Dannie Herzberg is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. She is an investor in Notion and Statsig and coaches founders across the entire Sequoia portfolio on go-to-market strategy and execution.
Before Sequoia, Dannie spent four years at Slack, where she led self-service through enterprise sales, as the company grew from $100M - $1B in revenue. Dannie spent 5+ life-changing years at HubSpot, joining just after the company's inception and helping lead sales & platform from HubSpot's earliest days through the company's IPO.
Dannie Herzberg's view of the Modern Sales Leader
As a partner at Sequoia, I am constantly helping founders recruit & develop exceptional sales leaders. There's no one archetype for a modern sales executive, but there are 3 consistent traits that differentiate those who prove to world-class:
- They are talent magnets & culture builders. A-players want to work with A-players. The best leaders know how to attract and retain top talent and allow the people on their team to flourish in their careers. They build intentional cultures within their respective organizations that raise the scale of their team's ambition and result in peak performance.
- They are customer-obsessed. The modern sales leader sees sales and customer success as two sides of the same coin. They understand that happy customers are the most important component of a successful flywheel, and they build culture around truly understanding and serving their customers.
- They are data geeks, not empire builders. A traditional sales leader may have bragged about the size of his/her organization. More sales reps = more influence. Not the modern sales leader. The modern sales leader is always asking himself: how do I do more with less? What can I learn from the data? Where will I see the greatest return on investment?