Dominic Allon of Pipedrive On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business
It’s all about balancing the short and the long, delivering day-by-day whilst staying on course for your ‘true north’ vision and strategy. We inevitably get drawn into the ‘here and now’, so you need discipline to create time and space to look up and out, keep in touch with changing environments and customer expectations, and hone your long-term goals.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dominic Allon, CEO of Pipedrive.
Dominic is the CEO of Pipedrive, the world’s leading CRM for small businesses. Backed by Vista Equity Partners, Pipedrive’s CRM platform helps companies close more deals and grow their business. Prior to Pipedrive, Dominic served in leadership roles at Google, The Economist, KKR and Intuit.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
I’m from London and have been based here for most of my career although I spent nearly three years running Google Hong Kong following more than six years at Google UK in leadership positions. For most of my career, I have served in commercial roles at global media and technology enterprises, including The Economist, Google and Intuit.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
One of the biggest decisions I made that helped me get where I am today was leaving the warm waters of Google after 10 years to branch out and try something new. Sometimes, the biggest risk is not taking any risk. From there, I landed at the global financial technology company and maker of Quickbooks and Turbotax, Intuit, where I had the opportunity to learn from the best of the best, and serve in general management roles for Intuit UK and France, and then eventually Intuit’s entire international business. This experience set me up well for my current role as CEO of the global SaaS company Pipedrive where we have achieved fantastic product-led growth and established ourselves as the best sales CRM for small businesses.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
One that is top of mind was during my tenure at Google. I scaled the ‘Squared’ digital marketing training program, a groundbreaking educational course founded by Google that spans five months and empowers a new breed of digital marketeers. The initiative has been instrumental in helping a new generation of marketeers worldwide digitize their skills and get the most out of the internet.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
Early in my career, I had a couple of long stints with the same companies. With hindsight, I could have stretched myself and expanded my experience and skill sets with one or two additional job cycles in different companies. My advice to early and mid-career executives is to actively manage their careers balancing loyalty and tenure, with wide-ranging experiences and challenges, and never be afraid to try something new.
Upskilling your abilities is never a bad idea — whatever field you are in, it’s a great way to learn something new, while staying competitive in the job market. You never know what doors will open up or what new opportunities might present themselves, and even if you are not looking, it’s always good to have options.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
Giving and receiving mentorship and coaching are key for all of us. Even the best athletes who are at the top of their game have coaches to offer support and development — and emotional support is just as important as physical.
I’ve benefited from the advice and guidance of a number of key figures throughout my career, and have in turn enjoyed supporting others inside and outside of the workplace when I can. I think it’s essential to have multiple sources of unbiased, third-party advice from people who only have your best interests at heart — that is how we improve and grow. It can be from an executive coach or a close relative, or sometimes both!
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
I’ve learned a lot from other leaders and try to emulate the best of each. At Google, Larry and Sergey taught me the importance of thinking big and innovation, and at Intuit, under Founder Scott Cook, I learned to be obsessed with listening to and observing customers, and building products that solve their needs. More recently, at Pipedrive I’m proud of our unique people-first culture because I see that when we put our people and customers first, everything else follows!
Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.
Declare and amplify your purpose. Why do you exist? What gets you out of bed in the morning? At Pipedrive our purpose and passion is to help small businesses grow and everyone on the team is excited to achieve that.
People, people, people — to scale successfully you have to have the right people on the bus. We stay close to our team members to ensure they have clear objectives and all the resources they need to succeed.
Customer obsession — understanding customer needs is at the heart of successful product strategy. We use data to understand at scale how our customers use our product and are very focused on capturing and analyzing the ‘voice of customer’ through all available channels.
Commercial ambition and readiness — marketing, sales and go-to-market channels are all critical and require sufficient investment to sustain long-term market conditioning and revenue growth. Recently we’ve found great ROI by expanding our marketing investment.
Invest in technology to enable you to scale efficiently. For example, all our small business customers understand the need to have an excellent CRM system in place — that means you are investing in your customer relationships, which is foundational in successful sales and key in driving revenue streams for the bottom line.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
It’s all about balancing the short and the long, delivering day-by-day whilst staying on course for your ‘true north’ vision and strategy. We inevitably get drawn into the ‘here and now’, so you need discipline to create time and space to look up and out, keep in touch with changing environments and customer expectations, and hone your long-term goals.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
If you hire well, in line with your values, you will get the best of the existing culture whilst also allowing new employees to be themselves and offer a net addition to the team dynamic. This allows the culture to evolve organically. It’s also important to have a kind, but open and honest feedback culture, and at Pipedrive I try to lead by example in shaping such a culture.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
Onboarding is critical and it pays to invest in giving new employees an excellent onboarding process and experience up front. Not only does this leave a positive impression on new folks, but it’s also important to orient them quickly so they can feel part of the team and add value as soon as possible!
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
My best advice is “seek to understand before you seek to be understood.” I feel like that is highly relevant in the workplace, whether you’re interacting with employees, your boss, customers or partners, but it carries into all other aspects of our lives as well.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m most active on LinkedIn and often post news about Pipedrive’s culture, innovation and technology. Follow me on LinkedIn or send me a message: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicallon/
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
