How Personio builds long-term partnerships to drive revenue growth
Who we spoke with: Geraldine MacCarthy is Chief Revenue Officer at Personio, a leading European company that provides all-in-one software to streamline HR management processes so that SMEs can unlock the power of people.
Tell us about the role of the Chief Revenue Officer. Why do you think this job title is growing so fast?
First and foremost, it’s about accountability. In many organisations, the creation of the CRO role is an opportunity to consolidate disparate positions into a single C-suite level leader with clear accountability for revenue.
Over the last couple of years, systems, infrastructure, data and operations have become more sophisticated and complex. I think this has reinforced the need for a senior leadership role to align teams so that the organisation can drive revenue growth in a more cohesive way.
What motivates you at work and how do you motivate your team?
A business is nothing without great people, and what motivates me is helping people at Personio be the best they can be. It’s a privilege to work alongside them and to be able to support small and mid-size organizations across Europe with enterprise-grade software that makes a real impact.
We recently added our 10,000th customer and serve over a million employees, and I think everyone in the team has been galvanised by that milestone. It shows how far we have come, but also that we’ve just got started and an exciting future lies ahead.
What sales-related advice have you never forgotten?
It's a cliché but it holds true today: people buy from people. Time and time again, Personio has worked with a champion in a business who has bought our solution because of the way we nurture long-term relationships. Then, when they move onto a new business, either they reach out directly to us or we re-establish contact through LinkedIn and pick up where we left off. They know exactly what they are getting, and the mutual trust endures. Now more than ever, I think that partnership approach to sales is hugely important.
In practice, this means living our core value of exceeding customer expectations. At our all-team meetings, we invite customers in to tell us what we’re doing well but also what we’re not doing so well and how we can serve them better. We also have mechanisms in place to enable customers to give us direct product feedback and we systematically gather more detailed comments and data through our customer advisory board.
I think it’s this relentless customer focus that enables us to give HR teams a seat at the executive table, empowering them to deliver the data and insights that drive strategic impact within their organisations.
How have your buyers' expectations of the buying process changed in recent years?
Buyers today want to buy from companies that will truly partner with them in the long run and support them through good times and bad. It’s not just about today’s transaction, but the post-sale service you can offer tomorrow and into the future.
Delivering a good service is no longer simply about following their instructions. There's a growing expectation that we will respectfully challenge them on how they operate, bringing fresh data-driven insights and new ways of thinking.
Buyers have much more information at their fingertips than a decade or so ago and tend to do a lot more research, whether online or offline, before making a decision. Over the last five years, we've seen a proliferation of Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, which has been immensely exciting for both sellers and buyers. In these more challenging times, however, organisations are taking a fresh look at every single product in their tech stack and questioning whether it is truly adding value or not. The trend now is for consolidation with buyers moving towards all-in-one solutions that simplify their lives.
What are top-performing sales professionals doing differently at Personio?
There are three main things that I see our top sales reps doing at Personio.
Firstly, they are focused on partnership – building those long-term relationships that will enable them to support their buyers’ needs now and in the future.
Secondly, they know how to prioritise, having developed a keen understanding of what is going to drive impact today, what is going to drive impact next week and what needs to happen next month.
Thirdly, they use their unique vantage point to provoke customers to think in new and constructive ways. Because our sales reps are out in the market talking to HR professionals every day and analysing the latest HR data, they are able to bring in amazing insights and perspectives. Using these to respectfully challenge customers to evolve their thinking is mutually beneficial and an important part of the collaborative relationship.
How does LinkedIn Sales Navigator help your team build these deep relationships?
All the sales reps at Personio use LinkedIn Sales Navigator daily. It offers a unique and deep set of data on professionals and market trends consolidated into one place, which allows them to be more efficient and impactful.
Crucially, they can have much more detailed and focused conversations in the market than they would have otherwise, thanks to the valuable insights they have at their fingertips.
A major advantage is that we are able to integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator directly into our customer relationship management software, Salesforce, so that we have everything in one place. Studies have shown that people can lose up to 10 minutes of productivity every time they flip to a different software tool, so the fact that LinkedIn and Salesforce are well integrated is brilliant. It makes the whole process faster and smoother, and frees up our reps to focus on those deep, long-term relationships that are so important to us at Personio.
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