Looking Back at the Numbers

Two co-founders in Austin discuss how their sales organisation changed over three years.

Looking Back at the Numbers

Listen and choose the right answer

What main issue does Laura highlight regarding the current sales pipeline?

• Deals are taking twice as long to close compared to earlier years.
• The company has too many international offices in Europe.
• The marketing team is generating low-quality leads.

Why did Ben add the secondary legal sign-off in October?

• To comply with new federal regulations in Austin.
• As a panic reaction after losing a major fintech account.
• To satisfy demands from the board of directors.

What percentage of current deal delays is caused by that extra approval step?

• Twenty percent
• Forty percent
• Eighty percent

What do Ben and Laura decide to do at the end of the conversation?

• Fire the legal team responsible for the bottleneck.
• Remove the approval step and notify the sales reps.
• Hire fifty more account executives for the Denver hub.

Listen again and complete the sentences

• Ben: Well, we're running a ____ of two hundred people now. That kind of coordination overhead is bound to happen.
• Ben: That's just the price we pay to ____ across our Austin and Denver hubs. We can't rely on raw start-up hustle anymore.
• Laura: I know, but our current flat structure isn't so flat when every rep has to navigate a massive ____ just to get a discount approved.
• Ben: Hold on, our management layer is necessary because we had a massive ____ last year. We brought in thirty new reps in one month.
• Laura: And that hiring spree gave us severe process debt. Nobody knows where to find the ____ we used to share over coffee.

Sources: photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels