Climate Conversations: Expanding into Enterprise SaaS.

In today’s deep dive, Redpoint Operating Partner Travis Bryant demystifies the world of building and scaling enterprise sales operations. Travis joined Redpoint as an EIR 5 years ago post decorated stints at Salesforce, Front, and Optimizely, where he served as SVP of Global Sales. Travis soon transitioned into a Partner position with us, leading our broader Founder Experience efforts. These days, Travis splits his time between working with Redpoint portfolio companies and advising a broader base of external founders and sales leaders, primarily in the climate ecosystem, on building customer-centric sales frameworks and teams. I feel like I get a little bit smarter every minute I spend with Travis, so hopefully his teachings are similarly valuable to you as you and your team strengthen your own sales muscles.

Travis’ Top Takes on Laying Your Enterprise Sales Foundation:

1. While you might already be itching to pick up the phone, the most important step in enterprise sales is to first define your Ideal Customer Profile(s), or ICP. Though in some ways intuitive, far too many companies overlook defining this with some level of objectivity and precision, which can lead to downstream inefficiencies that have the potential to grow as your company grows.

   1. The first set of criteria you should consider when defining your ICP are firmographic variables: industry, number of employees, revenue threshold, regulatory environment

   2. The second set of criteria you should consider when defining your ICP are demographic variables: role, generation, geography

   3. The third set of criteria you should consider when defining your ICP are psychographic variables: climate sensitive, risk taking / averse, bureaucratic, innovative, incentive structures

2. Companies don’t buy products; people buy products. Knowing your customer means knowing them at the individual level. Once you’ve defined your ICP, you should then define your Ideal Persona Profile(s), differentiating between Primary Users, Program Managers, and Executive Sponsors. Since enterprise sales are no longer exclusively a top down mandate, it is important to consider the role that each persona plays in both advocating and proliferating your product in the organization as well as signing off on your annual contract.

3. Customer empathy is an art. Your mentality when navigating an organization should always be “help me help you.”

4. Within climate specifically, your go-to-market consideration set is not complete without taking into account the roles that less well understood third parties like third party implementation partners, climate consultants, and government agencies play in the ecosystem. In some sense, climate tech remains the Wild West.

5. When selling a climate solution, never forget to translate your impact into dollars-denominated ROI for the company, particularly in a more volatile macro environment.

6. Post establishing company wide definitions of your ICP and persona profiles, it’s important to align on mutually understood definitions of your core metrics (think MQL, SQL, QO, and more) as the hand off between marketing and sales should be structured to minimize leakage. 

7. Sales is a numbers game, and there is no substitute for activity and synchronous conversations. 

8. There is real value in losing early (ie: minimizing time spent). When losing, the most important dynamic to track is the fidelity of your reasons lost. 

9. With significant pressure on win rates in the current macro environment, many companies will need to reassess the pipeline required to meet their overall sales targets. Do not fall into the trap of believing that you are immune. 

10. When hiring for startup sales functions, screen for entrepreneurial energy. A genuine willingness to lean into a 0 to 1 motion in a low data environment is critical to setting new hires – and the organization – up for success.

11. The best sales teams play as a team and learn from each other, whether it’s sharing customer anecdotes and fun facts, or role playing and reviewing one another’s “game film” for best practices.

12. At the end of the day, your #1 priority should be Net Promoter Customers. With most SaaS pricing structures, you don’t make money until someone renews.

The Tech Toolkit for Enterprise Sales:

1. Salesforce (CRM)

2. Hubspot (CRM)

3. Attio (CRM)

4. Gong (call recording)

5. Chorus (call recording)

6. Sybill (call recording)

7. Atrium (analytics)

8. Outreach (prospecting)

9. Apollo.io (prospecting)

10. Clari (forecasting)

As we wave farewell to Earth Month, I could not be more excited for the year that awaits the climate tech community. With the truly best-in-class talent flooding the ecosystem at an unprecedented rate and the broadening base of participants in this important conversation, it certainly feels like the next twelve months could show the most true progress yet.

If you have any feedback on these go-to-market musings as we wrap up part 3 of this Climate Conversations series, we’d love to hear from you. Find us on Twitter at  @tbryant80 / @itsmeeraclark.