Categories: Scaling Sales
When prioritizing initiatives to scale the business, successful executive leaders look to their portfolio company’s board early on in their process to capture buy-in and support. Getting this early commitment from the board, supported Segment’s leaders in driving critical company outcomes from their transformation initiative.
Segment implemented a value-based sales motion to enable their customer-facing teams to scale product-led growth (PLG) and reduce internal inefficiencies. Through the company’s hard work, Segment increased annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 150% over a two-year period. In late 2020, Segment was acquired by industry leader Twilio for $3.2 billion.
Your portfolio company leaders may find value in the actions Segment’s leaders took to accelerate business value. Segment’s Former Chief Revenue Officer Joe Morrissey discussed Segment’s journey with John Kaplan. In the discussion, Morrissey takes a deep dive into how Segment’s leadership team leveraged their board to ensure critical company outcomes from their transformation initiative. Here are the key factors they covered and how they supported Segment’s success.
Alignment and Buy-In From the Board:
To successfully execute a company-wide transformation initiative, it's critical to secure commitment and buy-in from your board and cross-functional leaders. Leaders who capture this buy-in early in the process are better equipped to generate the company-wide commitment necessary to drive true transformation and revenue impact. Sharing why he went to Segment’s board before he invested in his next steps, Morrissey shares, “If you’re going to make a big bet on a transformation like this, why wouldn’t you want to ensure that every one of your board members is bought in and behind what you’re doing? As a C-level executive, you need to have confidence and credibility with the board. It just makes sense to get them bought into what your big bets are.”
Getting early support from the board helped Morrissey build and operationalize his transformation initiative in a way that was focused on delivering critical outcomes. He shares, “We had a rigorous board who was clear on ensuring I had defined success metrics in mind and that we could tie this engagement back to improvements in retention, efficiency and sales productivity. I am very happy to say that we delivered on those.”
The benefit of having success metrics defined at the start of the process means leaders can prepare accordingly and align their transformation initiative to the outcomes they need to achieve. Additionally, conversations with the board help to set the tone for accountability. Knowing they’ll likely only get one shot to make an impact, successful leaders will stay committed to their initiatives and put in a concerted effort to ensure ROI and critical outcomes.
Bring your portfolio company partners and their CROs up to speed on the benefits of early board approval and support. In the video below, Morrissey pinpoints some of the first steps he and his leadership team took to capture board buy-in, support and input for their transformation initiative. He defines why those actions were critical to driving organizational transformation and accelerating business growth.
Setting and achieving measurable results takes a rigorous effort and sometimes a partner who can help leaders avoid common setbacks. If your portfolio company leaders are transforming their organizations, here are the topics and focus areas that CROs, like Joe Morrissey, look for in a potential partner.
How Portfolio Companies Can Learn From Segment’s Approach:
Looking back at the journey overall Morrissey shares, “There are lots of different ways you can drive transformation. It was clear that getting everybody on the same page and getting alignment was probably the first thing that I had to do. I know you only get one shot as a sales leader at this level, so that’s what prompted my call to Force Management.”
As your portfolio company leaders move forward, share Segment’s story with them.
