Eric Martin

Head Of Sales, Vanta

Content

What's your framework to prioritizing needs/deliverables when you're the first sales leader at a company establishing the function?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

As the first GTM hire and sales leader at Vanta, hitting our weekly revenue target was the absolute most important thing that I could do for myself, for the company, and for my CEO. Yes, you read that correctly, I had a weekly revenue target that I had to hit (and that we exceeded on a weekly ......Read More

599 Views

As a hiring manager, what do the best sales candidates have in common?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

The answer to this question depends on the sales leader (i.e. me vs someone else), the product that the rep is selling, the stage of the business, etc. The list goes on. I personally am always looking for candidates who have these two attributes: 1. Innate curiosity 2. Persuasiveness ......Read More

513 Views

What advice would you give to someone tasked with taking the sales function up market in an existing business structure?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

This is a great question and a task that I was asked to take on for Vanta twice over the past two years - first helping us break into the mid-market, and later helping us break into the enterprise. My first piece of advice is to make sure that there's cross-functional alignment in your company......Read More

478 Views

How does "the way you motivate" your sales org change as your company scale?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

It's a great question. I believe that all reps are continuously motivated by earning potential and career growth opportunities, regardless of the stage of the company. To get more nuanced, you'll see earlier hires more motivated by the combination of equity and cash, and you'll also see earlie......Read More

468 Views

Do you have any advice for a junior who is a first sales hire?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

First off, I'm going to assume that the question here is whether or not I have any advice for a "junior seller" who is a first sales hire. My advice is to ask your company leaders to help you find a sales mentor or sales coach. Asking for something like this is not a sign of weakness, it's a s......Read More

461 Views

If your sales team has only one or two people responsible for covering multiple products with complex features, how would you recommend dividing the workload in the short-term so as best to support long-term growth and expansion of the team?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

This is a good, and interesting question. Like many of the other questions, answering this properly requires more context, so I'd ask that you DM me to find some time to chat. A couple of questions that come to mind when reading this question include: How similar or different are the ICPs f......Read More

445 Views

How do you communicate sales updates and activities to the rest of the company?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

This is a great question, and how we have done this at Vanta has evolved over the years. Being thoughtful about how sales communicates updates to the rest of the company (and vice versa) is so critical. Today, we have a number of public slack channels where sales or GTM-related updates are reg......Read More

445 Views

When is a good time to start making big changes with sales processes? Our CEO believes we are too small 200+ employees to adopt a sales methodology. I have implemented best practices, rules of engagement, sales process, and all sales training. The only thing we lack is a methodology to bring the team together and unite us. We have made very large gains in ARR & ACV over 120%, but seem to have plateaued. I have approached my CEO many times always trying to improve culture, training, and support and find that it's the hardest part of my job to get him on board. I have proven myself with hard data and still can't seem to get through. The usual response I get is we just need to focus on getting X quarter sales in.

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

First off, congrats on the big gains in ARR & ACV, and also for putting some key processes in place. Like many of my other responses, let me say here that "It depends." We should find some time to chat about your situation. At Vanta, we had a repeatable sales playbook from the early days, but ......Read More

428 Views

How do you think about shared KPI’s with your demand generation? And what are ones that sales teams often miss?

Eric Martin

Vanta Head Of Sales • November 29

Great question. The way that we've thought about shared KPIs has evolved over the years, and continues to evolve, as I think is true of most companies. One of our mottos here at Vanta is to "never win alone" and that also applies to all things demand generation. While we can cut the data a ......Read More