Enterprise...

Question

Enterprise AE Quota Attainment seems significantly more challenging than Mid Market at Showpad - why is that?

Former Employee · Accepted Answer

Former Sales Director perspective:

Showpad shifted their focus from Mid-Market first to Enterprise about 2 years ago. They were exclusively a mid-market player that enjoyed healthy but not exponential growth. Their two original co-founders were happy with where the company was but it appeared like the lead investor was not given they had fallen quite a bit behind Highspot & Seismic on both product features & market share.

In order to bridge the chasm they brought on a new CEO, CPO, CSO, CRO, CMO - the only c-suite to stay in place was their CFO (who is a world-class CFO)

However, the change in exec leadership led to three problems:

1) The product roadmap stalled: As said above, the product was competitive within mid-market but lacked major feature & functionality compared to Seismic & Highspot. The new CPO, who on paper looked like a smart hire coming from Miro, struggled to grasp the sales enablement market and created a revolving door of product & engineering talent that led to zero new features being created in his tenure. Today Showpad is likely in 5th place behind the two major players, Seismic & Highspot, as well as Allego & Bigtincan.  It's not competitive in the enterprise space and until they change CPOs I don't think it will

2) unrealistic sales goals: The sales cycle at showpad is between 3-6 months for mid-market buyers. Quotas for Enterprise deals were set in a similar time but forecast at closer to 3-months. In short, the whole sales org missed budget badly (in 2021 & 2022). This was coupled with an absentee CMO and lack of marketing strategy so pipeline coverage was often below 2x for Ent. Lack of success was largely focused on individual AEs. I was shocked when I was asked for names on my team to let go when it was my responsibility to make sure they were successful. Which brings me to point 3.

3) culture collapse: the original founders had created a brilliant culture. Yes, it was not the most economically efficient however people by and large loved the company, including me. The change in c-suite leadership turned the culture toxic relatively quickly. The CEO had come up through the ranks at Showpad and was neighbors with one of the co-founders. He had never been a CEO and was publicly struggling with imposter syndrome during company-wide calls. The best example would be comparing him to Joffrey Baratheon of Game of Thrones. A cruel kiss-the-ring culture was rewarded. While I was always treated well - the behind closed doors conversations were incredibly toxic and incompetent to the level of comical. Great talent become hard to keep.

In a nutshell:
- The product is not an Ent product and there is no product roadmap to get them there
- The sales incentive structure is not supportive to Ent buying cycles
- The culture rewards kissing the ring over sales performance. An Ent AE never hit quota while I was at Showpad and I don't see that changing without a new exec team

My advice if you're interested in the Sales Enablement space is to look at Seismic (great product, ok culture). I would avoid Highspot (Bro culture). Allego has an interesting product as well and may be worth checking out, no idea on their culture.

Former Employee · Answer

They don't know how to sell to the enterprise and have very junior sales reps that don't understand the enterprise space

Notifications

Showpad

RepVue Score

0

Showpad

79.74

Anonymous Q&A

Enterprise AE Quota Attainment seems significantly more challenging than Mid Market at Showpad - why is that?