Building Out Your Business During Your First Six Months

Whether you come from one end of the spectrum as a seasoned enterprise rep who knows the physical security space inside and out or are new to sales altogether, building your career at Verkada will be unique because of both the pace that you will grow with us and the nature of our company mission: integrating an organization’s commercial building and other physical spaces in order to provide a safer and more efficient environment. Understandably, it may not be immediately obvious why you should be making the jump from your current job situation but we encourage you to reach out to actual people on our sales team (profiled on our career web page or LinkedIn), to hear first hand about their journey at Verkada so far. Additionally, we hope these guides give you a sense of the different phases of the first year at Verkada and will help you visualize how you can come in and embark on a wonderful career here. In this post, we describe what your first successful six months at Verkada looks like in sales after completing onboarding and training.

Ramping up as a Rep

We give sales reps two quarters to “ramp up” before they are considered “fully ramped.” Quotas correspondingly follow this learning curve, and the levels are set up to allow good sales reps to generate outsize take-homes in commissions early on even as they ramp. We want reps to be successful and make money, first and foremost. We fundamentally believe that happy, successful reps are what is best for Verkada in the long-term.

What to Strive for while Ramping - Our Philosophy

Even though we are fully dedicated and committed to providing all the support and more that reps need to thrive, there is also a good amount of freedom here at Verkada that can be a surprise at first for reps who come from centrally managed companies. We use a decentralized approach. What that means for sales is that instead of being super prescriptive, we simply share what the best reps do. We don’t micromanage or tell you that’s what you have to do. Instead, we let you run your territory as your own CEO.

Another example of this is how we operate in sales using a decentralized model. Our sales org consists of complementary functions such as sales development, channel sales managers, support teams, and solutions engineers. However, the Account Executive owns the relationship with the customer in all these facets. They are responsible for building their pipeline, knowing their partners, demoing the product, and supporting existing customers. In other companies, the ownership is more dispersed, which leads to less flexibility and the earning potential is diminished. In a decentralized model, one person - you - are the owner and stand to gain the most financially for running your business well in your territory.

Sound daunting? Good. It means that this is an incredible opportunity. Being a part of a hyper-growing company with large-scale ambitions means also taking on commensurately bigger picture views for your personal career ambition.

As you ramp up, the high level questions to guide you should be along the lines of - how can I build out my own business within my territory, leveraging all the support I have around me? It’s almost like at Verkada, you are building your own start-up within our start-up.

Building Out Your Territory

The most crucial factor to your success during your first six months is constructing a detailed territory plan in order to strategically prospect and build revenue pipeline. Your manager will assist you in identifying the top accounts in your patch, placing a heavy emphasis on pipeline generation and learning the sales cycle. You will work hand in hand with your channel sales manager to build relationships with channel partners in your region, who you will leverage to close deals and break into top tier accounts. The repetitions and experiences you get during your first six months will set the foundation for the rest of the year as you transition to a fully-ramped Account Executive.

Becoming the CEO of your Patch

In the third part of the 'Sales at Verkada' blog series, we cover what it takes to be successful at the one-year mark of being a sales rep, after you’ve finished ramping up as a rep both in terms of your quota and your skill sets. In it, we go discuss going above and beyond the Verkada Sales Playbook and the importance of relationships with your peers and other departments.