Our team looks to connect and profile sales leaders from around the world. This week we sat down with the Senior Director of Sales at Articulate, Brandon Gort. Articulate empowers their customers with the ability to create interactive e-learning for their employees & customers. Brandon leads the charge for sales and is responsible for the largest quota in the organization. According to TechCrunch, Articulate had a value of $4B as per an article from July ’21, after raising one of the largest series A rounds in US history, of 1.5B.
Who are you and why should salespeople care?
My name’s Brandon, and I’m the Senior Dir of Sales at Articulate. Articulate enables every organization to unlock human potential through learning in the flow of work and in the flow of life. I manage 2 sales teams, the SMB and Commercial AEs who are full cycle. Full cycle here means territory-based prospecting, cold outbound, meeting qualification, all the way to negotiation and close.
In my 5+ years here, this company has gone through incredible growth. I’ve seen our headcount almost 3x, we’ve achieved 100%+ of our rev goals each year and raised a historic Series A round of funding. It’s been a fun ride, and we’re just getting started.
I manage two amazing teams that have been able to consistently exceed quota, YoY. It’s truly a testament to them and my front-line managers, considering the way tech has been impacted the past two years. The highest achieving AE on my team in 2023 hit 160% to quota. What I love most is helping reps who were below their quota attainment one year, to become top performers the next year.
What makes a successful AE on your team and why?
Successful AEs at Articulate do and show the following characteristics:
- Consistency
- Organization
- Creativity
- Persistency
The best AEs have to put together a plan for not only hitting their quota, but hit 150%+ of their quota and are able to execute on their plan. It’s imperative they are able to prepare accordingly based on their territory and current pipeline.
The reps on my team consistently push the value of our solution to their prospects. Going from demo to close takes hard work and talent. You need to be able to educate the prospect on the value and ROI of our solution as to how it helps you overcome your challenges and problems today and that your future state is worth it.
Whenever I interview for openings on my team the reps that get my thumbs up are ones that “bring it daily.” We need positive team players and those that are not only willing to do what it takes to hit their goals, but also value a collaborative team approach to winning.
Why e-learning?
E-learning is an amazing industry to be selling for a number of reasons:
- E-learning products make a difference in people’s lives and can make massive impact to an organization’s KPIs.
- Selling to learning & development and HR personas is a dream. People in these departments job is to help others within their orgs. They are wonderful people to sell to who are looking to use your products to help others.
- Shameless plug- selling Articulate is like selling no other product. Our customers create interactive training that people will learn, grow and develop because of. There’s nothing better than going to a conference and people swarm your booth telling you that your products changed their lives. No bullshit. People earn promotions, make massive change and impact at their companies. I don’t think there is anything better than that.
Before Articulate, back in 2016, I was at a company called Northpass (since acquired by Gainsight), which sold a learning management system (LMS). When I got there, I didn’t know much about what an LMS even was, but I knew companies used them to deliver training to their employees. I could get behind that. I took what I learned from Northpass and leveraged that to get a role as the first Strategic Enterprise AE at Articulate.
In my time here at Articulate I’ve had diverse conversations ranging from CEOs, Chief Learning Officers (CLOs), to leaders in innovation and change management. I’ve been able to grow my career, make amazing connections, and help others.
People don’t often associate learning & development, training or e-learning tech with the potential to make great money, but I’m here to say that just isn’t true. We are just like other tech companies, where top AEs can make a shit ton of money by exceeding their targets. So, we get the best of both worlds; helping our customers be successful using our products, and cashing some nice commission checks each month.
What is your role, and what impact do you have on sales at your company?
As Senior Dir of Sales, and having both SMB and Commercial AEs, I have the privilege of having the highest quota in the company. In total, 13 sales reps fall under my supervision. A few key areas of focus for my team this year include:
- Leveraging the MEDDPICC framework to ensure we are accurately qualifying, forecasting and progressing deals
- Closed lost analysis to better understand the why for our business
- Prioritize multithreading within our deals
- Self-generated pipegen
- Embracing everything AI. Adopting tools, up to date on trends, impact on our industry.
What are some struggles you see with AEs and how can they fix them?
- Selling features vs solutions. Companies focus way too much on product features. I get it, they are sexy and shiny, but unless you are giving your prospects a solution to a problem that keeps them up at night, they won’t give a shit.
- What separates good from great AEs is their consistency with their approach. You can be doing the right thing, but doing it consistently over a long period of time is where you separate yourself from the rest of the pact
- Agenda setting. This one seems simple, right? Yet many AEs just don’t do this. If you are looking to control the conversation, establishing a short, concise agenda that is delivered before your call or to kick off your call is a game changer.
- Follow ups! AE’s love to “just check in”. Adding value to your check ins will change how your prospect interacts with you to progress a deal.
- Separate yourself from the outcome (aka getting the sale), and focus on helping your prospect be successful. If now isn’t the right timing for them, let go. If you’ve provided and continue to provide value, when the timing is right, they will be back.
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