Building a Company First Culture that Drives Results

It’s 3pm on Friday, September 28th, the last business day of the quarter and we’re just over $100k away from an aggressive stretch goal. It’s looking like we’re going to come up short. Even though over 90% of our Account Executives (AEs) have hit quota, everyone seems a little disappointed that they couldn’t overachieve by enough to close the gap.

That is when we get an inbound call from a prospect interested in evaluating our solution. The prospect says he wants to do a team demo early next week, and that if they see the value of the platform, they can quickly move forward and sign an agreement. The I-SDR (Inbound Sales Development Rep) gently pushes back saying we’re happy to move at your timeline (as we have a consultative sale), but mentions we might have some flexibility if they’re able to move quickly as it’s the end of our fiscal quarter. The prospects makes no promises but agrees to schedule the demo for 4pm that day rather than next week.

The I-SDR immediately preps the AE for the call. The AE then approaches the Customer Success team to ask about how similar customers use us so that he can be prepared to tell the right stories on the call. He also goes to our Product Specialist team to request that they build the solution out as if they were already customer. Typically we only do this once an agreement is signed, but they are well aware of what was at stake and want to help.

Long story short, after some heroics, we were able to get the prospect to sign at 7pm which put us over our stretch goal.

The best part: there were still over 70 people company-wide in the office cheering as the DocuSign came in. It was an incredible moment, and that level of company unity was something I had never previously experienced.

What is a Company First Culture?

So how did we get to a point where so many different departments wanted to help close a deal and help hit the goal?

At CB Insights, we pride ourselves on having built and maintained a Company First Culture.

What defines a company first culture? It is a place where:

• Everyone buys into and is focused on the overall company goals
• Employees make decisions that are in the best interest of the company
• There is a feeling that people are a part of something bigger than themselves
• Everyone feels like they are contributing to the overall success of the company
• There is an environment of trust because even if people don’t agree with every decision they believe that everyone has positive intent and is coming from a place that is in the best interest of the company

Moving from theory to practice

You might think, that sounds great but is only good in theory. While it may be easy to get people at the top to work together, it isn’t realistic for individual contributors.

I thought that too before I got to CB Insights. Now that I've experienced it first hand,  I have put together a concrete list of seven things you can do to make it happen. They are:

• Start from the top
• Build transparency
• Explain the WHY
• Delegate responsibility
• Leverage team-based incentives
• Hire the right people
• Promote the company first mindset

1. It starts from the top.

If the executive team isn’t in sync and there are disputes within leadership that are not in the best interest of the company, it will absolutely trickle down to the front line. This is especially true (but not limited to) if people below find out about them. While employees should be open with everyone, they should always voice concerns up the ladder, not down.

Furthermore, it is critical for leadership to “disagree and commit” on decisions, meaning that everyone feels heard, but once something is decided, all of the leaders must buy in and move forward with that decision. Additionally, politics need to be avoided or building this type of culture is impossible. If career promotions are not done in a systematic way that are merit based as opposed to favoritism, people will focus on the wrong metrics to get ahead. While it’s important for executive leadership to build strong relationships with the team, promotions can not be based on who the executives like the best. It needs to be based on who has demonstrated the right results in the right way.

2. You need to be transparent with numbers if you want people bought in.

While companies think they do this by doing a quarterly town hall, this isn’t nearly enough. If your intention is to inspire people to do their best work in order to help build an incredible company, everyone should know exactly where things stand. At CB Insights, we have chalkboards visible that anyone can see in real time where we are as a company for both new business revenue and retention. Whenever we close new business or retain an existing customer the employee writes it on the board and subtracts the revenue from the overall goal.  This allows everyone to always know what our current gap to the goal is. This also empowers everyone to see how their work is consistently getting the team closer to the company goal. We actually have pictures for the last 3 years of the chalk board at the end of every quarter and this is something that we all take a lot of pride in as it’s a reminder of all of the blood sweat and tears that went into hitting every quarter.

3. EXPLAIN the WHY.

At CB Insights, we had over 50 promotions across our SDR, AE and CS groups in 2018 alone. 3 of our Sales Directors were Account Executives at CB Insights prior to managing AEs. 3 of our Customer Success Directors were CSMs here prior to managing them. People have the opportunity to truly grow their careers at CB Insights. In meetings, we constantly reiterate that continued growth and company success will lead to more opportunities for everyone. While there always needs to be a balance between internal and external hiring in a successful organization, job openings will obviously slow down if we do not continue to hit our numbers. This helps everyone focus on the big picture.

4. Be sure to delegate responsibility and promote creativity.

Nobody at a fast growing company wants to be just a cog in the wheel. In addition to our quarterly hack day, we are always finding ways for people to take on new challenges. The most de-motivating thing someone can hear is “just do your job” so we always encourage people to find new projects that will help the company in addition to managing their normal responsibilities. Additionally, rather than leadership taking everything on, we constantly give employees projects that do not necessarily fit under their role like owning a weekly meeting or organizing a contest. We provide them the freedom to run with these things and come up with their own ideas. This increased ownership allows them to grow while also injecting a company first mentality by creating meaning and growth in their work. While some companies believe that they can buy loyalty, the majority of people care more about career growth than anything else.

5. Team based incentives are a key tool at your disposal.

At CB Insights, if we hit our annual revenue targets, we go on a 2 day retreat as a company. Not only does this build camaraderie as a company, but it pushes the whole team to work together the whole year. While every company has its own parameters, if you incentivize based on team goals, it’s easy to get people more aligned. That is why all of our contests and SPIFFs are team-based.

6. Hire the right people, not only the best people.

This could even have been first on the list as it is that important. Every company has those people that are talented, but that only cares about themselves.  At CB Insights, that type of selfishness isn’t tolerated. One of our core values is humility. We always interview for humility and no matter how good a person is, if we feel they are too arrogant or selfish, we’ll pass on them even though we have so many positions to fill.

7. Promote the company culture mindset.

We constantly use the term “company first” so it’s a common phrase across our org. Marc Jacobs, our SVP of Sales and Customer Success did an entire presentation on it at our annual Sales Kickoff this year. We tell stories about how people made company first decisions and we celebrate those people. Additionally, while of course we recognize strong individual performance, most accolades go to teams or groups of people that did special things that helped the team as a whole. If you focus more on the team than the individual from the leadership team down, the rest of the org will follow.

The best part is company first means everyone wins

Here are just some of the reasons why focusing on the above is a win for everyone:

For the organization as a whole: people will be much more efficient by being focused on progressing the business forward rather than getting caught up on “me first” things. This leads to far less turnover because people understand company decisions better which mitigates the potential of prolonged frustration.

For leadership: the leadership team is more aligned and there is trust that everyone will make the best decisions for the org. This makes decision making easier as we always talk about “what’s best for the company.” We need to make many decisions every day as we scale at CB Insights, but by going in with a company first approach,we are able to execute quickly and efficiently.

For individual contributors:  The feeling of being a part of building something bigger than yourself gives deeper meaning to their work as they know that they are contributing to the larger picture and growing a real company that you can feel proud of. Your career will grow quicker when the company trusts that you have the right intentions.

At the end of day, there are many reasons that we’re having tremendous success. We are fortunate to have a great product, customers  and a ripe market amongst other factors. But very few companies in the world are able to have our growth rate and consistently continue to exceed high expectations. Quarter over quarter we are able to meet bigger and bigger challenges while maintaining a great culture. I am confident that we would not be in this position without the company first culture we’ve created and maintained.