Chapter 6 Grow Revenue Faster with Messaging Alignment, Playbooks, and Onboarding By Elay Cohen At this point in our journey, we have seen what it takes to build a great SaaS company, find product/market fit, and nail our company positioning. The next phase is all about execution, with a keen focus on building and equipping your sales team for success. Elay Cohen was at Salesforce in our formative (revenue) years — from 2005–2013. During this time, Salesforce saw revenues grow from $176 million to more than $3 billion. Much of this success has to be attributed to the amazing sales organization that was built under Jim Steele and Brian Millham, and enabled by the sales productivity team under Elay. Before you embark on expanding your initial sales team (which may only be you at this point in time), heed some of the advice that Elay lays out for you in “building to scale.” Thinking about your sales organization (fledgling or not) as a machine will help you focus on the critical success factors outlined in this chapter needed to build a repeatable and predictable revenue stream for your company. One of the most irking questions that keeps founders, CEOs, CROs, and CMOs awake every night is how to get their sales teams up to speed, faster. The question is universal — applying to both large companies and startups alike. Once a company has product-market fit worked out, and its go-to-market execution becomes the focus, there are several questions that need to quickly be addressed: