Running Through Walls: How To Build a Sales Team

At Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), founded in 1985, sales played a major role in the company’s success. As former PTC CEO Steve Walske told Venrock partner Brian Ascher, by investing heavily in a sales force for the design software company, PTC became a powerhouse in its market.

“The way you sustain your advantage is through distribution, because then you can build other products and run them through the same channel,” says Walske, who is now on the boards of several VC-backed startups and also mentors software CEOs. Shifting resources to sales, Walske says, allowed the company to build value while listening to customers — and improving the product at the same time. “We had this mantra, which was ‘Let’s make good decisions today, so that at the end of the day, when we go home, the company is more valuable than it was at the beginning of the day.’” That focus on value, Walske says, led directly to PTC’s strong sales force.

But a great sales team doesn’t simply happen, Walske is quick to add — it needs strong guidance. “Obviously there are certain sales people who are innately talented — they’re intelligent, they’re personable, and they work hard,” he explains. “But at the end of the day, it’s all about management.”

That means experimenting to determine the right structure for a sales team and the right profile for the salesperson selling the product. “Should it be someone sitting in offices all throughout the country, or should they all be sitting in an office together? Should it be a hybrid approach?” Once managers figure out the answers, they understand the best sales model for the business. Some of the salespeople on the “experimental” team will drop off, and that’s OK, Walske says: “The ones that were left, we knew what their profile looked like.”

Walske also believes in a methodical approach to setting up teams and territories — again, with the goal of carefully managing growth. “If you’re a Bay Area company, you put your five salespeople in your main office, and they come in every day” to work with the manager, Walske says. Salespeople may need to travel to service far-flung accounts, he adds, “but you save enormous amounts of money by making sure you have strong direct management on top of these people.”

Now that he spends most of him time on boards (including ClearCare and 6sense), Walske remains a believer in strong management — especially when it comes to having hard conversations with entrepreneurs. “I do prefer CEOs who can accommodate negative feedback,” he says. “I don’t want to waste their time, and I don’t want to waste my time.” He sees his board responsibilities as ongoing conversations, not simply showing up at meetings.

“What I tell my CEOs is that if I learn something new in a board meeting, then one of us isn’t doing our job,” Walske says. “If it really works, then I become an extension of the management team.” He expects that leaders will contact him directly with questions so he can offer advice, “and that dialogue continues. That’s the engagement I want.”