Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (Stripe): Building Your Sales Organization

DESCRIPTION

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser was hired to scale the sales team at Stripe, which meant that she had to become smarter about customer segmentation. Throughout her career, Jeanne’s relied on strong partnership with the data science organization. In this episode of BUILDing To Boss, we unpack how Stripe leveraged product-led growth to scale a sales org with a repeatable process. Plus, hear what Jeanne has to say about revolutionizing the idea of personalization in sales outreach. Hint: it’s more than just personalization tokens in mass emails.

Key Takeaways:

[1:44] Jeanne talks about her professional journey and how she ended up where she is today.

[3:22] How big was Stripe when Jeanne started to work there?

[4:24] What did Jeanne learn at Google about affecting and influencing people?

[6:24] What drew Jeanne to Stripe?

[9:37] Did Stripe founders prioritize strong values from the beginning?

[11:29] What was the sales team like when Jeanne joined Stripe?

[14:14] When was the pivot going from product-led growth to scaling Stripe with the repeatable sales process?

[16:26] How did Jeanne specifically scale the sales team at Stripe?

[18:11] What does Stripe’s team look like now? What are the various sales roles there? How are they working together, and how big is the team now?

[21:42] What do team sales really work with?

[24:12] How often do operational groups meet?

[26:22] What does Transactional Sales Org mean? How does that relate back to a self-serve sales model?

[28:23] Jeanne gives her suggestions about personalization and sales outreach.

[30:44] What metrics are necessary to start looking at a transition?

[32:40] What is the role of revenue operations? How does that work with the sales team?

[34:24] Does revenue operations at Stripe sit on the sales team?

[35:15] When Jeanne thinks about growth in partnerships at Stripe, how does she identify businesses to partner with?

[36:45] What makes a great leader?

[37:38] What advice does Jeanne have for new leaders joining organizations?

[38:26] What advice does Jeanne have for people looking to be internally promoted?

[39:35] What key business trends has Jeanne seen as a result of the pandemic and the way that people have changed how they work?

[40:36] Rapid-fire questions.