SaaStr Podcast #206: Ryan Barretto, SVP of Global Sales at Sprout Social With 4 Core Considerations Startup Founders Must Recognize When Pricing Their Product
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This post is by Harry Stebbings from SaaStr
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Welcome to Episode 206! Ryan Barretto is the SVP of Global Sales at Sprout Social, a leading provider of social media engagement, advocacy and analytics solutions for business. To date they have raised over $111m in funding from the likes of NEA, Goldman Sachs, and their very recently announced $40m Series D led by Future Fund. At Sprout Social Ryan oversees both the Sales and Customer Success organizations. Prior to Sprout, he was the VP of Global Sales at Pardot–a Salesforce company. At Pardot, Ryan’s team tripled revenue growth in two years, making Pardot one of Salesforce’s fastest growing businesses and during his 10 year tenure at Salesforce he saw the company grow from $180m to $7.5Bn.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
- How Ryan made his way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce over 13 years ago? What were some of Ryan’s biggest takeaways from seeing Salesforce from $180m to $7.5Bn?
Why does Ryan think that it is lazy to believe that you have to pick a market and you can’t have them all? How can one approach the element of very different messaging being required for SMB vs enterprise? How can one do both? How does that change the structure of the team? How can one build a product with the simplicity of SMB and functionality of enterprise?
When it comes to winning the market, what does Ryan mean when he says, “boring is better than sexy?” What are the 4 elements all founders must consider when pricing their SaaS product? Where does Ryan see many go wrong with pricing? When serving SMB, how can one provide enterprise quality customer support? How does Ryan feel about customization? What number justifies it?
Why does Ryan believe that being good at sales won’t make you a great sales leader? What is needed to make the transition? What can sales reps do to learn and bridge that gap? What has worked for Ryan in the past? Where has Ryan seen many go wrong here? What 3 elements does Ryan look for in all additions to the team?
What is the number 1 issue that is preventing people building truly diverse teams? How can we change our job descriptions to make the more inclusive? How can we expand our candidate pool to include more diverse people than usual? What can leaders do to build environments of inclusion where people can really bring their full selves to work?
Ryan’s 60 Second SaaStr:
- What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
Sales rep productivity, what is good to Ryan?
What motto or quote does Ryan frequently revert back to? Why?
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Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Ryan Barretto
Transcript
Harry Stebbings: A very special day here at the official SaaStr podcast with me, Harry Stebbings, @HStebbings1996 with two Bs on Instagram. Why? Well, it’s the first episode of 2019 and starting as we mean to go on, we have an incredible leader in their field. An individual that saw Salesforce first-hand scale from a $180 million business to a $7.5 billion business over an incredible 10 year tenure. I’m thrilled to welcome Ryan Barretto.
Ryan is the SVP of Global Sales at Sprout Social, a leading provider of social media engagement, advocacy, and analytic solutions for business. To date they’ve raised over $111 million in funding from the likes of NEA, Goldman Sachs, and their very recently announced 40 million series D led by Future Fund. At Sprout Social, Ryan oversees both the sales and the customer success organizations. And prior to Sprout, he was the VP of Global Sales at Pardot, a Salesforce company. And at Pardot Ryan’s team tripled revenue growth in just two years, making Pardot one of Salesforce’s fastest growing business lines. I do also want to say a huge thank you to Jason Lemkin for the intro. I really do, sir, appreciate that my friend.
But you’ve heard quite enough from me. Now I’m thrilled to hand over to Ryan Barretto at Sprout Social.
Ryan, it is absolutely fantastic to have you on the show. As I said, I’m so excited for this one. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Ryan Barretto: Thank you, Harry. I’m excited to be here.
Harry Stebbings: Well, I would love to kick off things today, Ryan, with a little bit about you. Tell me, how did you make your way into most definitely the wonderful world of SaaS and come to be SVP of Sales at Sprout Social?
Ryan Barretto: Thanks, Harry. Since I was a kid I’ve always had this entrepreneurial spirit and love for building things. My friends and family still tease me about the fireworks store I ran out of my house and my bedazzled jeans business. And at the end of 2005 I was winding down my own bootstrap startup that was in the online travel space. I was trying to find something new that wasn’t gonna be your typical corporate job. And I was lucky enough to land an interview with Salesforce.com, who’d just opened an office in Toronto. And at that time they were about 175 million and 800 employees. And I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it now, but I’d never heard of them.
I walked into this amazing waterfront office that only had about 20 people in it but open seating for hundreds. And was so impressed with the confidence they had. They were very clear that their mission was to disrupt and dominate the software industry, which was pretty given that their tagline was No Software. I ended up staying at Salesforce for over 10 years in a variety of roles, helping grow offices and teams across the US and Canada. And it ultimately landed me in Chicago, where I now live.
And my last two years at Salesforce were spent leading the sales organization for Pardot, the marketing automation solution that Salesforce had acquired. And that job gave me access to an amazing founder in Adam Blitzer and the chance to lead a global sales team for a business that was still being run as a startup within Salesforce.
Harry Stebbings: I mean, what an incredible journey that is though, seeing the kind of frontline hyper-growth that’s at Salesforce. Now, I do have to ask before we press on and it’s a question of … Having seen that from the frontline, both with Pardot and Salesforce together over the 10 years, what were some of the biggest takeaways from seeing that scaling into hyper-growth?
Ryan Barretto: There is so much learning and so many amazing people to learn from but I’ll try and narrow it down to two things. The first takeaway would be, be deliberate and explicit about your business plan. Write it down, share the rough draft with your team, debate it, prioritize it. Salesforce called it their V2MOM process and it stood for vision, values, met
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