Julian Teixeira, CRO @ 1Password: How to Hire and Train Your First Sales Hires

I think of it as breaking down the anatomy of a win. What steps should one be repeating to have a higher rate of success in winning deals? That's just part of it. Like, without the right skills development, your playbook isn't worth shit. You're not hiring people to take orders. You're, you're hiring them to sell. You think about what outbounding really is. It's about captivating interest. It's about getting to the point quickly. There's something that matters to the individual that you're speaking to. That, in and of itself, is valuable, even if all you're getting is an inbound call. That makes you more effective at that first discovery call, that first meeting.

Ready to go? Julian, I am excited for this, dude. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. So first, thank you so much for joining me.

Yeah. Likewise. Thank you for having me, Harry. This is, uh, this is great.

Not at all. But I wanna start with your entry. You ha- you started in marketing, and I think it's a really interesting entry point. How did your entrance from marketing impact how you think about sales today?

Uh, it, yeah. It was really interesting, in a way. 'Cause like, on, on the one hand, it, it, you know, it didn't prepare me at all, uh, for, for what sales could sorta look like. But, on the other hand, um, I learned to appreciate very early on that, uh, when done right, uh, marketing can really serve as the guard rails for repeatable success, uh, in sales. And so, you know, aligning the outside-looking-in perception of the company and the brand with what the field is presenting, um, is critical, uh, to establishing that trust and credibility. So that, that was sort of my appreciation, uh, as I went into sales, is understanding that, you know, when it's done right, it could, it could be really effective.

You had 10 years at Lightspeed. That's a phenomenal amount of time. And you also, like, incredibly accomplished, in terms of position, at a young age. I just wanna ask, what are the biggest sales leadership, specifically, takeaways for you from 10 years at Lightspeed in that period of hypergrowth?

Yeah. It, it, it was a long journey. Um, and, you know, the, the company I joined, uh, at the top of 2011 was not the company I left, um, uh, you know, sorta halfway through 2020. Um, but I, you know, I learned very on and at every stage that, uh, connecting with people was the key to motivating them, uh, and keeping them engaged. You know, you know, building and scaling companies is hard work. Uh, you're taking people through some really, really hard changes. And so, the ability to connect with them on a very personal level and understand what motivates them, um, was really-

What are the hardest changes, Julian?

You know, people are sort of used to going through change and then living with it for extended periods of time. Um, but, you know, the reality is, when, when you're part of a scale-up or a startup, like, you know, the thing you implemented three months ago can very well go stale, uh, shortly thereafter. And so people get a lot of fatigue with that. Um, you know, they, they, they like for things to remain constant and consistent. Um, and that's just not the case when you're scaling rapidly.