Transforming an Enterprise Sales Organization - with Cathy Minter, CRO at R3

In this episode of the Selling the Cloud podcast,  we are  joined by Cathy Minter, Chief Revenue Officer at R3.

Cathy shares her experiences in taking over the role of the CRO in an early stage pioneer in applying Block Chain to enterprise level application development. 

The need for transformation was initially based upon the original formation of R3, which was founded as a consortium of large financial service companies exploring how Block Chain could  impact and be leveraged in the banking industry.  Initially, R3 was more a consulting company and think tank comprised of investment banking professionals and not an enterprise software platform, with an enterprise sales organization.

Cathy's initial challenge was to build the processes, infrastructure and organization required to evangelize the opportunity that Block Chain provides to application development of the  future.

Becoming a "Customer First" company started by getting the executive team aligned on building a customer centric culture that would serve them well over the long haul.  It was then translated into the sales process that transitioned from product/feature/function to a solution, business value centric methodology.  The use of "Proof of Technology" phase "0" programs to ensure both the business benefit and technical fit was used while embracing a "land and expand" customer acquisition and expansion strategy.

Marketing and Sales alignment was discussed as a key responsibility of a CRO. When marketing and sales became part of the same reporting structure to Cathy at R3, that was when alignment became integration.  A critical inflection point happened when marketing made all of their "goals" yet sales and the company missed their revenue goals...it was time to align marketing and sales to the same outcome based goals and integrate the processes, platforms and organizations to the end to end customer buying journey.

Lastly, Cathy shared how to identify enterprise sales candidates for the traits of resilience.  In fact, she linked the candidate question "tell me about the last five deals you lost and what did you learn from those" as a way to understand both resilience and a candidates ability to accept responsibility and learn from those experiences.

If you want to become a Chief Revenue officer in an enterprise sales environment,  and especially one where the need is to transform the company to a customer first, solution sales methodology, this is a great listen.

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