Calix - Martyn Bassett Associates

Due to unprecedented growth, Calix began a transformation of its sales organization and needed a new sales leader.

The Search

Due to the unprecedented growth of the business, Calix began a transformation of its sales organization. To scale the North American sales team, hiring was to happen across all parts of the sales org (i.e. in territories, named accounts, and subject matter experts who would focus on their tech stack.)

We were engaged to find a US-based Regional Vice President Sales. The focus of this hire was to lead the growth of a territory, build a team of high-performance enterprise sales reps, and lead them to exceed annual targets that ranged between $1.2 to $1.5M per AE.

The Client

Calix is a publicly-traded B2B SaaS vendor whose solutions enable innovative Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to optimize and monetize the complex infrastructure between their customers and the cloud.

Calix leverages cloud analytics to transform and optimize the business model of a CSP to enable them to rapidly deploy new services to drive revenue growth and new subscription services.

Search Requirements

Strong leadership skills and the ability to recruit and manage successful high income earning AEs was central to the profile of leader our client wanted to hire. Candidates need to have at least 5 years of management experience and a track record of previous target-exceeding performance as a salesperson.

Another must-have requirement was experience focused on enterprise B2B Saas. Preference was given to those who had come from selling the value of a business solution to a decision-maker of a telecommunications or CSP.

The Hire

This central US-based candidate had over 20 years of employment experience, all of which had been in enterprise software sales. They also had 7 years of management experience, managing Account Executives selling software to large enterprise accounts.

They were comfortable selling to the C-suite of a large enterprise account; numbers focused, data-driven, metrics obsessed and able to articulate and break down stats, quota attainment and communicate successes in quantifiable ways.

A user and teacher of Spin Selling and Challenger Sales methodologies.

“We are very happy with the process and results of Martyn Bassett Associates. This hire continues to be one of our strongest leaders, leading his team to 260% in their first year.”

–– Dan Bloch, VP of Global Cloud Solution Sales

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