Episode #206
2 Months of Revenue in 8 Days: How Brex's CRO Fixes What Breaks at Scale ft. Garrett Marker (Brex)
Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com . What does it take to run 60% of a company? Garrett Marker, Chief Revenue Officer at Brex, oversees about 700 people across sales, customer success, RevOps, partnerships, enablement, and support - and this year, his goal was to aggressively scale a sales team that industry data recently ranked the third-fastest growing in tech, without letting rep performance slip. It hasn't all gone to plan. Garrett is refreshingly candid with host Josh Schachter, grading the scaling effort a "B" - what held up, what broke, and how his team turned around a slumping segment in dramatic fashion. Along the way, he explains why the battle cards that used to last a quarter now go stale in about a week, why Brex bet on human SDRs while the market rushed toward AI ones, and why the hardest part of AI products isn't selling them at all. It's a look inside the operating decisions of a CRO whose remit spans the entire customer lifecycle - from first touch through renewal and expansion. --- What You'll Learn - How a struggling Brex segment did two months' worth of revenue in eight days and the AI-assisted diagnosis behind the course correction - Why battle cards that used to last a quarter are now stale within about a week - How AI role plays and automated call scoring turned weeks or months of rep ramp into hours or days - Garrett's build-vs-buy rule - What Brex's internally built "narrative platform" does that seller-productivity tools don't (mapping the full buyer's journey across sales, CS, and support) - The question Garrett asked at the end of every demo as a seller and the rep whose career it transformed in three months - How the TAP program works - Why adoption, not sales, is the bottleneck for AI products - How a shift in CS conversations (not product changes) grew book-closing adoption 20% in twelve months - What Garrett believes it will take to increase NRR by 30 points in the next couple of years --- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview & Intro 1:52 - Meet Garrett Marker (CRO, Brex) 4:03 - Why founders buy like consumers 5:28 - Scaling the third-fastest-growing sales team in tech 7:28 - Solving today's AND tomorrow's problems 9:25 - 2 months of revenue in 8 days after a segment course correction 11:22 - How AI made competitive diagnosis faster 14:37 - Rebuilding enablement around AI and ramping reps in days 17:27 - How Brex decides build vs. buy 18:35 - Mapping the full buyer's journey across sales, CS, and support 21:38 - Success plans and buyer psychology 25:56 - Why won't you move forward? 27:53 - How SDRs earn on-the-spot promotions to AE 32:52 - Post-sale priorities: cracking AI product adoption at scale 35:11 - Why CS teams must understand the whole tech stack, not just their product (+20% book-closing adoption) --- Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com --- Where to Find the Guest Garrett Marker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmarker/ --- Where to Find the Hosts: Josh's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jschachter/ Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/
