Opinion
Figma CRO Sean Boscanian argues traditional software sales quotas are arbitrary
“My perspective is quotas are kind of made up.”
Insight
Figma AEs must generate their own pipeline without relying on SDRs
“A's have to be responsible for their own PG, like full stop. That I think is, is consistently true anywhere I've been, and I firmly believe in it. I think that's critical. That is the job in a lot of ways, like the most important part of the job.”
Insight
Managing sales reps purely by quota creates lazy leadership, says Boscanian
“I just think it's too much of a lagging indicator. And I think it, what my fear is, it creates lazy leadership. If we're performance managing based on the idea that someone got to their number or didn't get to their number at the end of a month, quarter, or ye…”
Disclosure
Figma operates without a traditional customer success team, says CRO Boscanian
“We don't actually have a traditional CS team.”
Disclosure
Figma operates without traditional sales development representatives, says CRO Boscanian
“We also don't have traditional SDRs.”
Disclosure
Figma sets average enterprise sales quotas at 3x to 4x OTE
“An average enterprise rep here might have three to four X their OTE for a quota, and we're happy with that.”
Assertion Supported
Majority of Figma's sales team activity is outbound today, says Boscanian
“Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Not, not a hundred percent of our business up on, but a hundred percent in that the, what the sales team is doing at Figma is majority outbound today.”
Prediction Held up
Figma will monetize its AI features through a credit-based pricing model
“We're gonna start monetizing our AI usage through credits as well.”
Insight
Over-assigning sales quotas gives management a false sense of security
“I don't necessarily believe that you completely de-risk your year by making sure that you've dished out enough quota to cover your target. I think that's a bit of like of a false, you know sense of comfort.”
Insight
Prioritize deal-closing experience over industry domain knowledge when hiring sales reps
“I, if those are the two options to choose from, I would take the person with the experience doing the deal, because I think the industry experience you can teach with, to the person who's got, you know, the right willingness to learn and the curiosity, and obv…”
Opinion
Figma CRO has a visceral negative reaction to jumpy sales resumes
“I have a usually a pretty visceral reaction to people who are super jumpy, you know, in terms of a resume.”
Insight
Candidates who pit competing offers against a company pose retention risks
“If at the end of a process, you know, with Figma spending a couple of weeks doing all this work if you're not like, all right, I'm in. I want to do this. It tends to be a little bit of a yellow flag for me. And if they're actively trying to pit you against a, …”
Insight
Figma assigns enterprise reps to accounts before formal product training
“I think for an enterprise rep, one of the things we want to do is kind of as quickly as possible, even before we teach them all the product stuff and the sales skills, which hopefully they're bringing some with them. We kind of want to get them into their acco…”
Insight
Management frequently sets sales quotas too high, admits Figma CRO
“I agree, with the exception of, what if we got it wrong? What if we got the quota wrong? What if we set it too high? And that happens. It truly does.”
Insight
Outbound sales teams should receive more favorable quotas to attract talent
“If where you're ending up is, hey, we have an opportunity, we love what we're doing, but we have to push it to the market, and we have to do that in a very proactive, strategic, outbound way and we need x type of people to do that, then index towards giving pe…”
Opinion
Sending gifts to sales prospects is an outdated, ineffective tactic
“Sending gifts. Yeah. I've never, I mean, I've never understood it, to be honest with you. I think I have like a pile of gifts that are sitting in some office in San Francisco that I don't occupy right now for me, but like, I just don't understand how a gift wo…”
Insight
Refusing remote sales hires locks companies out of top talent
“Are they dead? No. Are they harder? I think so. I mean, it is, it just puts a lot more pressure on the system, I think, if it's fully remote. But are they dead? I don't think so. I honestly think, like, if you go completely the other direction, I think you're …”
Insight
Enterprise sales success requires balancing curiosity with being prescriptive
“I believe like right now more than anything else, if you want to be great in, you know, enterprise tech sales, it's not just about being curious, it's about being prescriptive. And that's an interesting balance, right? Because you're right, people are busy and…”
Assertion Supported
Figma's net dollar retention rate recently increased from 131% to 136%
“We added five points on our net retention, pretty significant when I think went from 131% to 136%.”
Disclosure
Figma shifted its SDR team to manage small transactional renewals
“Recently we made a new shift, and we said even that we're gonna kind of take the focus away from, and we're using them now in a more pointed way on existing customers and managing small you know, transactional renewals to get those off the plates of some of th…”
Insight
Sales teams should intercept PLG customers early to drive upgrades
“I don't think it ever hurts to do it a little earlier than a little later, because I think what we do still find is we think it's the right time based on our formulas. You still have to convince someone that that's the case. And that might take a couple of go-…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Most Figma sales reps operate a traditional enterprise sales motion
“SMB, that's the PLG motion, everything else is sales led. Everything else we do, mid-market, enterprise strat, which is the majority of our team and the reps that we have, it's running like a very traditional SaaS sales business.”
Disclosure
Figma enterprise reps focus on account expansion over net-new logos
“The job of a sales rep, they get their book of accounts, right? And every year we've created more focus around them and we've done, we've had to do ruthless prioritization on like which accounts are we going to really go deep on. But once they get their accoun…”
Assertion Supported
Figma requires sales candidates to complete practical discovery and demo exercises
“So we always make people do, you know, a challenge or an exercise at the end that requires some heavy lifting in terms of like learning a bit about our business but also showing off your, you know, basic sales skills run discovery.”
