20Sales: Why You Need a CRO Pre-Product | Why Remote Sales Teams Do Not Work | How Snowflake Built a Sales Machine with Chad Peets

Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio. In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We Discuss: 1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product: •

Why does Chad believe that SaaS companies need a CRO pre-product? • •

Should the founder not be the right person to create the sales playbook? • •

What should the founder look for in their first CRO hire? • •

Does any great CRO really want to go back to an early startup and do it again? • 2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams: •

Why are most sales reps not performing? • •

How long does it take for sales teams to ramp? How does this change with PLG and enterprise? • •

What are the benchmarks of good vs great for average sales reps? • •

How do founders and VCs most often hurt their sales teams and performance? • 3. How to Build a Hiring Machine: •

What are the single biggest mistakes people make when hiring sales reps and teams? • •

Are sales people money motivated? How to create comp plans that incentivise and align? • •

Why does Chad believe that any sales rep that does not want to be in the office, is not putting their career and development first? • •

Why is it harder than ever to recruit great sales leaders today? • 4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake: •

What are the single biggest lessons of what worked from scaling Snowflake's sales team? • •

What did not work? What would he do differently with the team again? • •

What did Snowflake teach Chad about success and culture and how they interplay together? •