John Mccracken - Fmr SVP Global Sales, Castlight Health

On Sales Teams

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John McCracken on Sales Teams.mp4 from Avery Rosin on Vimeo.

John McCracken, SVP Worldwide Sales at Castlight Health and Former SVP WW Sales Jive Software John McCracken has been the SVP of World Wide Sales at Castlight Health since January 2015. He was formerly the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Jive Software, Inc. from November 2008 to September 2014. Mr. McCracken served as Senior Vice President of Sales at Inovis. John has an 18-year record of success across senior sales management roles for several leading technology firms. He held executive management positions at American Express, Warrantech and PC ServiceSource. He served as an Advisory Board Member for iConclude.

Summary Notes on Sales Teams

  • What do you look for when hiring inside vs outside sales reps?

  • For inside sales, hire individuals early in their career – people who are hungry

  • For outside/field for enterprise, hire individuals with a lot more experience

  • A consistent track record of performance is key, and experience at ‘logo’ companies helps

  • What would be a typical sales org structure? How does that change as a company begins to scale?

  • This is determined by stage of the company

  • For early stage companies, employ more of a team approach, have to be more cohesive getting to the vein of an count – use shares quotas

  • How do you think about comp for inside v outside?

  • Use a 50/50 plan; 50% base, 50% variable commissions

  • How do you think about sales comp accelerators

  • If bringing in someone from an established company, will have to get her into the 8-10% range after she hits 100%; from here, you want to incentivize employee to get over 125% to get to 10-20% range

  • What types of people are best suited for sales teams?

  • Athletes tend to be successful as they have the thrill to win mentality and are used to natural highs and lows

  • What are best practices when someone not performing and not on way out

  • Once someone misses for the 2nd consecutive quarter, the manager must evaluate the pipeline and determine whether there is a shot of landing these accounts

  • If not, the rep should be encouraged to start looking elsewhere at the end of the 2nd missed quarter