Why Continuous Reinvention Is Paramount in Sales Performance Management with Chris Cabrera

The Art of Generating Early Sales

Whitney Sales, the creator of The Sales Method and General Partner at Acceleprise, broke into the world of venture capital by chance. After working in sales for companies over the years, Sales discovered her true passion lay in working with founders.

Before long, her engagement led her to Acceleprise, where Sales became an early partner. Early-stage sales engagement within new companies is Sales’ specialty.

“The process of selling really is a science at this point,” Sales said. “And there are playbooks you can apply. So, a lot of what you’re doing as a founder is applying the knowledge that you have gained in developing the product in your customer discovery with your beta users and your customer development, etc. and utilizing that knowledge to figure out the path forward to close a deal.”

Success Is Not a Location: Working Remote Made Easy

Karen Mangia, VP of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, is an internationally recognized thought leader and author of “Working from Home: Making the New Normal Work for You,” “Listen Up! How to Tune Into Customers and Turn Down the Noise” and “Success With Less.”

Disrupting Career Paths Through the Journey of Food

A recovering lawyer and politico turned culinary historian, food writer and professional speaker, Adrian Miller may not immediately seem like the correct guest for Sales Disrupters, but host Erik Charles begs to differ.

How does a Georgetown law school graduate go from working in the White House during the Clinton administration to the award-winning author of a book on soul food history? Miller provided answers about his unusual journey and how it’s never too late to disrupt a career path for another.

“I had just finished up my stint at the Clinton White House,” Miller said. “I planned to move back to my home in Colorado and start my political career, but the job market was really slow.”

While browsing the food section of a bookstore one day, Miller came across a book on Southern food written by John Edgerton called “Southern Food at Home, on the Road in History.” Mentioned in that book was a statement that stopped Miller in his tracks: the tribute to African Americans' achievement in cookery had yet to be written.

“I reached out to him (Edgerton) because when I picked up the book, it was about 10 years old,” Miller said. “I wrote him. and I asked him if, 10 years later, he felt it was still true. And he said, for the most part, nobody’s taken on the full story – just parts of it.”

Challenge presented; challenge accepted.

The road to completing and selling his first novel was not a simple one. It took a lot of work and research, and, throughout the process, there was always the concern that by telling people about his project, someone might lift Miller’s idea.

But Miller wasn’t shy about telling people about his book.

“People respond to you when you share your dream,” Miller said. “I can’t tell you did stuff for me just because I told people what I was working on.”

At a speaking engagement at a gathering of the Southern Food Alliance, Miller’s book project caught a publisher's attention, and that is how “Soul Food: The Surprising Story of An American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time” went from idea to reality. Sometimes, a little disruption is what it takes to transform a career into a dream job.

Why Continuous Reinvention Is Paramount in Sales Performance Management with Chris Cabrera

Chris Cabrera is something of a survivor. The Xactly CEO founded the company and stayed to the IPO. He has continued to lead when so many executives take a ceremonial position on the board and has stayed at the helm even when private equity took the company back private.

Even those challenges have paled in comparison to what he and other leaders are fighting with the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, it’s just another moment during which Cabrera’s philosophy of continual reinvention has paid off.

“Now, it’s a whole different world. All these people are working remotely. You can’t see the whites of their eyes,” Cabrera said. “You don’t really know what they’re doing. So, we feel it’s even more important now to create incentives that help you explain to the folks what your expectations are but also help them to do more.”

Xactly helped do that with an integration with their partner Slack, giving workers a way to see their incentives on the same screen they’re using to communicate with leaders or catch up with co-workers.

Despite many companies seeking those solutions in the pandemic, Cabrera said too few have realized they need to keep reinventing themselves and utilize resources like data and analysis tools rather than sit static.

“We have a tremendous road ahead of us, and I think it’s largely because the vast majority of companies have still not woken up to being able to use data in the way that we’re talking about,” he said. “So, I still think we have a lot of educating to do, and you have a lot of very senior, very smart people in these very big companies that are thinking like it’s 1990 and they are really, really missing the boat. The future is to help them have those lightbulbs go on.”

How San Jose Sharks President Jonathan Becher Is Innovating the Fan Experience Despite the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jonathan Becher, President of the San Jose Sharks, likes to say he isn’t the president of the San Jose Sharks.

It’s not a tactic to avoid getting recognized at Starbucks. For Becher, it’s just the truth. His true title is President of Sharks Sports and Entertainment, with his purview extending past the National Hockey League team to the minor league franchise, facilities, a non-profit and other wings of the business.

Still, men skating and using sticks in an attempt to get a rubber disk past a man with a glove drives most of their business. So, when the actual hockey stops, as it has during the coronavirus pandemic, what do you do to keep fans connected? If you’re Becher, you adapt.

“I don’t think we’re in the business of putting on a hockey game,” he said. “What we’re actually in the business of is making memories.”

Of course, that can be watching Evander Kane light the lamp in the third period, but Becher and his team are thinking of different ways for fans to make memories. It’s meant diving in to areas the team previously eschewed, like simulated games using a video game platform.

The team has given some fans the opportunity to create an avatar and “suit up” next to their favorite Sharks players during the games the team puts out on its Twitch channel.

“They’ve been surprisingly, to me anyway, because I’m not a gamer, popular,” Becher said. “Partly, I think it’s because we did some cool stuff.”

One fan, after his digital alter ego scored the winning goal, posted on social that it was the best experience of his life. Another memory made thanks to the Sharks – without the team even taking to the physical ice. Those moments are just one of the innovations Becher believes will be “sticky” and carry over once the team is able to play games again.

“Here’s a new line of business that didn’t occur to us before, that was born out of necessity because of this disruption, and which we will continue even long after live games are back, because not everyone can be in our building in one night,” he said.