Guest:

Danielle Peretore - Director, Sales Strategy & Analytics @Glassdoor

(Formerly @NerdWallet, @LinkedIn, @BCG, @HBS)

Guest Background:

Danielle Peretore is the Director of Sales Strategy & Analytics at Glassdoor. Prior to Glassdoor, Danielle worked in management consulting and business operations in the tech industry. She graduated from Brown and Harvard Business School and has a soft spot for the East Coast. She spends most of her free time doting on her two rescue dogs.

Guest Links:

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we cover:

- Biz Ops Team Structure & Hiring - Best Practices

- International Markets Selection Framework

- Data-Driven Executive Decision Making - Executive Profiles, Challenges, Solutions

- Translating Executive Strategy & Data to the Field - Sales & Customer Success

- Building Commercial Structures for Scale

- Company Superpowers - @Glassdoor, @NerdWallet, @LinkedIn

Full Interview Transcript:

[Naber] Hello friends around the world. My name is Naber Naber, welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented, and highly skilled sales and marketing minds on the planet from the world's fastest-growing companies. Enjoy.

Hey everybody, today we have Danielle Peretore on the show. Danielle's the Director of Sales Strategy and Analytics at Glassdoor. Glassdoor was acquired back in 2018 for $1.2 billion. worked in management consulting and business operations in the tech industry. She worked for NerdWallet, who has a $500 million valuation, and $105 million capital raised. And she also worked at LinkedIn, who was acquired by Microsoft back in 2016 for $26.2 billion. Before that, they went public in 2011. Danielle graduated from Brown and Harvard Business School, and she has a soft spot for the East Coast. She spends most of her free time doting on her two rescue dogs. Here we go.

[Naber] Danielle, awesome to have you on the show. How are you this morning?

[Danielle Peretore] I am great, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[Naber] Thank you.

[Danielle Peretore] Although it's actually evening my time.

[Naber] (laughs) Well happy evening, and good evening. So what I think we'll do is first talk through a little bit of your personal story, get into you as a kid, some of the decisions you made, interests you had, et cetera, and then we'll start to lean into probably 80, 90% of what we'll talk about which is your professional jumps, and some of the superpowers that you've acquired, accumulated along the way, and some of the things that you're great at, and know a lot about. And we'll talk through some of the methods and mindsets that you have around those things. Sound okay?

[Danielle Peretore] Yeah, sounds great.

[Naber] Okay cool. Let's start back in Jersey, where it all started.

[Danielle Peretore] Oh boy.

(Naber laughing)

[Naber] 25, 35, minutes outside of Newark it seems. Tell us a little bit about you as a kid.

[Danielle Peretore] So, I think I was the ultimate nerdy kid. I read all the time and everywhere, and I was horrible at sports. I got kicked off of six sports teams in high school, actually six.

[Naber] You counted.

[Danielle Peretore] About half for skill. Oh yeah, I mean about half of them were for skill and about half of them for having a bad attitude. So, you know, kinda evened out. But yes, I read a lot of books. I went to a lot of really nerdy camps. I went to computer camp, I went to science camp, I went to math camp, all of the above.

[Naber] Yes, this is so cool.

[Danielle Peretore] Is it, is it so cool, or did I have a tiger mom? I'm not really sure.

(Naber laughing)

[Naber] Fair enough, fair enough. So maybe both are true. This is great. Tell us about a couple of the camps that you enjoyed the most and why.

[Danielle Peretore] Which camps did I enjoy, actually I loved computer camp because you could play games all day. Actually, you weren't supposed to but I did. Do you remember that game Frogger that was really big in the 90s?

[Naber] Absolutely.

[Danielle Peretore] Of course, of course. Okay great. Yeah, I loved Frogger, so I played a lot of Frogger there. I also learned how to code in HTML, back in, this must have been like 1998. So I was ahead of the curve and then I totally lost it, never became a coder, you know my mom's dreams of me becoming a female engineer just went out the window. That's a story for later, but anyway I coded these, Danielle's home page, it was always rainbow and sparkles, whatever. So yeah, I loved computer camp.

[Naber] Very cool.

[Danielle Peretore] Yeah, yeah.

[Naber] And what was the first way that you made money?

[Danielle Peretore] First way I made money. The first actual paycheck I had for the summer before I went to college, my parents were, you know I'd been a nerdy kid just studying all through high school. And so they were very determined, they said that I needed to have a menial job. It was incredibly important to them that I understood what life would look like if I dropped out of college. And so they signed me up to work at a, it was like a shack that made french fries. So I made french fries and like chicken dinos. It was at like a, I think it was at a local pool. Yeah, it was at a local pool. And I spent my summer mopping floors, lots of clogged toilets. It was great, it was great. By the time I got to college, I was like, yep I'm gonna figure this thing out, I'm gonna stick it out. I don't want there to be any more clogged toilets in my future.

(Naber laughing)

[Naber] That's a good story.

[Danielle Peretore] Yeah, my parents had a little bit of a shock and awe strategy in terms of raising us. They were like yeah, you don't wanna do the things that we think you should do, or that you should do, let us shock you. Like, throw you in the deep end.

[Naber] That's funny. Was that the way it was for all our siblings as well?

[Danielle Peretore] Oh my gosh, yes. I think my other sisters, one of them worked, she actually, she was going to Harvard and then she spent two summers scooping ice cream. Where she got in trouble because apparently her ratio of ice cream to sprinkles was not right, and it was pretty funny when then she had to explain to them, she's like, "I promise I can do this. "I'm going to Harvard next year."

(Naber laughing)

[Naber] All right, great. And one last question, and we'll move on. What was your personality like as a kid? How would you describe it?

[Danielle Peretore] Well, believe it or not, I didn't talk really, as a kid. This is shocking to anyone who knows me now, but I was silent. I didn't talk to anyone, except my parents, and I really didn't like other kids. I was not into it. I just wanted to hang out with the adults. I basically wanted to be left alone and reading all day. I didn't wanna sweat. Sports was just a no go, I didn't really wanna be outside. I was like an 80-year-old woman as a 10-year-old.

[Naber] Interesting.

[Danielle Peretore] Yeah.

[Naber] Were you always like that, like did your parents say that you were like that when you were really small, like when you were a child?

[Danielle Peretore] Yes, yes. Yes, I was always like that. I never, there's all these pictures of me as a kid where all the other kids are together and I'm in the corner by myself not talking to anyone. Yeah, but it's funny, as I got older, so my middle sister used to be the really talkative one and so she would answer questions for me and whatever, and then we totally flipped and now I talk all the time, I always wanna talk. And my middle sister is really quiet and wants to be left alone.

[Naber] Well, you're making up for lost time with words, I love it.

[Danielle Peretore] I mean, yeah it's been about half my life that I've been making up for lost time so I should probably pump the brakes a little bit.

(Naber laughing)

[Naber] Fair enough. All right, so you're getting out of high school, you're making the decision to go to uni, why Brown University? And why cognitive neuroscience and Brazilian Portuguese studies?

[Danielle Peretore] Oh God, that's the question of the century. Why Brown, I'm wearing my Brown sweatshirt right now actually. I went to Brown, well really 'cause it was the best school

I got into and as I said I had a tiger mom. So there wasn't much negotiation there. However, I loved Brown. I loved everything about Brown. Brown is just such a weird, wacky, wonderful place. There are no requirements, you take whatever you want. The weirder you are the better.

I was considered so normal at Brown. And it was not cool, you know, it was not cool that I was normal. My friends from Brown are, they're just doing weird cool stuff. Brown was the best. I just had my 10-year reunion and it was a dream, I loved it. I think I got there and I was like, oh it's a bunch of weird kids who wanna sit in a corner and read, like me, great.

[Naber] Why cognitive neuroscience, and why Brazilian Portuguese studies?

[Danielle Peretore] Also great questions. So cognitive neuroscience, as I've said lik...

Danielle Peretore - Director, Sales Strategy & Analytics @Glassdoor (Formerly @NerdWallet, @LinkedIn, @BCG, @HBS) - Biz Ops Team Structures, Data-Driven Executive Decision Making, Translating Executive Data to the Field - Sales & Customer Success