A strong sales operation is critical for companies to scale quickly. Your sales team has to be geared for growth every bit as much as your product and strategy functions. This was the subject of the latest Accel Breakfast, building on our previous events when we discussed product leadership and inbound marketing. We were lucky to be joined by Frank Swain, the CRO of Instana, one of our portfolio companies and a global leader in APM.

Frank has built highly successful, growth-minded sales teams at companies from Splunk to AppDynamics, and is now putting his experience to work at Instana. I have worked closely with the Instana team, including Frank and co-founder/CEO Mirko since we made our investment two years ago and they have taught me a lot about effective go-to-market strategies.

Over breakfast, Frank shared his experience on building a high-velocity sales operation, leveraging the land-and-expand model, and how to build and incentivise a winning sales team.