In this episode, founder of Highspot, Oliver Sharp speaks with Madrona Managing Director, Tim Porter about the importance of being connected with your customer.  This connection informs your product market fit, your sales and market story, and how you reach your customers.  Oliver offers straight talk about how to understand your audience – and how thinking in their terms is more valuable than you may realize.  He covers how to build a successful customer satisfaction team (start with the product designers) and how this approach of being close to the customer was the crucial element that changed the trajectory at Highspot. 

 

Oliver also talks about making the transition from big company to startup.  He has done this journey back and forth several times and as he states “a startup doesn’t care how senior you are” the work needs to get done.  Oliver offers some ideas for interviewing if you are thinking of making the leap from big to startup.  One tip is don’t use the phrase “roll up my sleeves!”

 

The slightly longer than usual episode ends with how to have a company culture survive and change.  You can come up with great words and values – and he offers some ways to integrate these into everything a company does and thus build the strength of the organization. 

 

Highspot is the highest rated and most adopted sales enablement platform on the market.  Their customers include Workday, Dun & Bradstreet, Zillow, Starbucks.  Oliver is a founder and the Chief Solutions Architect at Highspot.