Why Fast Growth is a Pipeline to Expose Weak Sales Organizations with Chad Peets and Chris Degnan

Summary

Podcast Summary – Revenue Builders

Episode: Why Fast Growth is a Pipeline to Expose Weak Sales Organizations

Guests: Chad Peetz (RPT Partners, ex-Sutter Hill Ventures) & Chris Degnan (ex-Snowflake CRO, author of "Make It Snow")

Hosts: John McMahon & John Kaplan

Date: July 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the realities, risks, and strategies behind building durable, world-class B2B sales organizations amid explosive AI-driven growth and shifting revenue models. Chad Peetz and Chris Degnan (now co-founders at RPT Partners) share lessons from scaling teams at iconic firms like Snowflake, why many fast-growing companies are misreading their own numbers, and how to avoid hiring mercenaries over patriots. The discussion is a playbook for executives, investors, and recruiters seeking to future-proof sales orgs in the new era.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The RPT Partners Origin Story

Timestamps: 02:29–09:54

• Intent: RPT Partners builds world-class sales orgs by combining Peetz’s deep recruiting expertise (7,500+ hires) with Degnan’s operational experience as Snowflake’s CRO through hypergrowth and IPO.
• Peetz highlighted the importance of complementing operational guidance with first-hand CRO experience:
  “I feel pretty good about my ability to add operational, go to market advice, but man, I've never sat in the seat [of CRO].” (04:10, Peetz)
• Degnan expressed gratitude to the McMahon network and recounted his journey from risk-averse “country club lifestyle” at EMC to the raw grind of Snowflake’s early days.
• Relationship-driven hiring as a growth lever—Degnan leveraged “borrowed credibility” from the McMahon and Peetz networks to attract early senior hires for Snowflake.

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2. Lessons from Scaling Snowflake & Hypergrowth Companies

Timestamps: 09:54–13:34

• The Reality of Start-ups:
  • Early sales execs wear multiple hats—Degnan was nicknamed the “shadow CTO” despite lacking technical chops, highlighting the scrappiness required:
    “You're not the CRO, you're half product manager and half sales leader, and you're going to scrounge for everything you get. And if you're not willing to scrounge...don't take the job.” (09:54, McMahon)
• Pace of Change:
  • Compared to even five years ago, AI companies face unprecedented pressure to accelerate.
    “The pace of innovation, pace of growth, and how quickly you could be hot to not—that's pretty apparent.” (12:26, Degnan)

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3. Hiring for Fast-Growth: Avoiding Overhiring & Mercenary Mindsets

Timestamps: 13:34–19:49

• Overhiring Trap:
  • Many founders obsess over scaling too quickly by importing execs from much larger orgs, who often can’t “do the job today.”
    “That guy’s gonna fail 99 times out of 100.” (14:46, Peetz)
• Revenue Confusion:
  • Companies often dress up volatile, uncommitted usage as “ARR”—a misleading practice.
    • “Some of these companies will just have monthly consumption with no commit...and they will call it ARR. That’s not ARR. It can go away overnight.” (19:22, Peetz)
• Advice to Recruits:
  • Assess stability, not just headline growth or compensation.
  • Scrutinize how much revenue is truly committed, margin health, and whether you’re joining a durable business model.

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4. Building Patriots, Not Mercenaries

Timestamps: 19:49–27:30

• Career Moves Should Build Skills, Not Just Pay:
  • “Think about the move after that. Is it going to get you to the next place you want to be?” (21:44, McMahon)
• Must-Have Experience:
  • For sales leaders, familiarity with proven methodologies like MEDDIC/MEDDPICC is table stakes.
    • “If you’re a sales leader… and you've never worked for a quality sales organization…you're not coming in the portfolio.” (22:29, Peetz)
• Patriot vs. Mercenary Test:
  • Probe core motivation (“Why do you get out of bed?”), pride in real achievements, and whether they wear overperformance “like a badge of honor.”
    • “Where do you sit amongst your peers currently in your sales organization? …If they don't know and they can't talk about their track record… it tells me something about them.” (26:09, Peetz)

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5. The AI Era: New Challenges in Sales Recruitment

Timestamps: 24:04–25:40

• Talent Pool Shifts:
  • Development and long-term thinking are harder to find. “10 years ago, development was really important to these people. They really cared. …Today, these reps just don’t care as much about that.” (24:20, Peetz)
• Entitlement and Short-termism:
  • The cultural (not just industry) shift toward entitlement and chasing quick money.

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6. Sales Model Evolution: Consumption, Value Realization, and Measurement

Timestamps: 27:30–31:53

• Principled Comp Plans:
  • Snowflake paid on committed bookings, not raw consumption, to incentivize durable value and avoid “order taking.”
    • “The sales team was not paid on uncommitted consumption. That’s not durable revenue. That’s not ARR in my opinion.” (29:03, Degnan)
• Metrics That Matter:
  • For reps: Face-to-face meetings, new logo counts, renewals targets. For org health: Ongoing accountability and measurement, even after scaling.

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7. What Makes Enduring Sales Organizations

Timestamps: 31:53–41:47

• Stay Above Basic Retention Plays:

  • An all-in focus on retention over new logo growth is “death.”
    • “Your lifeblood, your insurance policy, is new logos growing every quarter.” (30:52, McMahon)

• Look for Three Things Before You Join:

  1. Large, real market
  2. Clear, differentiated value proposition
  3. World-class sales culture and leadership

• Double-Edged Sword:

  • The most successful tech companies combine best-in-class technology with best-in-class sales.
    • “Historically, the greatest technology companies have had the greatest technologists paired with the greatest salesforce. Snowflake is a great example.” (41:47, Kaplan)

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8. Advice for Sellers in 2026: How to Pick the Right Opportunity

Timestamps: 35:10–38:51

• Evaluate the Market First:
  • Is the company in a big enough game to matter? Is their offering clearly differentiated?
• Sales Culture Is Non-Negotiable:
  • Chase environments where sales leadership commands respect and equips you to grow.
• Red Flags:
  • Companies that don’t value sales as a craft—“right now they’re just order takers”—won’t provide development or long-term upside.

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9. What’s Changing in the Seller’s Role

Timestamps: 43:48–47:22

• “Be a student of what you sell.” (43:48, Degnan)
  • Today’s buyer already knows the products—they want to buy from someone who can connect workflow-level detail to business outcomes.
• Technical Athlete:
  • Reps must be technical enough to “understand the job at the workflow level and connect it to a business outcome.” (45:10, Kaplan)
• Face-to-Face Still Wins:
  • Even top reps find “the biggest differentiator is face-to-face sales calls.” (46:00, McMahon)

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10. RPT Partners’ Go-to-Market: What Makes Them Unique

Timestamps: 47:41–53:59

• How Companies Engage:
  • Board or CEO referrals set the stage for deep, daily operational engagement—not surface-level board advisory.
• Recruiting Guarantee:
  • RPT personally fills every sales role:
    • “Our interview to hire ratio is 2 to 1…we get you better people faster than you can get through any other means.” (50:27, Peetz)
    • The result: less churn, more durable teams, time saved for leadership, and a bias for true talent.
• Reluctance to Scale Too Fast:
  • Maintaining quality: “If you overcommit one time and don’t deliver, your reputation turns to shit. It just takes once.” (53:13, Peetz)
• Unique Value:
  • “Most of these executive recruiters…do not want to fill the reps. And that’s the hardest part.” (51:48, Degnan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You’re not the CRO, you’re half product manager and half sales leader, and you’re going to scrounge for everything you get."
  — John McMahon (09:54)
• "The guy that's managed a $500 million business isn't going to want to do the job today."
  — Chad Peetz (14:46)
• "If you can’t help the customer build the cost justification…then you’re just another AI product they can switch from overnight."
  — John McMahon (22:52)
• "Why do you get out of bed every morning? Who are you? What motivates you?"
  — Chad Peetz (25:57)
• "This is not like, hey, we'll see [you] at every board meeting. Our CEOs, we talk to every single day…at 4 o’clock in the morning."
  — Chad Peetz (49:02)
• "Be a student of what you sell…The value of a great salesperson is going to be: I understand the technology, I go and tell that story every single day. I’m passionate about it and I’ll differentiate the company because I’m so good at that."
  — Chris Degnan (43:48)

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Takeaways & Action Items

• For Founders/CEOs:
  • Don’t get seduced by run-rate revenues, “hockey stick” charts, or brand-name hires. Validate durable revenue and invest in foundational team-building.
• For Sales Leaders & Reps:
  • Seek development, not just compensation. Scrutinize company leadership, market, and metrics before making a move.
• For Investors:
  • Tangible go-to-market expertise layered atop recruiting is a major moat in competitive, volatile markets.
• For All:
  • In AI and beyond, world-class sales orgs matter more than ever, and there’s no shortcut around cultural grit, constant learning, and team-building.

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For more information on RPT Partners, reach out via the website or industry connections—referrals from trusted investors carry weight.

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Summary by Revenue Builders Podcast Summarizer – July 2026

Transcript

[Chad Peetz]

Why do you get out of bed every morning like, who are you? What motivates you? Why?

[Chris Degnan]

Why?

[Chad Peetz]

And then I look at the resume. Why did you make this move? Why did you make this move? Why did you make this move? Yeah, I want to make money. No shit, we all want to make money. And then, and I'll talk a little bit about myself, you know, I said like, look, I wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning thinking about what I'm going to do the next day to be the best that I can be at my job. What do you wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning thinking about? Why do you want to do this? Does it matter to you that you're the best in the world? Where do you sit amongst your peers currently in your sales organization? And if they don't know and they can't talk about their track record of PG and exceeding quota and going to club and they don't wear it like a badge of honor, it tells me something about them.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid. Today they sit down with Chad Peetz and Chris Degnan of RPT Partners for a timely conversation on what it really takes to build world class sales organizations in today's market. Both are making their second appearance on Revenue Builders as they now have their joint venture RPT Partners underway. As many of you know, Chris Degnan was the first sales hire and 11 year CRO at Snowflake. He led that organization through the largest software IPO in history. He also just published his new book Make It Snow. Chad is the former Managing Director of Sutter Hill Ventures where he was instrumental in scaling Snowflake's revenue team helping them hire more than 500 people. He's helped hire more than 7,500 software sales executives in his 25 years of building elite go to market organizations. In this episode they talk about how they approach helping founders build durable, high performing go to market organizations. This conversation covers what has changed in the AI era, why some companies are confusing run rate revenue with true ARR, how to separate patriots from mercenaries in the hiring process, and why great sales talent still has to know the product, understand the customer's business and create measurable value. Here we Go.

[John McMahon]

So we have the number one recruiter in enterprise sales, Chad Pete's, and he's teaming with one of the top, if not the top former CRO in enterprise sales, Mr. Chris Degnan in RPT Partners. So guys, let's talk about why you're teaming and what special talent you bring to companies out there.

[Chad Peetz]

So I, you know, John, you know the history. I started Pete's and Associates and then went to Sutter Hill and then spun out and created rpt. And, and the intent of RPT is to build world class sales organizations with both the, a combination of the recruiting piece. So as you know, we place every salesperson and then myself providing the operational guidance, which honestly I, I learned all from you. So thank you.

[John McMahon]

You're welcome.

[Chad Peetz]

And, and you know, doing productivity plans, sitting on board seats and this, that and the other. And, and I know, I think, feel very strongly that we are the best in the world at recruiting the sales organizations. I know we are. I think that I add a fair amount of value from the operational stuff because I learned everything from you. However, I have never sat in the seat of being a CRO. I've never done that job. I, I've never been on sales calls, I've never actually led a team. So I feel pretty good about my ability to add operational, go to market advice, but man, I've never sat in the seat. And over the last two or three years I've probably called Chris, I don't know, seven or 800 times to ask for his advice. He's a patient guy and oh thank God, thank God. And by the way, if I've called him 800 times, I've called you five or six hundred times, let's be honest.

[John McMahon]

That's true.

[Chad Peetz]

And thank God both of you always took my call. So thank you both. But it just became so evident to me that there was just this massive gap in the value that I hope to be adding to these companies. And who better to fill that position than the only CRO in the world that's ever taken a business from 0 to 5 billion and also happens to be my closest friend in the world? And so how often do you get to work with the guy that's the best in the world, that's also your closest friend, that also at the same time solves the, solves the problem you're trying to solve? So I am so thrilled that I was somehow able to sell Chris on this. I'm still not sure how, but Chris to me was the absolute perfect guy to take RPT to where I hope we're going to take it to.

[John McMahon]

He is the perfect guy.

[Chad Peetz]

That's my two cents, Chris. Yeah.

[Chris Degnan]

So, John, first of all, thanks for having us both. I really appreciate it. And, and you know, I just have to say thank you, John, from the bottom of my heart for everything that you helped me do in my journey at Snowflake.

[John McMahon]

I.

[Chris Degnan]

There's. And I. And I would tell anyone who will listen that there is zero probability that I make it from the first guy in the door to, you know, almost $4 billion in revenue without. Without your support and guidance. So, first of all, you know, thank you, John.

[John McMahon]

I just want to welcome.

[Chris Degnan]

Also, just funny story is, you know, you. You created a bunch of legendary, great, great sales leaders that came out of your Blade Logic and BMC organization that went out and started a bunch of great companies. And one of those people was Chad. I mean, Chad really built a brand out of helping you build. Build the sales organization. And so one of my high school classmates that used to work for you, Adam Aarons, turned. Turned Chad on to me while I was, as Adam called it, I was living the country club lifestyle at emc. And he said, you should go take a risk and try something interesting. And I got the opportunity. Chad convinced me to work at this wonderful company. Not so wonderful, but I learned a lot at a place called Avexa. And then we get bought by my old employer, emc.

[John McMahon]

Right.

[Chris Degnan]

And so because I had had success under Andy Byron, who obviously learned a lot from you, a lot of your people from the McMahon network wanted to hire me. And they were certainly very interesting jobs like Appdynamics and others. And I found this company that was called Snowflake, that had no website, that had no customers. And I call my friend Chad up and I say, hey, Chad, I'd like to go. I think I'm gonna go to this startup. And he said, dude, that's career suicide. That's. And. And so, you know, the other interesting thing, John, that, you know, I think you know this, but when, when, when Mike Spicer was recruiting me to. To Snowflake, you know, he's like, hey, what. What other objections do you have? After negotiating the package, I said, you know, Mike, there's no one on the board that cared about sales. And I'm like, I. There has to be someone on the board. And fortunately, I had met you at Avexa and I said, so a guy like John would be amazing to have on the board. He goes, well, I know John, I'm actually on the board of another company. I'm having that board meeting tomorrow, and literally Spizer got that done in like a day and you accepted. And so obviously, great run, you know, amazing choice for us to get John McMahon on the board. And then I begged my friend Chad to help this crappy company that I was working for to help me build out the sales team. And so I think that was really the beginning of Chad and my relationship to really say, like, he was, quote, unquote, doing me a favor. And he did. I mean, like, recruiting at the early stages. Snowflake was super hard. And so then going out and then helping me, I borrowed your credibility, I borrowed Chad's credibility to hire some senior people along the way. And it was incredibly powerful for me to leverage both of your networks. And, and then, you know, as Snowflake had the success, you know, and, you know, this. John, like, the hardest part of being a CRO, in my opinion, is the travel. It's. It's getting on the planes like that. I don't, I don't think I can, like, overestimate how hard that is. It is like the, it is the hardest part of the job. And, and so as I started to, you know, figure out that I no longer wanted to be the CRO of a publicly traded company, you know, Chad and I started kicking around the idea of us doing something together. And, and then, you know, eight months in or about. About a year into me being unemployed, so being a, you know, on my own, the number one request I get from anyone that I, and I sit on multiple boards, I sit on eight different boards or board observer roles. The number one request I get is, I'd like to, can you help me build up the sales team? Or do you know a great recruiter?

[John McMahon]

But first, they probably tried to hire you again. Yeah, let's be honest.

[Chris Degnan]

They try to hire me, but I always tell them, like, you don't want me. I'm not, I'm not desperate enough.

[John McMahon]

So you don't.

[Chris Degnan]

You don't want me.

[John McMahon]

Right.

[Chris Degnan]

And so that's, and that's, and that's when I say, well, listen, there's only really one person that I trust in helping build, go to market. It's Chad. And so he and I have figured out a way to, you know, you know, partner together with RPT partners and super excited to do it with, you know, with Chad, my one. My closest friends in the world and, and the best in the business. So it's, It's. It'll be fun.

[John McMahon]

I remember a lot of that, and I remember the I think you guys going to do great, by the way. And I remember some of the early days at Snowflake. If everybody thinks it was a cakewalk. I mean, Chris was mostly product manager in the early days and part sales leader. He wasn't even really a CRO, because that's not really what you are. So these people, I think, you know, you just hop into a Snowflake in the early days and everything just runs great and it becomes a, you know, multibillion dollar company. I got news for you. That's not how it works. In fact, I don't know if you remember this, Chris. One time we were in the hallway and. And you said to me, you know, I think all we can do is tech and ad tech. And I said, well, you know, we better keep going down those bowling alleys, because if we don't knock down all the pins in those bowling alleys, we got to give these guys in development some time to build the product out. And they did. But there was a time where this. This might be it. This is all this work, and this is it. So congrats to you for sticking it out. And Chris was an amazing. For anybody that's listening and you want to go into a raw startup, be prepared that you're not the CRO, you're the. You're half product manager and half sales leader, and you're going to scrounge for everything you get. And if you're not willing to scrounge for everything you get and be resourceful, don't take the job.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, I mean, it's spot on. I think that the early engineers kind of had a kind of a nickname for me called the Shadow cto. And if you know me, you know that I'm not technical. Like, I couldn't sort of like the SQL database, I couldn't write SQL, but yet, like, what I would do is I would bring Benoit and Thierry, the founders, on sales calls, and I would. I would. It would be my job to make sure the customer was going to pay. Pay us. It'd be their job to make sure that they had a technology that would work. And that was the partnership. So I would say, like, I got a paying customer now. You got to make sure that this stuff works. And that's kind of how we built that, built the company.

[John McMahon]

Right.

[John Kaplan]

How do you guys translate that into skill sets for how you've come together? And some of the great companies I'm sure you're going to be assisting. How does that translate today into readiness for sellers out there? And Sales leaders. What's the same and what's changed, Chris, over the years?

[Chris Degnan]

One of the deals that Chad and I are working on together is a company called Factory. And like the thing with Factory that is maybe tough for anyone in the AI space now and Chad can validate this is the, the, the pace that, that these AI companies are expected to grow. Like if you think about when I started at Sofa, like we went from 3, our first half year, we did 3 million, we did 1555, 150, then like 300 and something million dollars. Like that's how we grew. And that was like no one had grown that fast ever, like ever. You know, the, the, the, the CEO and founder or co founder of Factory, he's like, if we grow that slow, we're dead. And it's kind of crazy to think about that. But yeah, I mean that's the thing that's like thrown me a little bit for a loop in the kind of modern day is like how the pace of innovation, the pace of growth and how quickly you could be hot to not. That's pretty apparent.

[John McMahon]

Well, this is where you and Chad can really help advise companies that you're involved with. But there's a whole bunch of companies that you're not involved with that are going through the same, you know, scaling problem. So how, what advice do you have for those companies to ensure that they're recruiting A players and scaling Right. And they're not just getting a bunch of B's and C's.

[Chris Degnan]

Well, I'll defer to the expert here.

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think first and foremost don't over hire. Right. So some of these companies look and they say, listen, we're going to be doing $300 million in a year. I need a guy that's managed a three or four or $500 million business. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, you don't need that. You need a guy. Where are you at today? You're at zero today and you have no foundation built. You don't have product market fit. You're not sure about the pain, you're not sure about any of this. You need a guy that can come in and do the job today. And by the way, if we get to a point where you're doing 300 million in a year and the guy doesn't scale up to that, what a wonderful problem to have. But the most common thing I see people want to do is over hire, get me some big name in here that's managing a big organization. And John, as you know, Chris knows John, Cap, and I'm. That Guy's gonna fail 99 times out of 100.

[John McMahon]

He's not gonna scrounge. He's not going to be resourceful.

[Chris Degnan]

Well, he's gonna say, I got it.

[Chad Peetz]

Let me go hire these five other guys to go do that. Beneath me.

[John Kaplan]

But what CROs on the planet today, besides the one experiencing it, are seeing this exponential growth. And I don't want to give it a negative term, but I don't know what else to call it on circular revenue. So we have partners, we have partners in AI. We're doing these partner deals and we're, we're, we're scaling revenue like astronomically. But the go to market function is not really building because we didn't really have it wasn't really like an enterprise sale yet. So is that making sense for some of these AI? I got it.

[Chris Degnan]

I got, I got a crazy example of that. So, yeah, like, so one of the guys who used to work for me, I was talking to him the other day, Mark Fleming, and he's still at Snowflake and he runs the largest business at Snowflake. And he was explaining to me, he said, I won't name the large language model, but there's a large language model company that the customer was spending over a million dollars a month with. This large language model provider, this large language model provider would not, would not assign a salesperson to them. They're like, we just want to talk to a sales team. But they don't have, they don't have. They're like, they're little, they're growing so fast. They just don't have the people. And even if they have the people, the people don't know what the hell they're talking about. And so then, like, you know, to Fleming's, you know, I don't know, luck or expertise, he brought in the Snowflake sales team and they were able to, you know, because they have partnerships with these large language model providers, provide guidance on how to use it and use it effectively. So they're like, effectively reselling some, some stuff that, that the, the manufacturer can't support this today. And that, like, that's not uncommon. It's crazy, right? Like, and, oh, by the way, like, if you go and talk to CIOs,

[Chad Peetz]

go do a poll of a bunch

[Chris Degnan]

of CIOs out there, find out how many of them are really happy with their large language model provider sales team because they, they're just so new. They just don't know anything right about

[John Kaplan]

like there's this pull from the marketplace, the massive pull like we've never seen before, I think. And when we talk to some of the leaders in that they're just beginning, so they have these massive revenue growth and they're just beginning to, to do the big hire for, you know, for the build out of the go to market on the enterprise. Do you guys like, what advice do you have? Like I'm a talent out there, let's say, and I'm getting recruited by one of these companies and I see these massive revenues, like what should I be thinking about? And what should I be kind of asking where, you know, where I'm going to where It's a great fit. The numbers don't tell the whole story, I don't think.

[Chad Peetz]

Well, I think that's it, man. Like you got to look at the type of revenue, right? Because very little of it is booked or committed. So you can get these massive spikes in customers trying that shit can go away. The second one of your competitors has a better product, right? So you have these companies that we're going from zero to 300. Okay, how much of that is booked? How much of that is committed? None of it. Okay, well that's all super exciting, but don't assume you're going to then go from 300 to 600. And there's AI companies out there, and I won't mention them that had a growth like this monthly and then they tried to get it to be committed and nobody would commit to using it. And then all of a sudden their competitor comes out with something better and they plateau or they decline. So first of all, you got to understand exactly what type of revenue you're talking about. Secondly, you do want to look at the margin of the business. These, these negative margin companies, negative gross margin companies. That is not a sustainable business. So if I'm a CRO and I'm looking at those spikes, man, I want to dig in. I want to understand like how healthy are the unit economics of this business business? Is it sustainable? Is it sticky? Because some of this shit is just a head fake.

[John McMahon]

And talk about, Chad, how some of them are pumping it up based upon what they call a run rate.

[Chad Peetz]

You have these companies that will call shit ARR. That just isn't ARR. ARR is annual recurring revenue. Recurring means we know it's going to be repeated. And the reason we know it's going to be repeated is because it's contracted and committed. Some of these companies will just have monthly consumption with Again, no commit. And they will call it arrangement. That's not.

[John McMahon]

Multiply the month monthly revenues times 12 and say that's our run rate.

[Chad Peetz]

By the way, I don't have that. If you want to call it run rate.

[Chris Degnan]

Okay.

[Chad Peetz]

I think it's misleading. Worse, they will call it ARR. They'll say this is our ARR. It's like, that's not ARR. You're implying that it's booked and committed when in fact and it can go away overnight.

[Chris Degnan]

Right? So, so John Kaplan, you asked the question though, like, what advice do you have to these, these sales reps? Because it's, it's super tempting. And you know, Chad has the, the data on how much, you know, some of these, these organizations are paying individual contributors.

[John Kaplan]

I think there's like, outrageous.

[Chris Degnan]

It's outrageous.

[John McMahon]

We'll get to that. Let's, we'll get to that.

[Chris Degnan]

But, but, but, like, but like the thing that I, the advice I, I'd have for anyone who's an individual contributor is like, evaluate where you are in your career. Like, and, and, and evaluate what you want to be when you grow up. Like, are you, are you early on your career? Like, think about like, you know, John McMahon. Like, there are so many VPs of sales that have been in the, you know, you know, you know, orbit of John McMahon. They've, they've learned, they've educated themselves and they've grown up and they've made their career after learning sales from a guy like John McMahon. And like now, like the med pick sales, you know, organizations are the most highly recruited VPs of sales out there. And I think that's what you have to ask yourself is what do you want to do when you grow up? I wanted to be a VP of sales. That was like, when I started and figured, I knew I wanted to be in technology sales, I wanted to be a VP of sales. And so like, I came and I worked for or in an organization for another guy that worked for McMahon and John Hanlon. And I remember in my interview with Hanlon, Hanlon said to me, hey, listen, come build a career at EMC in the interview. And he was so right. I learned sales there, I learned leadership there. And then I had an opportunity to get in the McMahon orbit at Avexa. So those are the things that, like, that made me, you know, a better leader, better at being a VP of sales, and then the CRO of Snowflake. I think that's important for you to evaluate when you're early on in your careers. What do you want to be because certainly making a million dollars or million four, whatever the hell it is that they're paying you, that, that's enticing. But like, don't be very shortsighted because this gravy train will end at some point.

[John McMahon]

Yeah, Very good advice. I usually tell people too, for the move you're making now, think about the move after that. Is it going to get you to the, the next move? Don't make a move now unless it's, unless you really believe it's going to get you to the next place that you want to be. And to Chris's point, it's more about education and learning and developing knowledge and skills so that then you could take it anywhere. There's a point where you can say, I could take this anywhere I want.

[John Kaplan]

Are we really though, seeing in this the kinds of companies that you guys are working with? Will I even make the profile if I haven't learned med pick value creation? If I don't have, if I don't have a high, if I don't have a high acumen.

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, as, as a sales leader. No.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Chad Peetz]

As a rep. If you're up and coming, you don't have to know that because we can teach it to you as long as you've got the, the raw characteristics we're looking for, for sure. But if you're a sales leader and you're 10 years into your sales leadership career and you've never worked for a quality sales organization and, and we define what quality is, if you've never worked in one, you're not coming in the portfolio.

[John McMahon]

Yeah. And it makes sense, Chad, it goes back to what you were saying before and Chris was saying, especially in consumption, if you can't get the customer to realize value because you can help them build the cost justification where they can see true value in your product, then you just another AI product that they can't see value. They, they can switch overnight, company can disappear. And there's a lot of those out there where they just threw an LLM wrapper around a bunch of data and a little bit of process and they called it a new product.

[Chris Degnan]

Rating purchase orders is great. Like, I don't want it. Like, you know, like there was a point where Snowflake was like, this flywheel is happening, but it took a lot of work to get there. And so I think it's, it's one thing to build it from, from nothing. It's another thing to just as Slootman always used to call passengers and drivers to be a passenger like, look, I mean, you're not going to be developed in a passenger, like, you know, setting. So I think you're looking for those people, like to. Chad's point is, like, we want to hire those people that will develop their people. That's a key characteristic of a great leader.

[John McMahon]

What's really different now before the pre. Before the pre. Let's call it AI Boom. What's different now in recruiting account executives?

[Chad Peetz]

Oh, it's. It's. It's so much harder to find, John. The types of individuals that we built our sales organizations around, whether it was App Dynamics or Mongo or Blade Logic or any of the great ones that, That I was lucky enough to. To.

[John McMahon]

To.

[Chad Peetz]

Or Snowflake, obviously, to. To be a part of with you. You know, 10 years ago, development was really important to these people. They really cared. And unfortunately, what you're seeing today, I think part of it's more broad. It's cultural. I think. I think as a country, quite frankly, not to get political, but I think as a country, we've gotten soft and entitled and. And I think with the amount of money being thrown at these people, it's very difficult to find people that buy into that. They're just like, yeah, I hear you. That I don't. I don't want to do PG Tuesdays. Yeah, that great that. That sales leader developed me. But, you know, this LLM company is offering me three times as much money. It is exponentially more difficult to find those individuals today than it was five to ten years ago.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah.

[John McMahon]

Proven experience. Time in the seat. Were they underneath just a hot product or did they really learn?

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, but just the desire, like Chris said, the desire is not there.

[John McMahon]

Okay. You're picking. Touching something else.

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, the desire. The. The. I care that I'm willing to go do whatever I got to do. I want to be the best salesperson. It's back to what Chris was saying. I want to be the best salesperson in the world, which means I have to go to an organization that's going to allow me to become that. And five to 10 years ago, we sold that and we delivered on that promise. Today, these reps just don't care as much about that.

[John McMahon]

Okay, so if I'm in one of your companies or not in one of your companies and they're paying big, you know, packages along with large equity packages, how do I make sure that I'm recruiting, you know, patriots that are going to stick around and really learn versus a bunch of mercenaries? What are you looking for in the interview?

[Chad Peetz]

I Mean, I love this shit, right? So like if I'm interviewing somebody it's like, and John, you taught me all this, you know, Chris and I, Chris taught me some of this too. Like, why do you get out of bed every morning? Like, who are you? What motivates you?

[Chris Degnan]

Why? Why?

[Chad Peetz]

And then I look at the resume. Why did you make this move? Why did you make this move? Why did you make this move? Yeah, I want to make money. No, we all want to make money. And then, and I'll talk a little bit about myself, you know, I said like, look, I wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning thinking about what I'm going to do the next day to be the best that I can be at my job. What do you wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning thinking about? Why do you want to do this? Does it matter to you that you're the best in the world? Where do you sit amongst your peers currently in your sales organization? And if they don't know and they can't talk about their track record of PG and exceeding quota and going to club and they don't wear it like a badge of honor, it tells me something about them.

[John Kaplan]

What do you guys think about the skill sets involved with. I mean we kind of blew past the conversation on consumption. You know, the customer's trying to figure out how to go outcome based, which Johnny alluded to is all about value realization. And that motion is, I think it's still pretty new no matter who you are. Chris, you have great experience in consumption. You were one of the first guys to lead through that. But there's still companies trying to, trying to progress to consumption. What do you guys think about that? That motion and the value realization? It's a, it's probably considerably different than where they're coming from.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, I mean it depends on where you are in your, your life cycle of your company. Like if you think about where Snowflake was early on, what are the key metrics that mattered to us to build, build the company. So number one, it was, you know, go on eight face to face meetings a week and two to three net new business meetings a week. That was like the metric that we said that's what you have to do to be successful. Because as John can attest, I did that. Like at Snowflake I would send emails to the board and the entire company. This is what I did last week and this is what I'm going to do this week. Like that's like that was because I had no manager I had no CEO. Like that was like the level of accountability that I had to drive, you know, for myself. So I think number one is like you're saying, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to drive that behavior across my organization and measure that. You have to hold them accountable. That's something that I didn't do as great at when we were huge. I got super lazy and I didn't, I didn't continue to measure that. So it's important that you're, you're never forgetting that you have to measure you, you know, inspect what you expect type thing. And then from a, from a, we drove booking. So I, I didn't pay the sales team on uncommitted consumption. So if a customer came in so we had self service, customer could put in their credit card. They could, and they could start using the product. The sales team was not paid on uncommitted consumption. There was because like there's not like that's not durable revenue. That's not ARR. In my, my opinion, that's not a, there's no moat in there because the customer could switch off and go to Amazon Redshift or databricks or whomever.

[John Kaplan]

Right.

[Chris Degnan]

And so there wasn't like there was no reason to do that. So what I said is to the sales team, number one is you have to open up in a given year, eight new customers. You know, so basically two new customer logos, a quarter. I didn't care the size of the customer but, but what I said is like go, go land a use case. I didn't, I didn't come into a customer and say we need to be your enterprise data platform. I said, he, look, let's find this little use case and let's build on that use case. And so that was kind of how we, how we built the transactional motion at Snowflake. And then I gave the sales team a renewals quota because our renewals, as John can attest, is like our renewals early on we would have like these like ad tech companies that were spending a million dollars a year with us and there was no way that I was going to give some customer success org the renewal like so, so I gave the sales team a renewals quota as well. And so that, that morphed as we grew that, that renewals quota went away and that morphed into a consumption quota. But the reps still had an ACV bookings quota, a consumption quota and they, they had a certain number of new logos they had to get or they couldn't get to their accelerators. They had to get to 80% of their, what I called the renewals quota in order for them to get to their accelerators because that drove the right behavior.

[John Kaplan]

You basically had a mentality, the sales mentality was hunt the new logo, establish the value realization of the logo for renewals. I think that's why you were so successful. Guys, I can't tell you how many conversations I'm having with SaaS companies right now that are just swinging fences and they're trying to hang on. But the SaaS apocalypse where they're actually telling their teams, don't worry about new logos right now.

[Chris Degnan]

That's death.

[John McMahon]

That's dead as a CRO. Your lifeblood, your insurance policy is new logos growing every quarter.

[John Kaplan]

No doubt. You know why they're doing it for the future.

[John McMahon]

When that starts to roll off, you don't, you don't have a very long future. That is coming in the air and it's on its way for sure coming.

[John Kaplan]

But they're trying to look at this retention number and they're focusing all their. And by the way, they didn't set it up like you did, Chris. So they don't have this motion of everybody thinking about what is value realization. So they don't have that built in kind of anti churn mentality. How does that figure into the types of reps like let's say I'm a sass, a pretty good sa. I have been a pretty good SaaS seller in the past. Customers are totally revalued us and like, what should I be thinking about as I look at trying to get on your train to figure out the companies that you're going to support. What advice would you give me? Because there's a hell of a lot of them out there.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, I mean like, because I'm certainly advising some companies that are traditional SaaS that are. So I think the first thing you have to ask yourself is do you believe they all have to transition to some level of consumption revenue? Because they all have to transition to AI revenue and most of the AI revenue there is some sort of consumption component to it because you're using underlying, you're using a large language model or API calls. Those API calls, they charge you per call. And so if you don't have a consumption model but your underlying cost of goods is consumption, that can screw you over. There's actually like companies like you know, I don't, you know, like, you know, there's companies like Sumo Logic that, that, that did that, that, that didn't have the, the relationship between scaling their, their, their licensing model to the underlying cost of goods and that, that, that, that hurt them initially. So I think there are things that you have to think through around pricing it. And then if the, if you're, if you're a rep at one of these companies, you have to like, ask the, ask the CEO, ask the founders, what is our plan? And do you believe in that plan? Like, those are things that are really important. And if you don't, then, man, it's time to find another, another company to go join.

[John McMahon]

On the flip side, I think the managers that are, that are recruiting have to smoke out the mercenaries, right? Because if you don't smoke the mercenaries out and you've hired, you know, 50 out of them, 50 of them out of a hundred reps and the first sign of bad news and they churn, you got real big problems.

[John Kaplan]

Well, the first time a bunch of companies out there, you think about the equity packages. This, you know, back in the day, that's where that story evolved is what's the quickest way for patriots to turn into mercenaries is when the equity becomes the reason. You're attracted to something, blinded by something, and then you get a massive recalibration in the marketplace, which is probably going to happen. And then you fi. You figure out who your patriots and mercenaries are.

[Chris Degnan]

Well, that also, by the way, becomes problematic if it continues to go up because, and we have that issue in, in particular in other continents because like, what happens is if all of a sudden you give someone stock and the, the stock price triples or, or more, you have people that don't want to leave but don't want to work because they're on paper, they're worth a lot of money and they then. And then getting rid of them. God, that. Especially in, in other countries outside the U.S. it's, it's hard there. It can be hard in the US it can be impossible in, in other countries. So.

[John Kaplan]

Oh, real.

[John McMahon]

Kaplan used to manage Germany, so he knows what you're talking.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah, yeah. You know, so real. So. So guys, what does the. Get me excited. I'm a young seller. Listen to this. Like, what does the world look like for me? What's going to be exciting that's going to give me energy about the opportunities out there. And what do I got to get, you know, what do I got to get my P's and Q's in order to, you know, to start studying the game? Because it's going to be a different game. What's your Best advice?

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, I mean, I, I think in terms of evaluating a company to go to, you always start with the market. If it's a small market, what's the point? So take a look at the overall market that the company sits within. Make sure you believe it's, it's a real market. And then once you can determine that, then you look at where the company sits within that market. Do they have a differentiated story? Because if it's a real market, that means it's a competitive market and you want to have competitors because it validates the market. But then if it's a competitive market, you better make sure that they have clear differentiation amongst all their competitors within that market. And then you go a layer down beneath that and you look at the sales leadership. Okay, is this sales leadership that I believe in? Is this world class sales? Because I will say that there are a lot of two, there are a lot of companies out there now that I do think check the first two boxes and absolutely whiff on the third box. Yeah, most of these companies out there, and I won't name names, but you can figure it out, kind of don't care. I shouldn't say they don't care. They don't care as much as we think they should about the quality of their sales organizations. And quite frankly, right now they're just order takers. I mean, some of these companies, their salespeople aren't selling. They're picking up the phone and just writing orders. At some point that comes to an end. But if I'm a sales guy and I truly care about all this stuff, it matters to me about the quality of sales organization. One, two. I want to go work for a company that truly validates the function in which I am there to perform. Do you really want to go to a company that doesn't give about shit about sales? If you're a salesperson, point. And, and so I think you have to look at all these things and there are some of them out there. Right. And, and these opportunities are bigger than anything we've ever seen because the markets in which they're playing are bigger markets that in my opinion have ever existed before. But you got to pick the right one.

[Chris Degnan]

So, so I, I, I, I'll piggyback. And I don't think it's really any different though, in the way that probably people evaluated Snowflake is. When, when, when I joined Snowflake, the kind of the pitch was that, you know, the enterprise data warehousing market was a 10 to 12 billion dollars market annually there was 5,000 customers by spending that money and then we have a, we have a, a better moat. Do you believe that, you know, you know, things are moving to the cloud? Yes, if you believe that. Great. Look at the investor, Mike Spicer. He's built, at the time Pure Storage was a super hot company. He built Pure Storage. We're borrowing, you know, Mike's credibility and then more, you know, for the sales organization. It was like, yeah, do you know who's on our board? John McMahon. And so I think like, do you think the company cares about sales if they're, if they have a guy like John McMahon on the board? And I think that's really important. So like, that's kind of like the way that, you know, Chad and I go into these things is like when we go into these companies and, and you know, either one of us can be strong personality, one might be stronger than the other.

[John McMahon]

But, but, but depends upon, it depends upon the topic.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, but like, you know, look, there's going to be a tax that the, the company's going to pay because they're going to have, they're going to have people that are going to give them advice that they, they have to take. And oh, by the way, it's for the better of the company. And if they do that, if the founder of the CEO cares enough, they bring us on and they put, put one of us on their, on the board. And when they do that, then, then all of a sudden it's like, okay, yeah, this company cares about it. And again, going back to a company like Factory, like Chad and I are involved in a really early stage security company called a security. I'm on the board there and, and Chad's building up, you know, helping us build the sales team. So it, like those are the things that matter. And, and so I think you have to look and evaluate that. Is it a fast growing market? Who are the investors? Do they care about sales? Are they putting someone like us on the board?

[John McMahon]

That's always been a litmus test for me too when I've gone into some companies and when I didn't do it, it was, it didn't work out. And because there's a lot of CEOs that are founders, mostly founders. They were really smart in high school, really smart in college. They graduated, they worked two years in a big company and everybody said, you know, what are you doing here? You, you don't belong here. They started their own company, BCS threw a bunch of money at them. All they've been told Their whole life is they're really smart and they're smarter than everybody else. So then they start their own company, they get a whole bunch of money, and now they think they know sales number one, number they could, because they think they could figure out. But number two, and most important, they think that everyone's going to buy their baby. And you can tell them like, everybody might buy your baby someday, but there's a path to everybody buying your baby. You have to be smart about who you sell to first, second, third, so you don't just waste a lot and burn a lot of money along the way. And when CEOs or founders don't like salespeople and believe developers should make more money than salespeople, you have a problem if you're working in that salesforce. And I've been, I've seen it firsthand.

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, I mean, John, I probably say if I talk to 10 CEOs, nine of them aren't a fit. Literally. And, and as Chris knows, like, I'll go in before I have the first conversation. First of all, I always will tell them to go watch a couple of other podcasts that we've done because it gives a very clear ideas to what you're getting. And, and my personally, I can be a little polarizing. I know that surprises you. I can be a little polarizing. So I want.

[John McMahon]

That doesn't surprise me.

[Chad Peetz]

So, and it's like, look, this is what you're getting. And there's a tax here. There is a tax and there is pain and there is cost and there is an expense and there's a big

[John McMahon]

benefit at the end.

[Chad Peetz]

And, and, but the benefit is you're going to have world class sales. And it will matter now if you don't subscribe to that theory, if you don't think you need world class sales, if you don't think sales as a differentiator matters to you, hey, no problem. Nice chatting with you. Goodbye. Most of them will never cop to that. They will all say, no, no, no, no, no, no, of course I want world class sales. And then you start going down. Okay, here's what that means. By the way, I took a look at your CRO. If we're going to engage, you're firing your CRO. But you've never met him. I don't fucking have to. And that's where usually the rubber meets the road. Well, I'm not prepared to do that. Okay, well then you're not prepared to do what it takes to have world class sales, because it's Promise you the guy sitting in the seat today will never build you a world class salesman.

[John McMahon]

He's a b, he's going to recruit seats. Yeah.

[Chad Peetz]

And so it's a pretty good qualifier on the first call.

[John McMahon]

And you know, early on in my career I worked for a guy named Steve Walsky at ptc and I remember him saying we're building the best product and we're going to have the best salesforce we have. We're going to have a double edged, double barrel shotgun is what he called it. And I don't know why any CEO would not want to have the best product teamed with the best salesforce.

[John Kaplan]

Well, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost biblical when you think about it. Historically, the greatest technology companies have had the greatest technologists paired with the greatest salesforce. Snowflake is a great example. MongoDB is a great example. You know, the ones that struggle are the ones that, you know, let's say you got the best go to market people on the planet and you don't just can't put the product out there that's going to struggle in today's environment. And AI for sure. Johnny, you and I are seeing this in the market of AI. There's so many AI companies out there and you can tell immediately the ones that don't have that, that, that double punch, they either have great AI, you know, MIT AI people and they've got no go to market expertise or not even an inkling. And you know, it's rare where you have both sides of the brain like that. So if you're looking at a company, I'd want to see the technology side. And this is what you're saying, Chris. I'd want to see the technology side coupled with a great go to market mindset and framework. Otherwise you ain't going to make it. You talked about ptc, Chris, you're talking about Snowflake. You know Chad, I know the, all the number of companies that had both of those together and today it's just not going to happen with one or the other. You got to have both. Absolutely. Got to.

[Chad Peetz]

John, have you and I ever worked on companies that had great sales teams and shitty products? We haven't. Right? We've never, we've never done any of those.

[John McMahon]

Yeah we have.

[Chad Peetz]

We.

[John McMahon]

So we're successful with the great sales team and the shitty product.

[Chad Peetz]

We've done a couple of those together.

[John McMahon]

You just asked me like what do I do? And I say I sell software and it doesn't work.

[John Kaplan]

How about the how about the future of the role, Chris? What do you say to the seller? What is the role going to look like in the future? Any changes for you?

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, you know, look, I think it's even more important than it ever has been to be a student of what you sell. So I do think that like if you don't know what the hell you're talking about and you're going out in front of these customers, like, like why are they going to meet with you? Because they're going to do all their research on their own. They're going to talk to their friends and like they'll, they'll buy, you know, in spite of you. And I think like where, where you can differentiate as a seller is, you know, do the hard things of like, like I said, like, be consistent of going on those sales calls every week, going on those eight face to face meetings every week, but also be consistent of being a student of what you sell. And I think that's one of the things I learned at EMC was man, if I didn't know the technology and I was selling here out in California in a tech savvy environment against a competitor who was headquartered right down the street. And so I had to be on my game. And so I think that's even more important now is you have to be on your game because how are people going to make sense of who's got better AI Now? It's really hard because there's so much information out there. So to me it's about, you know, the value of a great salesperson is going to be, I understand the technology, I go and tell that story every single day. I'm passionate about it and I'll differentiate the company because I'm so good at that. And I think that's really, really where I see great salespeople excelling in this type of environment.

[John Kaplan]

I think it's such a great point. Johnny and I are last few podcasts we've had. This topic of technical athletes has come up and the new definition for a technical athlete is somebody that can understand the job at the workflow level and connect it to a business outcome. Like that's not a luxury anymore. The sellers today and of the future are the ones that can understand the work at the workflow level and connect it to the business outcome level. Not just themselves understand it, but get everybody in between who they call on, get them emotionally connected to that connection because you're still calling on people that are experts at the workflow level and they're not thinking about the business outcome level. And nobody's buying this technology right now without a great understanding of how it's doing.

[John McMahon]

Both most definitely reps that we had on the podcast that were, you know, their top notch reps. One, they learn their craft under people like, like us, number one. And guess what? They said one of the biggest differentiators were a salesperson. They make face to face sales calls. Yeah, what a concept. But they said, that's how I whip the competition. I'm making face to face sales calls and the competition is calling over the phone or zoom, I'm kicking.

[Chad Peetz]

Well, you'll be surprised.

[Chris Degnan]

Like John, that's the thing. Is it crazy is like when you, when you get into an organization that's built and they're like, you know, what's the, what's the territory? Like, what's your territories? Oh, I have a rep in like California calling in like New York. I'm like, right, well how often is that rep gonna be getting on a plane to go out see that customer?

[John McMahon]

Never.

[Chris Degnan]

Maybe once a quarter, maybe. Right. And, and so, and that, that becomes

[John McMahon]

not have flat, no flyover states.

[Chris Degnan]

That's right. 100%.

[Chad Peetz]

By the way, Chris, Chris won't say this, but it's interesting. He talks about knowing the product. If you asked Frank or Sridhar, both of them will tell you the single greatest seller of Snowflake was Chris Degnan. Thousands of people in the sales organization, nobody could sell Snowflake like Chris. They both told me that separately. And I think there's a lot to be said for that, especially in this market today. Or you guys are talking about, you have to know your shit.

[John McMahon]

Yeah, you definitely do.

[John Kaplan]

So important. Have we, have we done. I don't feel like we've done enough of a kickoff for you guys on, on, you know, what you guys are launching. Like how do people get a hold of you? Or is this like they don't get a hold of you, you get a hold of them? Like what's, what's the go to market strategy for you guys?

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, I think, I think, look, we have a website. Our RPT partners, you can send any, there's an email on there. I think it's like infoptpartners.com I think the best introductions for us are typically from the venture capitalists to the founders. So the investors to the founders. The founder, CEO has to want us to. Because, you know, and I think we learned this from John McMahon. If we're, we're not cheap, but we're, it's, it's like how much do you value what we're going to bring to the table and how much do you value sales? And I think that's the thing that we, we recognize is the people that are willing to invest. You know, that's how we think about, you know, partnering with different companies and like, and we have to evaluate you. And so we know this ecosystem of venture people that are really incredible venture people that we like to follow as well. So I think there's a combination of those things. But look, you know, I'd love to have conversations, I'll have a conversation with anybody, go on sales calls, John. So you know, I'll go on, I'll go on as many sales calls as I need. But we're super.

[John Kaplan]

How do you guys engage? Like have you thought about, I mean, I know you guys have been doing this forever, but in your own, in your own ways. But like if I'm listening to this and figure out if you're, if you know we're right for you or what have you, like, how do you engage? What's it look like?

[Chad Peetz]

Typically somebody, to Chris's point, it's either the CEO or a board member. And it's typically if it's a board member making an introduction to the CEO or having a quick conversation with us first and then we have that conversation and walk them through the value and. Exactly. And we get into the weeds. Right. And that's the other thing about how we operate. We are in the weeds. This is not like, hey, we'll see every board meeting. You know, our CEOs we talk to every single day. Some of them four and five times a day, some of them at 4 o' clock in the morning. Our CROs, we talk to every day. Like we are operators that are in the business and you have to want that and see the value. And to Chris's point, we tell them what we charge. It's equity, it's time based and it's pretty straightforward. Like, look, if you don't see in the first 30 days that we're going to change the outcome of your company, you can fire us, you can fire us six months in, 12 months in, to be clear, never been fired, not once in 30 years. Because I think we add the value that people expect us to add, but they have the option of backing out at any point in time.

[John Kaplan]

You're going to partner with us, let's say I'm a perspective, a prospect. You're going to partner with us, we're going to get go to market expertise, you're Going to, you know, impact at the board level, you're going to impact at the go to market level. And Chad and well, Chris too, I mean, obviously, great, you know, recruiting at Snowflake, you're going to impact that. Actually putting men and women in jobs for us. Does anybody else do that in the marketplace?

[Chad Peetz]

Yeah, we will fill every single sales position. It is a machine. And so, like, once we're up and running, our interview to hire ratio is 2 to 1. That's the other value here that, you know, Chris and I had together is we'll get you better people faster than you can get through any other means. I'll guarantee it. But most importantly, or at least equally as important, we give time back. Right. So your sales leaders, if they're interviewing 10 candidates to fill a position, think of the wasted time there. And so we go in there and say, now it's two to one. So we just freed up five hours a week for every sales manager you have. Think about that at scale and how much more time they have back to go do their primary function, which is to drive revenue.

[John McMahon]

The guys aren't going to churn because they're a good fit. That's a big issue. Churn is the number one killer to bookings.

[John Kaplan]

Number one what a home run combination between the two of you guys.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, I think working with like, I think the thing that. And again, I learned this, like at Snowflake is, you know, John McMahon was not just helpful to me. Right. John McMahon was also helpful to Bob Muglia. Right. When we were building the sales team because Bob didn't know anything about sales. And so, you know, John would tell me is, hey, Chris, if we don't fix this marketing thing, you're going to get fired. Right. I mean, I remember that conversation. Yeah, I remember that conversation well.

[John McMahon]

After every board meeting they would ask me, should we keep Chris?

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah, yeah. And again, like, wouldn't have stayed in the job if John said no, then I'd been dead in the water. And so. But you know, I think that's the thing of these founders is like getting people like chat either chat. Chad and I together, one of us sits on the board and us building the sales team. Most of these executive recruiters, all they want is the C level exec. That's it. They do not want to fill the reps. And that's the hardest part. The rep. Right. And so like having this engine of like, okay, we know how to run a business at scale and hyperscale and we'll do that with you. We'll be, we'll sit there with you that that's what this value is and that's what we're doing.

[John Kaplan]

So you guys are already on a dozen boards. Are you going to start bringing on Chad and Chris? Are you going to start bringing on other, you know, executive operators like you guys? I mean Chad, I know that you're a rare bird because you, you got the human capital side and you also have the operational side. Chris, you have both as well too. Are you guys going to start to scale this thing? So people that are listening that are like, is there an opportunity there?

[Chad Peetz]

Slowly. I mean, I mean look, as John knows over going over higher, I was always very cautious about building a big company because I just don't know that you can ever maintain quality at scale. So I think the answer is yeah, that we were doing all this. We're going to expand the business but slowly.

[John Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Chad Peetz]

The demand is there. Like to be clear, we're not short on demand. But you never want once. If you over commit one time and don't deliver, your reputation turns to. It just takes once.

[Chris Degnan]

Yeah. And people don't. I mean that's the thing is like when like I don't think I could have done this if I had been like just the head of North America at Snowflake. It's like people want the experience that I have of going from zero to you know, $4 billion. They want someone who, and you know, someone like Chad to help build the organization. And it's like if I say oh yeah, talk to this person over here, this person right here better be pretty darn good if I'm, if you know, the customer's paying us. So like I think we have to evaluate, we'll evaluate that over time. But right now I'm just super excited to do this and help build world class companies along the way with my

[John Kaplan]

friend Chad after that great Snowflake exit dude, I have no, you must, this must be a great opportunity to get you all hyped up to go after this. I'm excited for you guys. You're gonna crush it.

[Chris Degnan]

Thanks.

[John McMahon]

Yeah.

[John Kaplan]

Johnny Mac. Is this where Jack Mack is?

[John McMahon]

Jack Mack is part of his team. Yes.

[Chad Peetz]

He's killing it. He's doing a great job.

[John Kaplan]

Well that's just another example. Like you got talent all the way down into the face to face conversations that are happening with the men and women out there that are looking for opportunities. That's. And I mean that sincerely. I got a lot of respect for Jack Mac. Well done.

[John McMahon]

Well I have a lot of respect for Chad Peets and Chris Degnan and wish you guys nothing but success. And you know I'm here for you if you ever have a question or need any advice. So thanks to Chad Peets, thanks to Chris Degnan, Mr. Kaplan, and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.

[Chad Peetz]

Thanks fellas. Much appreciated.

[Chris Degnan]

Thank you. Thank you both. Pleasure to be on.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.