perspectives

2019 Sales Summit

November 2019

By Mike Farrell, Jeff Haywood, Ben Spero

We brought together sales executives from over 25 portfolio companies to attend our inaugural Sales Summit in Phoenix, Arizona. We’ve been organizing similar events covering various functional areas, including our CEO Summit and Finance & Legal Roundtables, so we were eager to share best practices and facilitate networking around the topic of sales, a critical area impacting our portfolio companies.

With varied sales strategies (inside, outbound, online self-service, and hybrid), end customers (enterprise, SMB, and consumer), and markets (vertical and horizontal), our portfolio companies all require a deep understanding of sales pipeline management, recruitment & compensation, and tools & resources to scale their go-to-market sales motions. This unification across sales themes informed a two-day event filled with engaged discussions on sales challenges and tactical sales strategies as companies accelerate growth.
The Summit was a mix of portfolio company presentations and panels providing exposure to successful sales models and high-impact sales leaders from across the portfolio. Among the topics covered were:

High-Velocity Inside Sales within a Self-Service Online User Base
Pipeline Management
Hiring, Onboarding, and Training
Sales Compensation Models
Prospecting and Lead Generation for Outbound Sales Motions
Tools, Software, and Data to Drive Sales Efficiencies

It wasn’t all work without downtime. We built in networking opportunities throughout the Summit with a group hike, breakout sessions, and an evening reception.

We came away from the event highly energized by new relationships and candid discussions among sales leaders within Spectrum’s portfolio. We’ve found that these types of events lead to interactions that take place well beyond the Summit, and our executives are eager to help each other apply their best practice learnings in their everyday sales operations.

The event also underscored how fortunate we are to partner with high-caliber sales talent, promote cross-portfolio collaboration, and provide strategic guidance on a key driver of long-term value for our portfolio companies.

Content contained in this blog post is not intended to and does not constitute investment advice. Your use of the information in this blog post and materials linked is at your own risk. Spectrum Equity does not make any guarantee or other promise as to any results that may be obtained from using this content. No one should make any investment decision without first consulting his or her own financial advisor and conducting his or her own research and due diligence. Past performance is not indicative of future results, and there is a possibility of loss in connection with an investment in any Spectrum Fund. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Spectrum Equity disclaims any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, and/or opinions prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses. The specific companies identified above does not represent all of Spectrum’s investments, and no assumptions should be made that any investments identified were or will be profitable. View the complete list of our portfolio companies.