So most everyone is still working on figuring out just how distributed, hybrid, etc. we all want to be — and can be.
Harry Stebbings recently did a great 20VC with Marc Benioff and there’s a ton of great stuff in there.
One I found interesting was their Work from Home policy, circa now:
- Engineers just need to come to the office 10 days a quarter
- Sales & Marketing has to come to the office 3 days a week
- Marc works mostly from home himself, but “needs to be with his customers all the time”. Digital is OK sometimes — he does digital days, and “being in person with customers is critical.”
These are tough issues and I don’t think there are perfect answers. I do think this is roughly what most scale-ups would like though, having talked to many CEOs, CROs and more at 2023 SaaStr Annual.
Most just want to see their top engineers at quarterly meet-ups and once in a while. They know many engineers work best with quiet and concentration. Especially senior ones.
But most CROs I’ve talked to actually want their sellers in some sort of office 3+ days a week. They aren’t getting it in many cases. But it’s what they’d like.
And many are struggling to manage remote success teams effectively.
I don’t have all the answers. But I found it interesting how Salesforce has come up with 2 clear policies on engineering vs. sales & marketing.
Even for us at tiny little team SaaStr, we’re conflicted.
Has remote sales worked for us? Sort of. But we’ve also lost a lot doing it, as well. The team isn’t as close as it was when we all worked together. If I could, it would be 3 days a week together for our little sales and management team, too 🙂 But not sure that’s practical.
Much more in their great convo above.
