BC Startup Sales Podcast – Tips to Build a 30-60-90 Day Plan for Sales Leaders with Matt Gahr (Chrome River)

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Matt Gahr, Chief Sales Officer at Chrome River, to discuss “Tips to Build a 30-60-90 Day Plan for Sales Leaders.” Chrome River is a global leader in enterprise expense reporting and invoice management solutions, based out of California. The company prides itself in extremely high customer retention and satisfaction.

Matt Gahr is the Chief Sales Officer at Chrome River. Prior to this, he was the Vice President of Sales for Americas at Cornerstone OnDemand where he helped grow the business from $25 million to over $500 million. Prior to joining Cornerstone, Matt was a sales leader at TriNet and Randstad. In the early part of his career, he also served as co-founder and VP of Sales for GetListed, a recruiting marketplace startup. Matt received his BS in Business Administration and International Affairs from University of New Hampshire and an MBA from University of California, San Diego.

According to Matt, the first 30-60-90 day plan is more situationally oriented than formulaic, but this also depends on the company and objectives. While there may be some parameters around what the 30-60-90 day framework should look like, it’s highly contingent around the core task and goals of the sales leader. Matt himself firmly believes in setting the tone of the relationship from the start as that influences how that relationship evolves. First and foremost, it’s important to have clarity around objectives and tactics within the sales team. Once that has been established, it’s essential to do the same with your counterparts in other functions so you may jointly problem solve any obstacles in your way by leveraging a shared expertise, all while building relationships within the firm to drive sales forward. Finally, similar conversations must be conducted with customers to better understand their need and their feedback to your product. To lay the same out more tactically: in the first 30 days, sales leaders should have in-person conversations with sales managers within their organization to establish an open, trusting relationship as well as an understanding on motivations and objectives; in the first 60 days, they should conduct further conversations with the rest of the sales team; lastly over the 90 day range, they need to extend these interactions to customers for better understanding the value your product brings them and what defines success for them. At the end of this time period, a sales leader should become informed on his/her organization, product, and market.

Having done this a few times, a common malpractice Matt has recognized among new sales leaders is to come into a new organization and try to prove their value from day one, having a “ready-fire-aim” mentality. Instead, as mentioned previously, it’s essential to run diagnostics and better assess the team, firm, market and customer as well as understand the context and process through which each current practice was established, then move forward.

If you liked “Tips to Build a 30-60-90 Day Plan for Sales Leaders” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast to get all our new content each week!