GTM 68: Klaviyo’s Blueprint for Sales Success of $25M to $450M+ Growth with Sean Marshall

The GTM Podcast

During Sean's most recent operating role he spent 4.5 years as SVP, Global Sales at Klaviyo. He helped scale the sales organization from 15 to 300 people, while growing annual recurring revenue from $25m to over $450m. Prior to Klaviyo, Sean served in enterprise sales roles at Localytics, Yammer (acquired by Microsoft for $1.2B) and SuccessFactors (IPO & acquisition by SAP for $3.4B). He was one of the first few reps hired at Yammer to sell into the Fortune 500, responsible for closing some of their largest, 7-figure contracts. In 2022 Sean made the switch from operator to investor, currently serving as Managing Partner at Perkins Cove Partners. Over the last few years he has advised and invested in many B2B SaaS companies, particularly focused on helping with Go-To-Market.
What You Will Learn:

• The importance of leveraging your connections.
• Strategically pulling in every sales team within your org to orchestrate deals.
• How to hire the best AE’s for your company.
• How to be an effective storyteller.
• Optimizing different parts of your funnel in order to extract incremental dollars.

Highlights:
(2:57) Sean Marshall’s success attributor.
(5:35) Moving up to enterprise from a PLG focused company.
(9:36) Starting sales conversations - effectively positioning enterprise reps.
(14:10) Knowing when you’re ready to go upmarket.
(19:28) The makeup of enterprise pods that were set up at Klaviyo.
(22:05) Why CSM’s should be apart of the early deal cycles and not just post sales.
(23:45) A pivotal story that led Sean into Sales.
(29:39) How to evaluate an AE effectively in an interview.
(34:09) What it means to be a strong story teller.
(39:00) How to create a more efficient sales engine.
(47:35) Always offer your customers optionality.
(50:18) The importance of leveraging your referrals in a sales cycle.
Guest Speaker Links:
Sean’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmarshall82/
Sean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SeanMarshall1
Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/
Referenced Resource:
An article by Andy Raskin: The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen

The GTM Podcast
Features conversations with well-known tech executive, VC, and founders - the expert operators in the trenches who have ‘been there, done that’ to build some of the fastest-growing software companies. Every week, a guest joins Scott Barker to dissect their stories, revealing expert insights around what worked, what didn’t, and how things actually went down.
This podcast is produced by GTMnow, the media brand of GTMfund - sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350 of the best go-to-market executives. GTMfund is an early-stage VC fund focused on investing in the most exciting, up-and-coming B2B SaaS companies across the world. The LP network consists of VP and C-level Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success leaders from companies like DocuSign, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Okta, Zoom, and many more.
Visit gtmnow.com for more details and to sign up for our newsletter and other content resources.