Yext, a location data management company, was founded in 2006 as a local advertising business. Howard Lerman, Brian Distelburger and Brent Metz started the business as GymTicket.com, which helped Internet users find gyms based on location. When these users called a gym to sign up for a trial membership, the company charged a fee. Within a year, the company’s sales reached $1 million and the company morphed into Yext.
By 2009, the company was generating $20 million in revenue and switched its billing model to one based on leads via pay-per-action ads. In 2012, the company shifted its focus again, honing in on its listing update service. Today, the company primarily helps businesses synchronize their data across local search services and their own websites. Yext has raised $119.5 million in funding to date.
A large factor in Yext’s continued success as a technology powerhouse is the company’s robust sales team, which accounts for about 200 people in Yext’s New York City office alone.
Brian Distelburger, Yext’s co-founder and President, heads this team, running the company’s global revenue division and overseeing all sales and customer relationships across the company.
We caught up with him to discuss how he leads such a successful sales fleet, what he looks for in a sales person and what he wishes he knew when he was first starting out in sales.
Built In: What lessons did you learn in previous roles that have carried over to this role?
Brian Distelburger: Sales, fundamentally, is about communicating value proposition and framing things in a language customers can understand, especially in the tech space.
BI: What’s an important lesson you’ve learned in leading a sales team?
BD: When you’re building and running a sales team, you’re working with a lot of different personalities. This means sales people with a lot of people with different styles and different approaches. Instead of one size fits all, you’re going to be communicating with different people within your target prospects.
BI: What do you look for when hiring a sales employee at Yext?
BD: I look for people with a chip on their shoulder. I look for people who have something to prove and that’s largely because the rest of the sales team is wired that way. We want people that fit the culture of our company. At Yext, we intend to build a giant technology company in New York, and while Silicon Valley is the leader of building tech, in New York, people have a chip on their shoulder about that.
BI: Can you share any unique tactics you’ve learned that have worked well from a sales perspective?
BD: It’s tricky when you’re first starting a company — you don’t know really what the target market looks like, and you don’t know about communicating or reaching out. Don’t just think about sales — we built our services organization in building our sales organization. So your first few sales hires are particularly important — you want people you’re comfortable putting in a room and having them represent your company and brand. They’re going to have a lot of influence on the market and the way your company is perceived.
BI: What are some values that you promote within Yext’s sales teams?
BD: Integrity. We primarily focus on high integrity people. We also promote knowing as much about your customer’s business as possible. Before we ever walk into a room with a customer, we will know as much about their business, what they care about and how to speak their language as we can.
BI: What do you wish you knew when you were first starting out?
BD: In Yext’s early days, we found that customers cared about who they were buying from just as much as what they were buying. You can’t just hire a few sales people and go. It’s that core executive team that’s out selling in market—and that’s important— because at the end of those days those brands are buying you and not the product. You have to be out on the frontlines — don’t sit behind a desk, don’t draw on a white board what you think the future of the world should look like. Get out in market and talk to customers. Founders should be their company’s number one sales people.
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