CMO Samsara, Sarah Patterson: What You Do vs. Why It Matters
Grit28 Feb 2022

CMO Samsara, Sarah Patterson: What You Do vs. Why It Matters

Sarah Patterson, CMO of Samsara, doesn’t believe in keeping your armor up around your coworkers: “You’ve got something else on your mind, it’s going to come through,” she says. While working at Salesforce, she worked with a career coach and discovered that opening up about her personal and professional struggles brought her team closer. And that has also held true in her current role at Samsara, a fast-growing fleet management company that went public in December.


In this episode, Sarah and Joubin discuss the silver lining of the pandemic for her family’s cohesion; why catching up on work is a form of recharging; the benefits of journaling, even if it’s in an email thread; what Samsara does for a vital but un-digitized sector of the economy; the scary experience of living in the era of “smoke days”; hiring for sustainable rapid growth; Samsara’s IPO and earning the trust of the whole team; and how Sarah prepared to interview star skiier Lindsey Vonn.


In this episode, we cover:

  • Making deliberate choices about how you spend your time (06:36)
  • Accepting imperfection and being vulnerable with your colleagues (11:18)
  • The practice that goes into looking polished onstage (17:17)
  • The year Sarah left Salesforce for BranchOut, and why she went back (23:15)
  • The rapid growth of Samsara, and what it does (27:35)
  • How a mandate for truckers in North America laid the groundwork for Samsara’s business (33:39)
  • How Sarah thinks about the challenge of hiring, and why “what you do” is not the most important thing (39:32)
  • “Trial by fire” - earning the trust of workers who were at Samsara before her (42:43)
  • Is it easier to be an interviewer or an interviewee? (52:55)

Links:

Episoder(282)

Head of Revenue and BD at Asana, Oliver Jay: The Cutting Edge of Product-Led Growth

Head of Revenue and BD at Asana, Oliver Jay: The Cutting Edge of Product-Led Growth

When Oliver Jay worked for venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates in the late 2000s, he found that the most rewarding aspect for him was working with portfolio companies and watching the begin...

30 Aug 202146min

SVP Sales at Affirm, Eric Morse: Exploring The Partnership Between Engineering and Sales

SVP Sales at Affirm, Eric Morse: Exploring The Partnership Between Engineering and Sales

Eric Morse is unabashedly a “super nerd.”With a degree in physics from Duke University, Eric taught himself how to program and joined a consulting firm where he worked at implementing PeopleSoft, a hu...

23 Aug 202148min

CRO Front, LB Harvey: Moving Up-Market + Operational Excellence

CRO Front, LB Harvey: Moving Up-Market + Operational Excellence

Many successful LinkedIn alumni have been welcomed as guests on this podcast — and this week, the insightful LB Harvey will be joining those ranks.After starting her sales career as a Sales Executive ...

16 Aug 202145min

CRO/CSO Dialpad, Dan O’Connell: Taking Risks and Running a Company

CRO/CSO Dialpad, Dan O’Connell: Taking Risks and Running a Company

Dan O’Connell’s career is an impressive display of how hard work can catapult a person from the bottom of the sales hierarchy to the very top of business leadership.Having started as an account coordi...

9 Aug 202153min

CCO Figma, Amanda Kleha: The Strategies Behind Figma’s $10 Billion Valuation

CCO Figma, Amanda Kleha: The Strategies Behind Figma’s $10 Billion Valuation

When it comes to building a profitable business, Amanda Kleha has learned by doing. Amanda’s seven-year tenure in multiple senior marketing and sales positions at Zendesk saw the company make an IPO, ...

2 Aug 20211h 5min

CRO Okta, Steve Rowland: Identifying and Developing Future Business Leaders

CRO Okta, Steve Rowland: Identifying and Developing Future Business Leaders

When Steve Rowland studied at Texas A&M University to get his degree in engineering, he likely wouldn’t have expected that his career would shift into one of an extremely successful sales leader.Over ...

26 Jul 202147min

CRO Thrive, Renu Gupta: Building Positive Personal and Professional Habits

CRO Thrive, Renu Gupta: Building Positive Personal and Professional Habits

Take one look at Renu Gupta’s resume and it’s immediately clear that she is a talented — and successful — sales leader. With experience at companies such as Google, Dropbox and Slack, Renu has led lar...

19 Jul 202141min

SVP Sales at Iterable, Jan Zeman: Hiring and Coaching Successful Sales Talent

SVP Sales at Iterable, Jan Zeman: Hiring and Coaching Successful Sales Talent

When Jan Zeman was hired as a sales development representative in the early 2000s, he had a unique background in management consulting and venture capital. Jan has since risen through the sales ranks,...

12 Jul 202147min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
finansredaksjonen
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
pengepodden-2
utbytte
rss-sunn-okonomi
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
pengesnakk
liberal-halvtime
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
lederpodden
okonomiamatorene
rss-politisk-preik
rss-markedspuls-2