Tammy Sexton brings over two decades of experience in enterprise sales to her role as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Skyflow. Her role is to lead the global revenue organization, drive revenue growth, recruit top talent and strengthen relationships with customers across industries and regions. Organizationally at Skyflow, this means that Tammy oversees pre-sales, sales, business development, deal desk operations, and the sales engineering team.
However, the role of CRO extends far beyond that. Tammy defines her job as: Recruit-Retain-Revenue. It’s her responsibility to recruit the best sales professionals on the market today, and then to offer the training and support necessary for them to become the next great generation of Account Executives (AEs). Tammy recognizes the importance of building a strong team, and often references a quote from Skyflow’s CEO, “the team we build is the company we build.”
Below are highlights of the interview:
Can you briefly describe your journey and experience in the realm of revenue generation and leadership roles?
Most people in this role start out as an SDR, and I actually did not. I actually worked at a bank, and one of my clients owned his own company selling printers. He totally convinced me to join, and I’m so glad he did. From there, I went to Parametric Technology, which had an excellent sales development program, and it was an incredible place to learn.
I then spent over a decade at EMC and then a couple years at 1E before I got the startup bug. I discovered I really loved building a team and really getting those early, marquee logos that make such a big difference for a growing startup. I really worked my way up and made each role count. I was at SumoLogic, LogicHub, PagerDuty, and LaunchDarkly before joining Skyflow as their first Chief Revenue Officer early last year.
Tell us about Skyflow and its mission. What inspired you to join this company?
Skyflow is a data privacy vault company that’s revolutionizing how companies isolate, protect, and govern their customers’ sensitive data. We currently support customers around the world, like Lenovo, Nomi, and Science37, that span verticals like AI, fintech, retail, travel, and healthcare.
When I met Anshu and the leadership team, it immediately became clear to me that Skyflow is solving one of the most important technology problems of our era with a radical new approach, and the size of the potential market (TAM) blew me away. The data privacy problem isn’t going away, and Skyflow has the most comprehensive, scalable data privacy solution on the market today.
As a strategic leader, what methods do you employ to recognize and maximize company revenue while maintaining a focus on customer satisfaction?
We really emphasize that our AEs are also account managers, not just opportunity managers. Their job is to maintain a good experience for our customers throughout the lifecycle of each relationship, from partnering with our solutions engineers during initial calls to collaborating with our implementation and customer experience teams. We do our best work when we work as one team to put our customers first.
In terms of motivating our sales team, I’m a big proponent of positive reinforcement and specifically using spiffs to reach our goals. And not just rewards for getting a certain deal closed—we all should be closing deals—but incentives that reinforce great sales behavior. Recently, we had a spiff called “What’s your dog’s name?” that was all about getting our AE’s to ask prospects questions, get to know them on a personal level, and eventually build champions for Skyflow.
Could you elaborate on your involvement in aligning sales, marketing, and other revenue-related departments to achieve organizational goals?
Aligning sales, marketing, and product are key to our success at Skyflow. We all have different areas of expertise, and if we’re not collaborating, we’re not winning. Having alignment at the top is the first step. The executive team needs to be on the same page about what our priorities are and what our goals are.
From there, it’s an organized effort toward each goal. SDR and BDR outreach won’t have a ton of impact if we’re not targeting those same audiences with paid marketing or if we have no content on our website to keep those folks in the funnel. We need marketing to help us get and close deals, and marketing needs feedback from us so that they’re not creating content in silos.
We have joint Slack channels with marketing, and we work in lockstep. If something’s not working, we keep experimenting. We operate with curiosity, low ego, and shared goals.
What key trends and shifts do you see in the industry that are impacting revenue generation strategies?
There are a few things in flux right now. We’re seeing people be far less responsive on email and more responsive on LinkedIn. Automation tools were super helpful in the beginning, but the reality is that people can recognize them from a mile away. We’re starting to see the adoption of tools like ChatGPT to uplevel sequences and test out certain messages. The future is definitely more personalized and more relationship-focused.
With your extensive experience, what advice would you give to aspiring commercial executives looking to excel in the world of revenue growth?
If you want to be a great revenue executive, the most important thing you can do is to focus on being a great AE first. Show up for your team and for your customers. Raise your hand for new opportunities and challenges. Really focus on the basics of what makes a great account executive, which means connecting with prospects, really listening to and understanding their pain points, and then turning them into champions.
Beyond your professional endeavors, what are some of your personal interests or hobbies that help you maintain a well-rounded and energized perspective?
Finding balance is really important to me. I love working out. I like to think I’m like a local celebrity at my neighborhood Orange Theory. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and I love animals. I have two dogs, Brutus Beefcake Sexton and Jack Daniels Sexton, and a cat named Jinxy Sexton (from Meet the Parents).
I also really love reading and learning. I’m passionate about growing as a sales leader, and I read a lot of books on the subject because of that. Qualified Sales Leader, Power of Habit, and Fanatical Prospecting are all favorites. I recommend these books to anyone on my team—I’ll even buy them for anyone in Revenue!
Where do you see the future of revenue generation heading, and what strategies do you plan to adopt to stay ahead of the curve?
People are growing weary of all of the automation. Everyone’s overstimulated. The future of revenue generation is going to be relationship-building and actually connecting with your prospects. We need to shift towards targeted, well-researched outbounding.
Website: Skyflow
