Like in the NBA, sales teams are filled with highly competitive people who are driven to perfect their craft so that they can rack up as many wins as possible. Unlike the NBA, though, the best sales teams aren’t led by a collection of superstars. Rather, high-performing squads tend to be filled with team players who put the overall success above their own and work to help one another close deals.
San Francisco is filled with companies hiring top sales talent, but the seven we’re profiling here have cultures that encourage collaborations among teammates so that everyone wins. Continue reading to learn more about the collaborative cultures of the fast-growing sales teams.
Mural’s digital whiteboards are designed to make it easier for remote and distributed teams to collaborate with each other and clients. In addition to its whiteboard, Mural also offers over 200 templates designed ranging from icebreaker games to AWS architecture diagrams and video storyboards.
Winning Together: “Be it coaching me on how to handle a challenging conversation or sharing a new twist on a proposal deck, I can’t count the number of times a fellow account executive has supported me,” Laoudji said. “There’s a sense that we’re here to compete with the market, not with each other. I really like that about our team culture.”
(Sales) Lessons Learned at Mural: “Our best customers push us to get better, which often means asking members of our team, like product, legal and customer success, to reprioritize how they’re spending their time. I’ve learned that building strong internal relationships is as important as building external ones with our customers. I try to be proactive in getting to know my teammates as human beings so that they don’t only hear from me when I’m asking for something!”
Mural’s Newest Sales Tech: “This is going to sound really self-serving, but I do mean it: digital workspaces and whiteboards. I’ve found that making conversations visual has a way of quickly clarifying what my prospect and I are actually saying — a good antidote to the ‘illusion of agreement’ — and makes our meetings more collaborative and engaging. It’s helpful for managing my forecast and, frankly, more fun for both of us.”
Moveworks’ automated AI technology helps enterprises address IT, HR, finanace and communication issues by answering questions, announcing policies and providing real-time assistance.
A Mission Worth Honoring: “Between our product roadmap and the updates on overall company performance as well as the state of our finances, leadership keeps us informed at all times,” Product Design Lead Ivy Wang previously told Built In. “The culture of Moveworks is one where everyone is an equal part of the whole.”
Part of a Whole: At Moveworks, no one is left to fend for themselves. “What binds us together is the culture of collaborative ownership,” Head of People Operations Al-Husein Madhany previously told Built In. “That means every Movester is treated as an owner and a leader, and no one works in silos. Every team collaborates closely with one another to strive for our vision: gauging demand from customers, developing the right features, prioritizing goals and figuring out what works.”
Social media advertising can be incredibly time-consuming and challenging, with teams often having to rely on different platforms to track data, design media and video, and manage posts. Smartly.io brings everything together in one place and adds automation to the mix so that teams have more time to focus on strategy, personalization and experimentation.
A Team-First Culture: “Everyone looks out for each other and goes out of their way to set you up for success,” Farnham said. “Sales is a very competitive industry, and Smartly fosters a healthy environment for teams to collaborate and work together. We don’t compete with each other. We compete to win business so that our company can succeed.”
“Leadership and senior sellers are always ready to assist and offer guidance to secure a win. It is rare you have an entire sales team you can rely on and lean on, and I feel fortunate at this stage of my career to be a part of such an amazing culture.”
(Sales) Lessons Learned at Smartly.io: “The most valuable sales lesson I have learned is the importance of making sure your team has the right training and resources available to them. Sales requires having the right tools in the toolbox to be productive and successful, and Smartly.io does a fantastic job of making sure we have the best and most relevant sales tools to do our job effectively and efficiently. I do not take the resources provided to me for granted. I embrace them and use them every day to set myself and my team up for success.”
Smartly.io’s Newest Sales Tech: “LeadIQ and Gong are two tools we’ve recently adopted that help us work smarter. LeadIQ is an easy-to-use extension to LinkedIn that provides up-to-date names and roles of company employees so you can determine who you need to contact quickly and import their information right into Salesforce.”
Cloud-based building security company Fivetran ensures that building managers have full visibility over their facilities and that only people with proper clearance have access. The product delivers ready-to-use connectors that automatically adapt as schemas and APIs change, ensuring users consistent, reliable access to data.
Bring Your Full Self to Work: “At Fivetran, we feel safe sharing our voices, finding a connection with each other, and being our authentic selves,” Lead Technical Recruiter Angeline Lo previously told Built In. “We have several Slack channels and subjects that run the gamut, from a knitting club to cooking and baking tips, to random topics like cutting your own hair at home or promoting your favorite accordionist streaming a live performance.”
Currently Hiring: Fivetran is looking to hir a customer support engineer, business development representative and senior sales engineer in the east bay.
Miro is bringing whiteboarding sessions into the age of video meetings with its online whiteboard platform designed to enable teams to collaborate as if they were all in the same room.
Product-led Growth: “What we’re building here at Miro is quite unique in regard to our go-to-market motion,” Carr said. “We’ve grown our user base from 3.7 million to over 20 million in the last 15 months because we’re building a product that users and customers of all types and sizes love. The other piece of the puzzle is our culture of doing business in a way that genuinely aligns with our core values.”
“As a global company, we have a lot of different perspectives, and I love that our teammates uses their unique perspectives to learn, understand and better support our customers. Miro currently has over 100,000 client organizations, including 95 percent of the Fortune 100. And if you look at our deal rooms, we may have as many as 50 active “Mironeers” engaged in problem-solving for any customer at one time.”
(Sales) Lessons Learned at Miro: “The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is the importance of hiring the right people. When you hire truly great talent, everything else will come together. At Miro, we encourage active participation in the hiring process at all stages, which helps us ensure that we are bringing on new people who have the same positive attitude and set of values as the rest of our team.”
“I’ve also learned the importance of investing in the development of the team, which is why we incorporated a sales methodology called Force Management. It is fully customized to ensure it resonates with customers and our team. We want people to come to Miro to build their careers and stay with us for many years. We know that while they’re here, they’ll learn sales development skills that will help them excel in any scenario.”
By building high-end hardware on an intuitive, cloud-based software platform, Verkada allows modern enterprises to run safer, smarter buildings across all locations. The product brings ease of use to the levels of scale and protection that businesses and organizations require.
(Sales) Lessons Learned at Verkada: Questions matter more than answers. “By asking the right questions and listening to customers, you understand the business problems they need to solve,” Enterprise Account Executive Lauren Spears previously told Built In. “This helps you and your champion build a compelling, data-driven presentation on how your system will specifically benefit them. That way, conversations are less about price and more about value!”
Verkada’s Sales Openings: The team is currently looking to bring on a director of enterprise sales, a mid-market account executive and a sales enablement coordinator.
Torch is an integrated platform for learning and development leaders to deliver, manage and measure employee growth at scale. The sales department exists to create new business opportunities with prospective clients while fostering strong partnerships with existing customers.
An At-Home Feeling: “Since I am early in my career, I wanted to work at a place that would allow me to try out different things and learn quickly,” Full Stack Engineer Harshita Girase previously told Build In. “During the interviews, the team made me feel that my opinions were valued.”
Open Positions: Torch’s sales team is looking to bring on a mid-market account executive, sales development representative and sales manager, among other roles. While based in SF, all roles are open to remote employees.
