Startup CRO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Sales Function

by Matt Blumberg, Anita Absey

Overview

You're only a first-time CRO once, but that first time can be a daunting challenge for startup leaders. Without a blueprint or a guide, you're in a tough spot to manage all the details of the sales function, from developing collateral, to hiring the right people, to scaling your team. Startup CRO was written to help the first-time CRO navigate sales leadership challenges and provide tactics and best practices for how you can grow a high-performing sales organization.

Matt Blumberg and Anita Absey have decades of sales and leadership experience from founding a company, scaling it, and exiting. They cover a wide range of topics from establishing your pipeline, to hiring the right salespeople, scaling the sales organization, geographic expansion, pricing and packaging, and more. The authors share how to collaborate effectively in the executive suite and with functional leaders throughout an organization. As an added bonus, Matt shares CEO-to-CEO advice on what a great CRO looks like, signs your CRO isn't scaling, and how to engage with the CRO.

Startup CRO will help you pinpoint gaps or weaknesses, turn those into strengths, and help you scale yourself, the sales function, and your organization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798991328326
Publisher:	Bolster Network
Publication date:	10/10/2024
Series:	Bolster Startup
Pages:	118
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.28(d)

About the Author

Matt Blumberg has spent his entire career creating startups, scaling them, and sharing best practices of what works and what doesn't work for other CEOs and team members in the entrepreneurial community. He is the author of "Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business" (Wiley, 2020), an influential book embraced by entrepreneurs, CEOs, founders, and board of directors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Startup CEO was an outgrowth of his blog, StartupCEO.com. In 1999, he founded Return Path, an innovative email marketing company, helped it to $100m in revenues, and led it to a successful exit in a strategic sale to Validity in 2019. Along with colleagues from Return Path, Matt started Bolster in 2020, a company focused on helping startups and scaleups grow, develop, and scale their leadership teams and boards. Matt's second book, "Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams" (Wiley, 2021), was a collaboration with Bolster's CXOs to provide a blueprint for scaling up each function. Before Return Path, Matt led Marketing, Product Management, and the Internet Group for MovieFone, Inc. (later acquired by AOL). Prior to that, he served as an associate with private equity firm General Atlantic Partners and was a consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. He also cofounded and chairs the board of Path Forward, a nonprofit created and spun out of Return Path. Path Forward's mission is to empower people to restart their careers after time spent focused on caregiving by working with companies offering mid-career internships. Path Forward gives women and men a path to a professional career, while giving companies access to a diverse, untapped talent force. Matt is currently Executive Chair at Bolster. He earned his A.B. from Princeton University.

Anita Absey began her career on Wall Street in equity research, risk arbitrage, and corporate finance, but for the past 20 years has had wide-ranging roles in sales. Anita has been in sales leadership positions in startups and scaleups including Abacus Direct, DoubleClick, Return Path, and Voxy. Anita views her success through the lens of revenue growth and customer satisfaction and her greatest satisfaction comes from watching people on her teams thrive in their careers. Anita contributed to "Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams" (Wiley, 2021), sharing her experience, tips, and best practices for CROs to build a great sales organization. She earned a BA in economics at Fordham University.