The Crew Podcast (fka The Vibescaling Podcast)
GTM Roundtable: The State of AI-Native Sales w/ Clay, Parallel, Avoca & Profound
Four sales leaders running revenue at AI-native companies sat down with Chris Balestras to talk about what the job actually looks like right now. Territory plans that get thrown out mid-year. Comp models nobody has figured out. And the thing candidates never hear before they sign, which is that the first year is going to hurt. The conversation runs through deal caps and inbound throttling, why a four-month paper process feels broken to founders who watched the eval close in two days, and how each of them decides whether a candidate wants to learn the game or just extract from it. It closes somewhere more personal, on the conversations these guys had at home before taking the job. The Guests Liam Mulcahy is Head of Go-To-Market at Parallel . Jack Gashi is VP of Sales at Avoca Mark Ebert is SVP of Revenue at Profound Todd Busler is Head of Sales, Americas Discussed in This Episode: • Why annual territory and capacity planning falls apart when you hire this fast • Which things should stay written in pencil and which need to be written in pen • Deal caps and shutting off inbound to stop reps from sitting on pipeline • Why AE productivity benchmarks are made up right now, and everyone knows it • Jack on why equity is the wrong thing for most AEs to optimize for • The “worst 12 months” preview Clay gives candidates on purpose • Coin-operated vs. money-motivated , and how to tell them apart in an interview • The conversations these leaders had with their spouses before saying yes • Hiring people with young kids as a deliberate advantage Timestamps - (00:00) The worst 12 months of your life - (00:51) Welcome to the Crew podcast - (02:05) Headcount planning heading into next year - (02:50) Why most of the plan is written in pencil - (03:55) The four-month paper process nobody can explain - (11:53) When your best rep is also shipping code - (20:57) Moving the AM function into sales - (21:17) What you actually tell a candidate about quota and club - (24:47) Interviewing AMs and writing the rules as you go - (29:33) How do you do capacity planning right now - (29:55) Why the productivity math doesn't add up - (31:11) Reps turtling on deals - (32:33) Setting a deal cap ten minutes after the meeting - (34:14) It's a race, and what that does to coverage - (44:55) Forget the equity - (48:50) Coin-operated vs. money-motivated - (56:36) Hiring someone with a young kid at home - (61:09) Quality of time, and what the family actually sees - (75:04) The nuclear keys About The Crew Podcast The Crew podcast interviews GTM leaders and investors at top AI startups and early-stage companies. Every week, host Chris Balestras, partner @ Crew, talks to the people actually building go-to-market motions in real time, not in retrospect. About Crew Crew is a recruiting, investing, & media firm for seed through series D AI-natives & fast-growing SaaS startups. Where to Find Crew LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crewgtm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecrewgtm Website: https://www.withcrew.ai/Blog: https://www.withcrew.blog/
