Explore the forefront of innovation with our exclusive interview series, ExtraMile by KnowledgeNile. Here, industry pioneers share transformative tech insights and takeaways shaping the future of diverse industries.
In today’s conversation, Matt Schatz, the Chief Revenue Officer of Hivelocity, joined us to share his expertise. Hivelocity is a leading provider of enterprise cloud, virtual servers, and colocation solutions. Established in 2002, the firm has built a strong global reach and branches across 50 locations.
As the CRO of Hivelocity, Matt has been leading the company’s global expansion, sales, and revenue strategies. His extensive experience enables the firm to build and lead high-performance teams while driving significant growth. In discussions with Matt, we’ll complete an expedition that encompasses his professional journey, primary sales hurdles faced by enterprise cloud providers, the future of RevTech, and more.
Welcome, Matt; we’re pleased to host you today!
You are a sales expert with remarkable contributions to firms like Rackspace, WPEngine, Bazaarvoice, Flowspace, and others. How will you reflect on your professional journey across all these leading companies?
Matt. What made these companies great was our commitment to our customers. Having an organization who wakes up every day ready to delight their customers and building true partnerships is important. It’s what got me so excited about Hivelocity. I saw in Hivelocity the same ethos around delighting customers and not cutting corners when it came to supporting clients.
Matt, you joined Hivelocity a couple of months back with the vision to accelerate the company's global sales and revenue strategy. How do you plan to accomplish this goal and sustain growth within the organization?
Matt. It starts with building the right culture. Accountability is key, but it’s also so important to build a culture where people want to volunteer their best. Simon Sinek talks about culture as the difference between showing up for work and volunteering your best. When you have an organization that strives every day to volunteer their best, you can build something great. The other critical piece is the data. Everything has to be measured and have metrics-based goals. Repeatability starts with understanding the metrics.
What are the primary sales challenges that companies often ignore? How do you identify and tackle these hurdles?
Matt. I typically see early-stage companies not having a grasp on their key metrics, especially sales funnel metrics, conversion rates, etc. Without the metrics, it becomes incredibly hard to diagnose and solve sales challenges. Early-stage companies often fall victim to the hero mentality. It’s one person who steps in to save the day and without one or two people, the company is lost. Great companies develop the right processes, so they don’t need to have the superhero.
As a visionary leader, what attributes and skills do you look out for while appointing sales candidates to strengthen the team and drive organizational success?
Matt. I expect any candidate to come prepared with insightful questions that show me they’ve done their research. Great salespeople know how to ask great questions. I want my candidates to have a POV on the type and stage of company they want to work for and be able to explain their thought process. I expect my candidates to understand their own sales metrics and have demonstrated that they follow a sales methodology. After that, for every positive attribute they talk about, I want specific examples.
Innovations like enterprise cloud, virtual, and dedicated servers have transformed how businesses operate. How do you design a sales strategy for these services? What are the key considerations?
Matt. To me, this is all about asking the right questions and helping to educate our prospects on what might be the best solution for them. We need to understand why they need it now, but also to help them see around the next hurdle.
Is it important to align marketing and sales endeavors for better outcomes and higher revenue? What is your approach to this?
Matt. This is one of the most critical relationships that an organization has. It starts with having the same goal which is typically the revenue target. Too often, marketing has its own goal which might be Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales has a revenue goal. If the MQL goal is achieved but the revenue goal is missed, there is an issue. It also means having an agreed upon handoff for things like MQL’s, ABM campaigns, etc so the expectations for both teams are very clear. There also needs to be a feedback loop established so that improvement can be made and successes amplified.
What roles do analytics and reporting play in sales and revenue assessment? How do we adopt these techniques in a structured way?
Matt. First off, you have to measure everything. Revenue Operations is a critical team to build. Too often this hire is delayed, and most companies start by going too junior. A junior ops person can tell you all about the past. A senior ops person can use the data to help predict the future. That needs to be the goal. Start with the basics, like Pipeline conversion rates by stage throughout the funnel. Think about measuring deal expiration. Average sales cycle is interesting by treating each lead like a gallon of milk. Look at how long a deal is in the pipeline before your conversion rate goes down to a single digit. That becomes your deal expiration, so you know how much time you have to get that deal done.
The RevTech industry is changing swiftly, with new strategies and technologies entering the domain daily. According to you, which technologies will bring greater impact, and how do you plan to integrate them in the next couple of years?
Matt. I’m a little old school here, and what I don’t like are the technologies being deployed that just try and automate the sales process. I see too many reps that want all customer communication automated, which is generic and doesn’t build a trusted relationship. I need people that want and desire to learn about their prospects, who want to get on a video or phone call. With that said, I love technologies that give me insight into the client's journey, so I know exactly when to reach out. I love what Gong has done with their call recordings, their summarization, helping to identify next steps, etc.
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