President of Sprout Social, Ryan Barretto: Establishing a Compelling Company Vision

Ryan Barretto knows all about what it takes to successfully scale a business.

After an impressive 10-year career in sales leadership roles at Salesforce, Ryan took a role as SVP of Global Sales at Sprout Social — a business creating social media management tools — where he helped grow the company from $30 million in revenue to $170 million.

Now, one IPO later, Ryan is President of Sprout Social — and, also, today’s guest on Go To Market Grit! On this episode, Joubin and Ryan discuss Sprout Social’s content-led inbound lead generation engine, as well as the importance of delivering a compelling company vision as a leader.

In this episode, we cover:

• How Ryan's company, Sprout Social, is streamlining and improving social media management for businesses. (5:31)
• Early stages and IPO: The most stressful aspects of growing and scaling Sprout Social sales operation from $30 million to $170 million of revenue. (8:27)
• Leveraging content-driven marketing to support an inbound lead model. (13:55)
• How Sprout Social's product-led trial model makes account executives focus more on 'customer success' — and the evolution of the 'enterprise rep.' (16:19)
• The importance of asking for and taking feedback from colleagues as a leader. (19:59)
• Self-critical learners: Characteristics of successful new hires at Sprout Social — and how Ryan identifies learners during job interviews. (22:49)
• Why Ryan cares so deeply about learning and self-improvement — and how his upbringing as a first-generation Canadian informed his work ethic. (26:23)
• Instilling and supporting a culture of learning within an organization. (33:31)
• Fostering trust and rapport: Using collaboration with various business departments to communicate and build an inspiring company vision. (37:10)
• Learning and building credibility as a leader through being hands-on in all areas of a business. (41:08)
• 'Nailing the why': The importance of clear internal communication during periods of change. (43:01)
• What does the word grit mean to you? (46:27)

Links:

• Connect with Ryan
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins