Robert Brooks IV has spent 12 years leading sales, marketing and customer success at early-stage startups. Typically, he has served as the first sales (and first non-technical) hire reporting directly to a technical founder. Robert started his career at Charles Schwab but joined Stack Overflow ($1.8B exit), then Tempo Automation ($900M IPO) and is now part of the founding team and VP of Revenue at Lambda ($1.5B valuation). Robert is an advisor to several top-tier VC firms and some of the most high-profile AI startups in Silicon Valley.

Discussed in this Episode:

• The importance of deeply understanding your industry and product when selling AI.
• How to train your sales team to sell to highly technical buyers and decision-makers.
• Applying the concept of neural networks to enterprise sales processes.
• Strategies for turning around challenging customer relationships, with a case study on closing SpaceX and growing it from 0 to 10M ARR.
• The role of empathy, curiosity, and genuine care in successful sales and partnerships.
• Tactics for scaling revenue in tough economic times, from personalized executive briefings to strategic event presence.

Highlights:
(10:27) Robert's background and early involvement in AI startups.
(15:09) Convincing technical founders to value go-to-market expertise.
(19:06) Applying the concept of neural networks to enterprise sales.
(25:25) The importance of comprehension and curiosity in sales hiring.
(27:55) Delivering a crucial hardware project for SpaceX.
(33:37) The role of genuine care in building trust with customers.
(39:56) Balancing product training and sales process training.
(44:39) One thing revenue leaders believe to be true that Robert thinks is bull$***.
(49:02) The benefits of full-stack account executives in early-stage startups.
(53:27) One thing that is working for Robert in go-to-market right now.

Guest Speaker Links (Robert Brooks):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boborado/

Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

Sponsor:

• Brought to you by Demandbase. Demandbase helps B2B companies hit their revenue goals using fewer resources by using the power of AI to identify and engage the accounts and buying groups most likely to purchase. Their account-based technology unites sales and marketing teams around insights that you can understand and facilitates quick actions across systems and channels to deliver big wins. It’s flexible, scalable ABM built for you.

The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.