Fougere: Bad sales leaders yell at scoreboards instead of joining calls
Dan Fougere · Dan Fougere, CRO @Datadog: Why Discounting is Dangerous and Contract Sizes are Misleading | E1229 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Nov 22, 2024 · at 51:47
Dan Fougere, former CRO at Datadog, discusses common flaws in enterprise sales leadership culture on 20VC with Harry Stebbings.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The leader is not in the boat with them. The leader yells at the scoreboard at the end of the quarter or end of the week. How come you didn't get more meetings? How can we didn't do this? Like, well, you should have been in it with them. It shouldn't be a surprise at all. And you should know that because you were on the calls, you were in the meetings.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Dan Fougere
Fougere: Pipeline generation cannot be outsourced to SDRs
“Asking somebody else to do PG for you is like asking them to go to the gym for you. I think it creates, I don't think it creates the right culture to think that this is something that can be outsourced. And so the way I look at it is PG is everybody's job.”
Fougere: One weekly pipeline opportunity and meeting guarantees reps hit quota
“Like at Datadog, when I left, it was one of each of those, a pipeline, a new pipeline opportunity that's got a specific definition and a new business meeting for enterprise and two for SMB. And if I had those, I could, I guarantee you, you're going to make you…”
Fougere: Datadog gave reps four months post-landing before CS account handoff
“Gave them when they broke into a new account, whether it was inbound or outbound, doesn't matter. They had four months to sell more products, to take advantage of some of the growth that they might have because of a consumption model. And then after that point…”
Fougere: Datadog reduced CAC via non-commissioned Customer Success growth
“And so the CAC was incredible because the growth was non-commissioned because CS did not have commission, right?”
Fougere: Founders cannot scale sales playbooks to billions in revenue
“And that's a great way to get started, but you're not going to scale to billions of dollars of revenue, at least in my experience with that. Like you're going to need more of what I just described and every place I've ever been, that's been the sales leader do…”