# Slack, Atlassian, Dropbox: Five of the Biggest Lessons on Starting, Scaling and Managing Sales Teams from 25 Years Leading the Best with Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian 20Sales · Jul 12, 2023 · 37 min · 7,760 words Speakers: Kevin Egan, Harry Stebbings Source: https://www.996.fm/episodes/20vc--ep-74ee5835/ ## Cold open **Kevin Egan** [0:00]: I do favor hiring two to three at a time if you can afford it. In a PLG world, rep effectiveness, the best companies out there are doing a lot of AB testing. Early days of hiring reps, you're to need renaissance reps that have a very wide breadth of skill sets. ## Intro **Harry Stebbings** [0:15]: You are listening to 20 sales with me, Harry Stebbings. Now this is the monthly show where we sit down with the best sales leaders in the world to reveal their tips, tactics, and strategies when it comes to scaling sales teams. Today, I'm so thrilled to be joined by Kevin Egan, Global Head of Enterprise Sales at Atlassian, and brings more than twenty five years of enterprise sales experience and leadership to the company. And prior to his current role, Kevin served as the Vice President of North America Sales at both Slack and Dropbox, and has held various senior sales leadership positions at Salesforce. I'd also to say huge thank you to Maggie Hart, Kim Graves, and Renu Gupta for some fantastic question suggestions today. I so appreciated that. ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [0:52]: But before we move into the show you might remember in our amazing episode with Maggie Hot, she mentioned a tool she could not live without called Pocus. What is Pocus? Well, Pocus is a revenue data platform that makes it easy for go to market teams to analyze, visualize, and action data about their prospects and customers without needing engineers. 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So if you want to find out how you can use intend data to target key prospects or how to revive a stalled deal by expanding your buying committee outreach, head on over to zoominfo.com/20vc to see for yourself and sign up for a free trial of the ZoomInfo platform. Three, two, one. You have now arrived at your destination. ## Conversation **Harry Stebbings** [3:18]: Kevin, I am so excited for this. I have heard so many great things from Maggie, from Kim, from Renu, but I to start at the beginning. So hit me. How did you make your way into the world of sales first? Let's start there. **Kevin Egan** [3:30]: So I was lucky to join Oracle in the mid-90s and I started in the data center, a technical support role, and quickly made my way over the sales engineering side of the house. Again, at Oracle in the late 90s in their DMD organization, which was a fast moving, fantastic place to **Harry Stebbings** [3:48]: learn. I thought it'd be really cool if I started with a quick fire round because you've had some incredible companies where you've been a central part of their sales teams and often led them. Salesforce, Dropbox, and Slack. And I thought there's to be like one or two lessons from each that really shaped how you think. And so I wanted to delve into each in a quick fire round. So if we take Salesforce, what was the biggest takeaway for you and how did that shape how you think? **Kevin Egan** [4:11]: Salesforce does not get enough credit for being one of the original product led growth companies. If you look at Salesforce and what Benioff did in the early days, we were one of the first companies to ever allow companies for our potential clients to use a trial at no charge for 30 days. During that trial, the sales team was obsessed with what are the business problems that this customer is trying to solve? How do I help configure the Salesforce service to help solve those business problems? And it led to incredible conversion rates. The idea that if we're to put the product in our customers' hands, we to give them help in terms of how they solve their problems. That was an amazing element of Salesforce and and one I just don't think they got enough credit for. **Harry Stebbings** [4:49]: Let's move to Dropbox. You then spent four years, a little over four years at Dropbox. What was the biggest takeaway for you from your time there and how did it shape your mindset? **Kevin Egan** [4:57]: My biggest takeaway from Dropbox was the importance of getting it right. How do we provide a product that end users really love, but that large enterprises can trust from a security and operations standpoint? So the balance between end user love and an enterprise security posture is a really difficult one to strike. And I think Dropbox is one of the first companies to go from a B2C company into the B2B realm and really work hard to get the enterprise posture and the security and controls right, which is no small task. And it's a somewhat of an unsexy pursuit, but it's much necessary in order for large companies to trust you and to bring you in and allow you to expand within their domain. **Harry Stebbings** [5:32]: I mean, we're going dive into that later. I'm to pepper you with questions. Slack has such a hyper growth story that you're core and central to. What was your biggest takeaway from your time at Slack and how did that impact your mindset? **Kevin Egan** [5:44]: If you think about Slack, the power of Slack comes the bigger the team and the more employees you can get engaged on that platform, the more value they drive to their customers. 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 security controls that were necessary there was something that was truly unique at the time and very enjoyable. It led to, as you said, hyper growth. **Harry Stebbings** [6:16]: Now, I do to start at the core crux of a lot of the discussions I have with founders, which is the sales playbook. And I just to get some nomenclature right. How do you define sales playbook, Kevin? **Kevin Egan** [6:27]: Well, that's an interesting question, Harry. I don't typically use the word playbook. playbook. to me seems like just a simple one, two, three, and you follow these steps and you're to close the deal. I think it's more than that. When I think of a playbook, I actually just think of sales motions. I prefer the the term sales motions. Understanding who is the buyer, what's the user persona that we're selling to, what's the industry that they're in, what are the business problems that they're faced with, and how does our product uniquely solve that problem? Talking in terms of the unique solution to that problem is where I think strong sellers really shine and not talking about product features, but really the solution that overall would drive business value. So that's a motion more than it is a one, two, three playbook in my mind. **Harry Stebbings** [7:08]: So when we think about that motion, is it the founder that needs to be the one who creates the different motions, or are they able to hire a first sales leader, a first sales hire to create the motions for them? **Kevin Egan** [7:20]: I think when you listen to a founder speak to their product and how it solves business problems, 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 the idea matching as they're talking to other executives, but it's the sales VP's job to really nail it. **Harry Stebbings** [7:44]: If we think about PLG versus Enterprise, something that I see a lot of today, founders chasing PLG and Enterprise kind of from day one. Can you do both at the same time, you think, Kevin? **Kevin Egan** [7:56]: 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's imagination, capture that end user love is one thing. But to build out the enterprise security set, the feature set, and the enterprise posture, all the processes and controls that are necessary to really go big in enterprise takes many, many, years. So I think if I had to pick a path, it's probably more sequential. PLG first, gathering that end user love, and then adding on the enterprise layers following that. **Harry Stebbings** [8:31]: We're to delve into that. I just have to ask, you mentioned Slack nailing PLG first there and then moving to enterprise. I just chatted to Kim before this show and she said I had to ask, how did you know it was the right time to move into Enterprise when you did with Slack? **Kevin Egan** [8:45]: If you're a product that's generating enough end user value and it starts to spread within companies, you're to get pulled in by those companies to enterprise and you're to get to user cows that are so significant you're going get on the radar of procurement and legal and they say this many people are using this product. I want the right terms in place so that I can feel comfortable using the product. So you're to feel a real pull if you're getting it right and that virality is happening within companies. And I think that's what happened at Slack. They had, in in some cases, tens of thousands of users within single companies that said, hey, look, we need to come to the table and operate. You need to operate as more of a strategic partner than a Roam service that my end users love. **Harry Stebbings** [9:25]: But then we come to that realization. We're getting pulled into enterprise. We're getting pulled into procurement. I think there's a maybe naivety sometimes around what needs to change when you move to enterprise. What are the biggest elements, Kevin, that need to change when you're scaling from a PLG motion to an enterprise motion? **Kevin Egan** [9:41]: Well, I think number one is scale and reliability. They need to know that if this becomes business critical, you're to be, you know, providing the SLAs in the 99.99 uptime. There's data geography requirements around data residency. If I'm to use this service in Japan or if I'm going use it in Europe, I need to know that You've got local data centers. Process controls, you know, they want know how your engineers control data, who has access to that data, what security protocols you use around that data. They have encryption requirements, data loss prevention requirements. It gets pretty deep. But I think the one thing to emphasize there is that there's no finish line. It's not like as a PLG company, you can dip your toe into enterprise and deliver these three or four features. It's a lifelong pursuit that you need to be in partnership with your customers. If you look at today and just the changes in the data requirements around GDPR, like, that's a full time job for somebody to be looking at that and say, okay, Well, how are we running our service, and is it compliant in Europe? It's naive to think it's just a few features because in fact it is a lifelong pursuit to to make sure that you're staying up with the most stringent requirements that are coming out of enterprises today. **Harry Stebbings** [10:46]: I totally agree and can't dip your toe in. Those are the quite technical gnarly aspects of what needs to be done. There's also just the actual ability to move there in the first place. When you think about structuring your sales team as well, does the sales team carbon copy from PLG to Enterprise? Should we change the structure? Should it be more formal from AE to SDR to you name it? Like, how does the structure of sales teams change when moving from PLG to Enterprise? **Kevin Egan** [11:13]: Well, I think at first the sales team 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 to the service? What business problem is it solving? How would you down the line translate this into ROI for the end user? Early days is creating a a major feedback loop, which you can build that repeatability on. Once you have that repeatability, then you can start to build sales teams that are more traditional with the EDR core sellers focused on just revenue numbers supported by sales engineers and so forth. **Harry Stebbings** [11:48]: Can I ask you a bit of a weird one? Like, when you're doing PLG, you kind of know if sales teams are good. Do you see very quickly the velocity that they close customers? The sales cycles are shorter. It's easier to tell effectiveness. When you're scaling into enterprise, sales cycles are longer, conversations take more time. How do you determine rep effectiveness when moving into enterprise? **Kevin Egan** [12:09]: In a PLG world, rep effectiveness, the best companies out there are doing a lot of a AB testing. Atlassian is famous for AB 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 effective way is that testing. **Harry Stebbings** [12:26]: Should we test from the start? Should we layer the testing in? When we say like testing, if I'm a founder listening test with what? A rep versus what what is the alternative to testing? Do you see what I mean? You need to have **Kevin Egan** [12:38]: a If you're doing an AB test, you have your market, you have your online channels. You've got chat, you've got your website, and you've got your ecommerce engine and so forth. So that's one channel. And then the other would be sales rep handle where you can of measure what they're doing through their activities in Salesforce and opportunities that are being created. So you simply have a cohort of customers that are managed through the web channels and another cohort that are managed through sales reps. And if you see outsized growth in the ones managed through sales reps, hopefully you do. And that'll tell you that you have strong effectiveness or you're on your way to effective sales channel. **Harry Stebbings** [13:11]: One way to tell effectiveness is also like when you hire multiple at the same time. You can tell do you agree with the hiring two or three at the same time, or actually, do you think that's unnecessary? **Kevin Egan** [13:21]: I do favor hiring two to three at a time if you can afford it. That is a great indicator of sales rep 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 my sales rep base, who's really carrying the water up the hill and making it happen? **Harry Stebbings** [13:38]: If we dive into that hiring process, I heard that you're incredible when it came to identifying talent. How do you structure the hiring process for new sales hires? And if I'm a founder that you've angel invested in, how would you advise me? I've never done it before and I need that help and guidance. **Kevin Egan** [13:54]: I think hiring great salespeople is about process and it's about discipline. And when I was at Salesforce, I had the benefit of being a part of a process that came together that we really invested in. As Marc Benioff said, he he wanted to see everybody have hiring fatigue. Everybody should be interviewing it all the time, whether it be for a job opening that you have today or one that you might have down the line. To hire well, you really need to put a multistep process in to get to know the candidate, to get to know how they approach a customer, understand business problems, and then present to those business problems in a differentiated way. No hire that I've made at my past companies have gotten the job until they presented a mock scenario around fictitious company and a business problem that they're trying to solve. So we really put the rep on the spot, so to speak, to show how they deliver in the moment. We're talking to a customer about how they'll uniquely solve their business problem. By the time a rep gets a job with one of these companies, they should have met with five or six different people in five or six different steps. And that stand and deliver moment I think is important and tells you who can really command the conversation. **Harry Stebbings** [14:55]: Kevin, help me out here. Mock scenario. What does that look like? So one, often people either give the mock scenario of the company where the reps at now or the company that the hire is at, which is kind of bias I find in either direction. How do you think about which company that they should sell against or sell for? How long do you give them? Who's in that mock scenario meeting? What makes the best ones? Can you just help me understand what that looks like for me? **Kevin Egan** [15:22]: Sure. So I could go either way on that. At Salesforce, we gave them a fictitious company, a business set of business problems that they were solving using Salesforce set of solutions. At Slack, we were comfortable with them positioning their own service. And so I think both have their advantages. I just think it's what's important is really to really lay out what the business problems are, how this rep is to solve them, and how they're to kind command the room, so to speak, when they're trying to get over the finish line. **Harry Stebbings** [15:48]: I struggle with that one. And you're the hailed business leader, so I'm like, you know, being very bold here. But if you have, you know, years at a company, I know back to front how to articulate my business solution. I know back to front every aspect of it. I can pull wool over your eyes in seconds. If you give me a new company and say you've got 24 hours, sell me this pen. I've really got think on my feet about different customer personas, different customer needs, how to position that in market competitive. I've really got show my skill on the spot in real time like sales leaders need to. Do you not think that actually it's a bit easier if you give them what they already know? **Kevin Egan** [16:24]: Good question. I think if they're selling you what they already know, then the audience should be delivering much harder questions and harder objections. I think you can accommodate for that in terms of the tone that you take in that meeting and some of the mock question **Harry Stebbings** [16:39]: What do we think about good versus great? How do the best do in these mock scenarios? And are there any red flags that you look for? **Kevin Egan** [16:46]: The most curious part of the interview process is when they get through final interviews and you're assuming that they're just to crush the mock scenario. And sometimes they'll just come in and it'll be a flop and you'll say, wow, I just never saw that coming. And that comes down to what's their comfort level being in front of a room, being in front of an audience that's to throw up real objections. So sometimes you're surprised. Good versus great comes down to are they consistent throughout the whole process? Right? Did they did they crush the interviews and then just come in with a level of confidence during the mock scenario that just wins you over and makes a ton of sense? I'd say overall it's consistency. When you start to see inconsistency across the different steps of the process, that's definitely a red flag. **Harry Stebbings** [17:24]: Does the type of person that you need change dependent on whether you're running a PLG or an Enterprise Motion, cabin? **Kevin Egan** [17:31]: I'm not sure I differentiate so much on Enterprise versus PLG. To me, it's a little bit more about the timing of the company. How old is the company and where are they in their journey? Early days of hiring reps, you're 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 to see reps that are there for really to make a living and are more concerned with what's the paycheck and what's the quota. That's a different rep. So I think it's to me it's a little bit over time how the reps change a little bit less PLG versus enterprise. But, certainly, as you go into enterprise and you've been there longer, that rep that is to be successful there has more experience and is more focused on what are my set of accounts and how do I crush my number. **Harry Stebbings** [18:16]: Do you think it's a fair description that sales reps are coin operated? And is that a bad thing even? I hear founders sometimes say, oh, I'm a bit worried about how focused they are on the comp, on the ot, on the bonus. Is that a bad thing? **Kevin Egan** [18:30]: Again, going back to timing, it does not pay to have coin operated sales reps in the early days. They're gonna be overly focused on quotas and and crushing their number to get to a certain outcome. The early days are really about who has created the best connection between my developing product and my potential customer. But I think in the later years or as you build out your sales organization, well, I don't like the term coin operated. People do become more specialized as you get bigger as a company. And the specialization of the sales rep is to bring in customers and grow revenue, and they need to make a living. And so I would be concerned about coin operated early days, but not later. **Harry Stebbings** [19:05]: I hear a lot of founders say their biggest mistake they made when hiring sales teams was hiring for logos. My question to you is, how do you advise founders on the logo hires? So often I see startups and they go, oh, amazing name from big company, Microsoft, Oracle. and they say that's their big mistake. How do you advise on logo hires and what to look for? **Kevin Egan** [19:27]: 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 King. from Google, what have you. **Harry Stebbings** [19:40]: What do you mean by intellectual range, Kevin? **Kevin Egan** [19:42]: What I mean by intellectual range is this person, this initial sales leader is gonna have a lot on their plate. They're not to have a a big marketing team that they can outsource all of the writing and the messaging to. They're not going to have all the resourcing from product management and so forth. So they're to need to do a lot of different things. And so they're to need to have energy and range to do everything from writing to messaging to closing and providing that customer feedback, you know, the voice of the customer back in the product. So that range, as the companies become bigger and more specialized, starts to narrow, if you will. But in early days, it's really about how much stuff are you willing to take on, And that's sort I referred to when I talk about range. **Harry Stebbings** [20:20]: Can I ask you, Kevin, you've hired some the best across many different organizations. Comp packages are pretty hard to understand if it's your first time and to know what's good, what's fair. What have been some of your biggest lessons on comp package giving when hiring? **Kevin Egan** [20:35]: I think when I'm closing a candidate, I'm interested if I'm giving them a fair comp plan, are they really interested about the long term journey of this company? Because this comp plan only represents this moment in time for the next year or two. If we're both successful, the company will increase in size. Our jobs will be different. Our jobs will be bigger. So how how do they view the the long term journey at this company? And are they excited about the company and the journey, or is it about the comp plan? Sometimes if it becomes too much about the comp plan, then that's a red flag because it's really about a total rewards element, which is you're joining a rocket ship. You're gonna love this job and it's to really benefit your career overall. That's kind of what I'm looking for, but comp plans certainly need to be fair. If you're not providing a fair comp plan, you you can expect to hire the best. **Harry Stebbings** [21:16]: One of my favorite mentors says, you're never wrong to do the right thing. And I always think back to that on fairness. Can I ask you though, you know, again, we mentioned like working with amazing people? Again, spoke to so many that worked with you and they said, once you hired them, were incredible when it came to trust building. And I wanted to ask you, how do you think about building trust with new hires and then building trust in you both ways? What works? **Kevin Egan** [21:43]: Well, I think on the journey of people joining a company in the early days, they to have clear expectations and you as a leader need to be a little bit more directive on what are the expectations and how how you're gonna get there. And then as they become competent and ramped up in their job, it's a little bit more of a partnership and here's what we're going to do. I to hear more ideas from them on what they see as the next steps for the organization. So it goes from directive to more of a partnership. So I think that's an important element. The job and the the manager employee relationship changes over time. So that's one thing I try to focus on. **Harry Stebbings** [22:17]: How do you retain a sense of hierarchy? I think one thing that I've got wrong, Kevin, as a manager, honestly, I'm young. I tried to be people's friend and I'm not your friend. I am your boss at the end of the day. And I know we don't like hierarchies or boss, you are someone's boss and everyone has a boss. How do you retain that hierarchy, but also trust and proximity? **Kevin Egan** [22:37]: The term hierarchy is is an interesting one to get buy in from your employees. They need to appreciate their manager is contending with a lot more issues and has more on their plate, which is requiring a certain level of skill set and focus and hard work to get done. As I look at my boss, Cameron, he's got more on his plate than myself and they need to appreciate that you've got a lot going on. And when you're with them, you're focused on in their world and what's important to them. They need to have a sense for, if I was to take your job, here are the four or five things that I would need to ramp up to have a grasp on. If they feel like you're doing the same job as them, then you're in trouble and the hierarchy is to break down. So I think it's about how much work, role and responsibility that we're putting at every level so that people can be their best, And how do we ramp them into the next job and do we have appreciation for that there is a ramp? If they do, then I think hierarchy works and there's an appreciation. Secondly, with hierarchy, I think you're not gonna exercise hierarchy every day, but there are moments throughout the year where you have to be very direct with your employees on what the expectations are. if they're not meeting those expectations, you certainly need to deliver that when he was in plain speak and they need to know where they stand. So hierarchy also breaks down if the leader is not available or comfortable providing direct feedback. **Harry Stebbings** [23:58]: I mean, I'm glad you said about direct feedback. I heard that you were very good at providing direct feedback, which again is something that I honestly struggle with. I I like to avoid conflict. What would you advise founders on how to provide effective direct feedback? **Kevin Egan** [24:12]: 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 But there's also times where we need to get better or we have our blinders on and we need to be thinking more broadly. And it's the job of the manager to to break that news, so to speak. But it it is a portion of the relationship. It is not a constant feedback loop that's happening every day. It's a moment in time. People kind of sit up a little bit straighter, dust themselves off, and off we go. We're back to more of a congenial fun working relationship. But again, you can't be afraid to provide that feedback. And I think the employees sense that and they are disappointed when they don't get feedback because it's something that everybody I've worked for is looking for. What are **Harry Stebbings** [24:57]: the biggest mistakes sales leaders make with feedback? **Kevin Egan** [25:00]: When I think of feedback, Liz Wiseman's book, Multipliers, really nailed it. Is the feedback diminishing, and is it overbearing, and is it too frequent? Or is it just the right amount? And is it geared towards the priorities that we're trying to get after? So I think it's about frequency and making sure that it's not personal, but it's about how are we getting after it as a team. **Harry Stebbings** [25:19]: In terms of how we're getting after it as a team, you need something to get after. How do you think about effective sales forecasting in 2023, a year of such uncertainty? In **Kevin Egan** [25:28]: the year 2023, I think Salesforce forecasting has gotten a little more difficult. Everything is on the table. Every company is looking for areas to trim or reasons not to spend. So as a rep or a sales team, you better be crystal clear on the business problem that your 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 have a deal that's forecastable. **Harry Stebbings** [25:51]: How do you think about CFOs being in every deal now? The deal cycles have changed so significantly in mind. The buyers have changed so significantly. Everything about the way that we used to sell has changed with the complexity that now is inherent within cycles. Do you agree? And how does that change your process? **Kevin Egan** [26:08]: I think if a CFO is involved in your deal and they're spending time on that deal, that tells you that you are strategic to them. So your responsibility to respond to that is giving them the financial or the value engineering as it's called on the ROI. And that is the job of the sales team to do that. Maybe they have resources in a value engineering team. Maybe they don't. But really giving the CFO crystal clear picture of what's the return. I think it's table stakes these days, I welcome it because it tells you that they're willing to lean in and work with you as a partner. **Harry Stebbings** [26:38]: Speaking of kind of leaning in and working with you as a partner, when you think about like driving them home to actually closing, how do you think about quite a challenging element which is balancing hitting quarterly revenue targets with longer term pipeline and sales strategy? How do you think about that balance? **Kevin Egan** [26:54]: I think the balance between hitting the quarterly number and building long term pipeline. If it's an early stage company who absolutely needs that deal, you're probably gonna need your leadership and executive support as a seller on your side to make it clear in the right tone to the prospect that this is an opportunity that would really help the company at that time. But it needs to be done in a tone that works for the customer. Jamming deals at the end of the quarter is always kind of obnoxious, but it happens and does work. But sometimes there is a detrimental effect to of cramming deals at daily quarter. So in all this, the best reps are creating ample pipeline throughout the year. They create enough pipeline that they're able to hit their quarterly numbers without doing anything unnatural to get those deals in. Because if one falls out, they've got another that comes in. So it's around really generating enough pipeline throughout the year so you don't put yourselves in that position. Now is that possible every time? Probably not. But for the most part over the long run, pipeline covers all sins. **Harry Stebbings** [27:52]: Do you Do discounting, my friend? **Kevin Egan** [27:54]: 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 and fair. and other previous employers, yeah, we would discount, but that was it was something that worked well for both the company and the customer. **Harry Stebbings** [28:12]: How do you do discounting well? Do you know what I mean? Like, if I to get it over the line, I don't to seem desperate. I don't want give away too much. How do I do discounting well? And do I need approvals to do discounting? I'm a rapper on your team. Can I give a 20% discount? Can I give a 30% discount? Like, all stages accept for unacceptable. **Kevin Egan** [28:29]: Good discounting should originate from the office of the CFO. meaning the CFO knows the margins. They know what margins are willing to give away on products at what volumes. What should happen in most companies, the CFO should provide a discount matrix that the rep might have a few points to give, the rep's manager might have a few more points to give based on volume, and then all the way up to the sales VP. And then at some level, the exception would come from the CFO. So it should be very well organized and it should be with an eye towards what can the company afford to give based on certain volumes. If it's distinct or not tied into the CFO's office, then I think you're to in circles and have a lot of problems. **Harry Stebbings** [29:06]: What are the biggest mistakes that you see startups and startup founders make when it comes to discounting? **Kevin Egan** [29:11]: For most startups, if you're in with procurement and you're not selling through PLG and through the website and swiping credit cards, so to speak, and you're in with procurement, that procurement agent knows that you're a startup, knows that you are really keen on that revenue and that that revenue matters, and they're to push you harder than they might other vendors. And what they're looking for is conviction on your side that you believe in the product, that you have an understanding of the business value and the ROI that it's to provide. And they're looking for you to make a stand. So you'll face more pressure to discount, but I think procurement is looking for you to hold the line. **Harry Stebbings** [29:45]: If you don't get a deal over the line, you do a deal review or you do deal reviews generally. But I just to focus on that. How often do you do deal reviews? How do you structure them? Who's invited? Can you walk me through how you do deal reviews? **Kevin Egan** [29:59]: Deal reviews happening at different frequencies based on where you are in the organization. So sales reps having a deal review with their manager daily. I'm spending two to three hours a week just doing deal reviews. What separates good from great? I think great is organized using medic or med pick or some framework for how do we assess the deal, the people in the deal, the business value, and what are the drivers and how are we gonna get across the finish line. And I think the best sales leaders that I've seen run deal reviews aren't so interested in why the deal is gonna happen, but they're more focused on why the deal won't happen. So it's the job of the manager to see around the corner or see areas of weakness in that deal plan to really get the team to step up and cover any gaps. So it's about why it's not gonna happen, not all the good news about why it is going to happen. **Harry Stebbings** [30:42]: Kevin, I'm on many boards and very often they say, it just slipped to next quarter. Just slipped to next quarter. And I never quite know what to say. I'm like, you know, why? And, well, we're not really sure. How do you respond when you hear the classic, oh, it slipped to next quarter? **Kevin Egan** [30:58]: When I hear it slipped to next quarter, what I'm looking for is, did you commit it to this quarter? And did you tell the company that it was absolutely coming in and it's actually slipped? Or was it something that you were pursuing that potentially you could pull into this quarter? Those are two very different things. If it was committed to the quarter and did not come in, then if I'm a startup I would do a full deal review and understand why it didn't come in. And is it something around our pricing and our product or is it something around the sales execution? And I would be looking at those different sides of the equation to really dig into where do I have the problem? **Harry Stebbings** [31:31]: I do to move into my favorite though, Kevin, which is a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and then you suggest a wonderful answer in about sixty seconds. So what sales tactics have not changed in the last five years? **Kevin Egan** [31:43]: Great writing. Written communication that illustrates grasp of what the business problem is and how you're to solve it, illustrates the fact that you've got a plan and you can drive according to that plan. **Harry Stebbings** [31:54]: What sales tactics have died a death? **Kevin Egan** [31:56]: The sales tactics that have died a death are really around withholding information. When I started at Oracle to get a white paper, you had to email the sales rep and to get any technical documentation and so forth. Over time, that has changed dramatically. So withholding information has died of death. I think transparency across the board is the new normal. **Harry Stebbings** [32:15]: What one piece of advice would you give to a new sales leader starting a new role? So imagine you the night before you joined Atlassian or Slack as a sales leader, what would you have called yourself up and said? **Kevin Egan** [32:27]: I'd call myself and say every environment is different. Watch out for pattern matching from the previous company. Really get to know your peer group and the other side of the equation that being probably the engineering leadership to understand how they view their product and how their product solves problems. So spending more time with the broader organization and not pattern matching. What would **Harry Stebbings** [32:48]: you most like to change about the world of sales, Kevin? **Kevin Egan** [32:50]: I think there's an opportunity with AI to use technology to help every sales rep understand the best next step for their customers and to show up with more great idea for their customers. In terms of change, I'd like to see more adoption of AI to help us do that. **Harry Stebbings** [33:05]: What would you most like to change or what's the hardest element of your role with Atlassian today? **Kevin Egan** [33:10]: I think the hardest part of the job at Atlassian right now is helping our customers with opinionated view on how to make them successful, And I don't think that's different than any other company. Jira's been out there a long time. How are we helping engineering teams and broader companies ship better products faster and really getting into the weeds with them and providing an opinionated solution on how our services are helping them, I think is a pursuit that we're really turning up the investment on, but something that we're going to work every day to make happen. **Harry Stebbings** [33:38]: What one company sales strategy, Kevin, final one, do you most look up to respect or impressed by recently? Where you live here, you go, that was a smart sales strategy. Well done. **Kevin Egan** [33:49]: I'm impressed by Snowflake. From afar, I've not been a buyer of Snowflake technology. but my sense is that that company, the CEO on down, has really great alignment and is customer centric. And, again, I don't work there, but I think it's probably a pretty intense environment and they're making it happen every day. So that's a company that if you look at the last five years, they've really made hay, and and hats off to them in terms of how much progress they've made. **Harry Stebbings** [34:10]: Kevin, listen, I've loved doing this. As I said, I had so many good things from Kim, from Rainey, from Maggie. So thank you so much for joining me today, and I so appreciate the time. **Kevin Egan** [34:19]: Harry, thanks so much for having me. **Harry Stebbings** [34:22]: Such a great discussion with Kevin there. And if you to see more from us behind the scenes, of course, you can on YouTube with the full video available by searching for 20VC. VC, That's 20 20VC. But before we leave you today, ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [34:33]: you might remember in our amazing episode with Maggie Hot, she mentioned a tool she could not live without called Pocus. What is Pocus? Well, Pocus is a revenue data platform that makes it easy for go to market teams to analyze, visualize, and action data about their prospects and customers without needing engineers. Pocus helps companies like Miro, Webflow, Loom, and Superhuman focus their sales and success teams on the highest priority opportunities by surfacing insights at the right moment so reps can take action quickly. Pocus gives you a 360 degree view into product usage, empowering you to act on insights and fill your funnel efficiently. Sales teams save ten plus hours per week digging through data to surface millions in new revenue opportunities. 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