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

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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?