reach every single company and every single buyer with whatever marketing you're doing.”
Insight
Lindquist: Downsizing SDR teams after adopting AI is a scared defensive play
“Anybody that's like, oh, well, you know, we're just going to cut our SDR team in half, I'm like okay. That's an interesting move, right? That's a scared play that you're making because you're saying I can get the same productivity for half versus saying I can …”
Disclosure
Lindquist: Clay's quota-to-OTE ratio is seven and a half
“Our quota to OT ratio is like seven and a half.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Lindquist: Clay had near-200% NDR and zero churn when she joined
“And like the metrics that I got, I think I can share like, They're like, we haven't churned a customer. Our NDR is close to 200%.”
Insight
Lindquist: Founders should hire sales reps two at a time
“I tell every founder this, I'm like, hire two at a time, because then you'll actually see Is one, you hire one, you're like, is it good? Is it not good? I don't know. If you hire two, it's pretty clear whether one's good and one's bad.”
Insight
Lindquist: Standalone AI models cannot replace GTM platforms at team scale
“Have you ever tried to like get a hundred people to do something different, to change something, to iterate in the same way that you iterate? Good luck. Because we're still humans, right?”
Insight
Lindquist: Relationship-based selling relying on personal Rolodexes is dead
“The relationship type of sale of like, well, I know all these people. I have this Rolodex. That's gone. Because I think today the buying cycle, the buying committee is not just one person.”
Insight
Lindquist: Enterprise sales reps are unjustified for deals under $20k ACV
“Anything below 20 K, I'm like, why do you have a rep?”
Insight
Lindquist: Staying past seven years at one company makes adaptation difficult
“I think it's probably like seven years, six to seven years. After that, if you've been in a company for eight, nine, 10 years, it's like, The company is kind of built around you probably, and you, you've built so much of it to, like I don't know the best way t…”
Insight
Lindquist: High candidate learning slope matters more than domain expertise
“As you get to rep, you know, 100, domain expertise becomes a little bit less important, but the high slope is, is the most important thing.”
Opinion
Becca Lindquist: Taking a CRO Title Below $50M ARR Is Short-Sighted
“If you're joining a sub-fifty million dollar company and you're the CRO, I'm like, that's, that feels, my opinion feels like an ego play. And it feels like you are a little bit short-sighted because eventually you're going to stumble, and then what are they go…”
Insight
Lindquist: Sales IC mishires can be spotted within three weeks
“Do you know for an IC, like, within probably three weeks, right?”
Insight
Lindquist: Discount startup equity offers based on proven liquidity track record
“I actually just tell people, I'm like, what have they done Not what they say. What have they done that's shown that they're going to provide liquidity on that equity? And just apply a coefficient to that. If they give you a million dollars of equity, but they …”
Insight
Lindquist: Sales cultures thrive when 60% of reps beat quota
“The culture that I think is best is when you have 60% of people over a hundred percent, 80% over 80%, right? You're building a winning culture. People are successful. People are telling their friends they're having so much fun. Very successful. Come work here.…”
Insight
Lindquist: A real sales champion must satisfy three strict criteria
“It's, they're selling for you when you're not in the room, they have access and influence over the EB, and they have a personal win.”
Insight
Lindquist: Sales reps should be comped on net dollars to protect unit economics
“My favorite model is you sell the deal, you're renewing the deal, you're comped on net dollars. So what that does is that incentivizes the rep to have, to sell a good deal, right? And protect your unit economics.”
Insight
Lindquist: End-of-quarter discounting fails as buyers know discounts linger
“I think everybody knows at this point that if I'm giving you a discount on, you know, the last day of the quarter, it's you're probably gonna be able to get that same discount on the first day of the next quarter.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lindquist: Typing will become obsolete as professionals switch to voice AI
“He'd said the other day, he was like, no one's gonna type anymore. Like, if you're typing, you're behind. Like, you should be talking to your technology. And I was like, that's a weird way to think about it. It's like a very futuristic Jetsons way to think abo…”
Insight
Lindquist: High sales quotas must heavily reward overperformance
“It should be heavily weighted for its overperformance. If I'm giving you a big quota and you're hitting a 110% of that, I want you to be making good money.”
Insight
Lindquist: Recruiters should discount LinkedIn recommendations when evaluating candidates
“I always like, here are some of the other tips, like you discount recommendations, right? Like I don't give a shit about how many recommendations I have, but some people do. And I just discount that, right?”
Insight
Lindquist: Defensiveness during interview feedback is the ultimate hiring red flag
“If someone's really defensive, that's actually the biggest red flag.”
Insight
Lindquist: PLG reps must expand internally to lock out enterprise competitors
“And that's actually how I think PLG businesses do really, really well, right? Someone comes in, they, you know, they're dabbling in the product, right? And you as a seller, you're like, I'm going to go market that internally at that account to all of the other…”
Insight
Lindquist: Databricks breached Snowflake accounts by taking small initial footholds
“You see, I saw this with Snowflake and Databricks, right? Snowflake would own everything, and then Databricks would get one small foothold somewhere, and suddenly now they're fighting over the same workloads, and someone's going to win that.”
