Sean Murray: Why Discovery Today is F***** & How to Scale Into Enterprise Effectively | E1107

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

January 24, 2024

Duration

1h 13m

Channel

The Twenty Minute VC

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Brex automates and accelerates spend management, with easy-to-use corporate cards, travel, expense management, and bill pay — all on one AI-powered platform. Ready to join them? Switch to AI-powered spend management at brex.com/ ----------------------------------------------- Sean Murray is the CRO @ Greenhouse which is the fourth company Sean has scaled successfully into the enterprise. Sean’s prior roles include revenue leadership positions at Saleloft (CRO), Xactly (VP Sales), and CEB, now Gartner (Head of MID Global Sales). ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (00:02:25) Sales-Marketing Blend (00:06:00) Top CMO Traits (00:08:00) Marketing & Sales Impact (00:11:33) Customer Education Tactics (00:15:54) Sales Challenges Today (00:18:41) Innovative Sales Methods (00:22:08) Renewal & Upsell Tactics (00:28:05) Sales Tech Improvements (00:31:41) Customer Success in Enterprise (00:35:09) Sales Commitment Balancing (00:38:58) Customer Relations Management (00:48:23) Sales Team Dynamics (00:59:49) Sales Compensation Insights (01:09:20) Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Sean Murray

1. The Origin Story: Is a Love of Sales Born: How did Sean first fall in love with Sales? What does Sean know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career in sales? What is Sean’s biggest advice to a young person entering the sales world today?

1. Sales has Changed; You Need to Change with It: Why do CMOs need to be good sellers and CROs need to be good marketers today? Have we seen the total blending of sales and marketing today? Should we get rid of all sales teams and just have content marketing teams?

1. How to Move into the Enterprise Successfully: What are the three biggest mistakes startups make when scaling into the enterprise? What easy wins can they do early in the sales process to enterprises to get a good start? How important are logos? Does social validity really work in enterprise? How should sales teams use discounting in enterprise sales most effectively? What is the right way for sales leaders and CROs to budget for enterprise? Is there a way to test enterprise without committing the company and a lot of resources?

1. How to Build the Best Sales Team Today: What is the right hiring process for all new sales hires? What are the questions you have to ask in the interviews? What do the case studies entail? What are signals of the best reps? What are the biggest mistakes teams make when hiring new sales reps? What have been Sean’s biggest lessons on comp and negotiation with new reps? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Greenhouse Software on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Greenhouse Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #harrystebbings #20vc #business #venturecapital #startup #SeanMurray #greenhouse

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Sean Murray

  guest

• Harry Stebbings

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Sean Murray and Harry Stebbings, Sean Murray: Why Discovery Today is F***** & How to Scale Into Enterprise Effectively | E1107 explores sean Murray Explains Why Discovery Is Dead And Enterprise Sales Evolved Sean Murray, CRO of Greenhouse, argues that traditional sales discovery is effectively dead and must be replaced with hypothesis-led teaching and deep buyer insight, especially as buyers give reps only a sliver of their time. He explains why sales and marketing must now function as a single, revenue‑accountable unit, with CMOs acting like sellers and CROs acting like marketers. Murray walks through how top sellers and companies are adapting to harder market conditions: revisiting ICPs, reframing customer problems, using data to prove value, and structuring renewals as new sales cycles. He then details what founders get wrong about moving upmarket into enterprise, how to avoid crippling “sales debt,” and how to hire and ramp high-performing sales talent using structured, bias‑reducing processes and modern tooling.

🔗 RELATED EPISODES

Inside Legora: Jude Law Generated $50M Pipeline | Are They Undervalued at $5.5BN? | Patrick Forquer

Cliff Weitzman: What I Learned from 100 of the World’s Top CEOs & Why Tokens Will Outspend Salaries

Shopify CEO on How AI is a Scapegoat for Mass Layoffs & Trump Derangement Syndrome in Canada

Inside Clay's Sales Playbook | Becca Lindquist

Jackie Reses: The Most Powerful Woman in Finance; Making $50BN for Yahoo on Alibaba | E996

Tom Hulme & Stan Boland: Lessons from Jensen Huang & How to Fix the UK Tech Ecosystem