Insight
Egan: Startups Must Master PLG Before Layering On Enterprise Sales
“I think you can, but I think it's extremely difficult. I think Slack was able to do it. I think they nailed PLG first, and then enterprise, but they always had an eye towards enterprise. The reason why I say it's extremely difficult is to capture the end user'…”
Insight
Egan: Early-Stage Startups Should Avoid Hiring Coin-Operated Sales Reps
“It does not pay to have coin-operated sales reps in the early days. They're going to be overly focused on quotas and crushing their number to get to a certain outcome. The early days are really about who is creating the best connection between my developing pr…”
Insight
Egan: Early startup sales hires require intellectual range over big-company logos
“I think for a founder who's hiring, I could absolutely see where the big logo hire does not work out. I think, again, what you're looking for there is intellectual range, and that often doesn't just show up from, by the fact that they worked at Microsoft or ca…”
Insight
Egan: Prioritize Candidate Long-Term Commitment Over Immediate Compensation Plans
“I think when I'm closing a candidate, I'm interested if I'm giving them a fair comp plan, Are they really interested in about the long-term journey at this company? Because this comp plan only represents this moment in time for the next year or two.”
Opinion
Egan: Salesforce Is Underrated as an Early Product-Led Growth Innovator
“Salesforce does not get enough credit for being one of the original product-led growth companies.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Egan: Dropbox was among first B2C companies transitioning to B2B enterprise
“I think Dropbox was one of the first companies to go from a B to C company into the B to B realm and really work hard to get the enterprise posture and the security and controls right.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Egan: Slack Uniquely Combined Enterprise Security With End-User Engagement From Launch
“So Slack from day one had an appetite to work with large teams and large customers yet they had an incredibly engaging platform. So that ability to marry end user love with the enterprise posture right out of the gates, focus on large teams and all the securit…”
Insight
Egan: Founders set sales vision; sales VPs codify repeatability
“It's the job of the sales leader to pull from that and codify it and put it into writing and explain that these are our sales motions. So I think it's the CEO and the founder's job to provide the inspiration and the high level talking points and the kind of th…”
Assertion Supported
Egan: Slack Reached Tens of Thousands of Organic Users Per Company
“They had, in some cases, tens of thousands of users within single companies that said, Hey, look, we need to come to the table and operate.”
Insight
Egan: Enterprise sales transition requires continuous compliance, not just key features
“It's naive to think it's just a few features because in fact it is a lifelong pursuit to make sure that you're staying up with the most stringent requirements that are coming out of enterprises today.”
Insight
Egan: Early Enterprise Sales Teams Must Prioritize Product Feedback Over Revenue
“Well, I think at first the sales team is, is obviously there for revenue growth, but almost even more importantly, providing customer feedback into the product group, giving the product team that they're working with a sense for why do these people gravitate t…”
Insight
Egan: A/B Test Rep Accounts Versus Digital Channels to Measure Effectiveness
“In a PLG world, I think rep effectiveness, the best companies out there are doing a lot of A-B testing. Atlassian is famous for A-B testing. What happens if I put this account in the hands of a rep versus my regular online channels? And I'd say the most effect…”
Insight
Egan: Hire Sales Reps in Cohorts of Two or Three for Benchmarking
“I do favor hiring two to three at a time if you can afford it. I think that that is a great indicator of sales rep effectiveness and the comparison on, on the reps is very effective and will tell you. Number one, Can my reps accelerate? And number two, within …”
Disclosure
Kevin Egan never hires sales reps without a mock presentation
“No hire that I've made at my past companies have gotten the job until they've presented a mock scenario around a fictitious company and a business problem that they're trying to solve.”
Insight
Egan: Early-stage startups need generalist sales reps before scaling specialized ones
“Early days of hiring reps, you're going to need Renaissance reps that have a very wide breadth of skill sets who enjoy the building process. And as things go on and you start to sell, scale your sales team, you're going to see reps that are there for really to…”
Insight
Egan: Hierarchy breaks down if employees feel managers do their job
“If they feel like you're doing the same job as them, then you're in trouble, and the hierarchy is going to break down.”
Insight
Egan: Avoidance of direct feedback degrades managerial hierarchy
“So I think hierarchy also breaks down if the leader is not available or comfortable providing direct feedback.”
Insight
Egan: Direct feedback should be periodic, not a daily loop
“When I think of direct feedback, I think of it in terms of a ratio. So there's the day-to-day work that we're trying to get done. There's the challenges that we're facing, and we should be enjoying those challenges and having fun with it. But there's also time…”
Insight
Egan: Enterprise sales deals are unforecastable without clear ROI metrics
“As a rep or a sales team, you better be crystal clear on the business problem that your problem, your solution is solving and why the company would spend money on it. And what are they expecting in terms of return? If you don't have those things, you may not h…”
Insight
Egan: CFO time investment indicates a deal is strategic
“If the CFO is involved in your deal and they're spending time on that deal, that tells you that you are strategic to them.”
Insight
Kevin Egan: End-of-quarter deal cramming harms brand and customer relationships
“Jamming deals at the end of the quarter is always kind of obnoxious, but it happens. It does work, but sometimes there is a detrimental effect to kind of Cramming deals at the end of the quarter from a brand standpoint and from a relationship standpoint.”
Insight
Kevin Egan: Top sales reps maintain enough pipeline to avoid unnatural deals
“The best reps are creating ample pipeline throughout the year, and they somehow have so much, you know, they create enough pipeline that they're able to hit their quarterly numbers without doing any, anything unnatural to get those deals in, because if one fal…”
Assertion Contradicted
Egan: Atlassian Does Not Discount Software Prices for Any Customers
“In my current role at Atlassian, we don't discount. We try to work on terms that work for our customer, but everything's programmatic. So if our customers were to speak with any other customer, they know that they're in the same boat and that we're transparent…”
Insight
Egan: Enterprise sales discounting must originate from the CFO
“Good discounting should originate from the office of the CFO. Meaning, the CFO knows the margins. They know what they're willing to what margins they're willing to give away on products at what volumes. What should happen in most companies is the CFO should pr…”
