GTM 13: How to Hire People who are Wired for Greatness

GTM 13: How to Hire People who are Wired for Greatness with Suresh Khanna

Suresh Khanna is the Co-Founder and COO at Pieces. He is the former CRO and president of AdRoll Group, where he led the go-to-market strategy, scaled sales, success, and support teams from 10 to 400 people, and increased revenue from about $3 million to over $150 million when he left.

Suresh also established award-winning training and development programs that helped the company win Best Place to Work multiple times

What You Will Learn:

  • How to build a performance culture that works.
  • How AI advancement could impact go-to-market and agencies.
  • How to maintain raw energy while scaling.

Highlights:

(5:12) Suresh’s background and story.

(10:00) Why Suresh turned down a once-in-a-lifetime McKinsey job at 26.

(12:22) Suresh’s experience at Google.

(13:22) Why Suresh left Google for AdRoll.

(14:39) Suresh’s success at AdRoll.

(14:39) Suresh founding Pieces.

(17:00) AI advancement and its potential impact on go-to-market and agencies.

(25:21) How to build a winning performance culture.

(28:54) How to find and hire people wired for greatness.

(34:01) How to train managers to make better hiring decisions and scale the hiring process.

(38:29) How to reduce new hire ramp-up time.

(44:20) How AdRoll created a winning self-policing culture.

(46:20) What Suresh would do differently.

(49:15) How to keep the raw energy when rapidly scaling.

(53:32) The number one reason startups fail.

(57:30) Summary of Suresh’s career learnings.

Guest Speaker Link:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/khannasuresh/

Host Speaker Links:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/

The GTM Podcast
Don’t miss The GTM Podcast dropping every Tuesday discussing true stories and experiences including trials and tribulations in the Go-To-Market world.

Before helping found GTMfund, Scott spent 4 years at Outreach as Director of Strategic Engagement. He was in charge of aligning key relationships with VCs, BoDs, ecosystem partners and community members to drive revenue and strategic initiatives across Outreach. Scott initially ran revenue/partnerships for Sales Hacker (which was acquired by Outreach in 2018). Prior to Sales Hacker, he led and built outbound Business Development teams at Payfirma and MediaValet. Scott also advises for a number of high growth start-ups and is the host/author of The GTM Podcast and The GTM Newsletter. At GTMfund, Scott leads all fundraising efforts and runs the media arm of the firm. He’s also responsible for assessing investments, team management, LP/community relationships and GTM support for founders.

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