Jarod Greene [00:00:00]:
Welcome to V5, where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox about some of the hottest takes in all of B2B SaaS and sales. I am joined today by Nicole Kawamoto, who's the Director of Solution Engineering of Pro Products at ServiceTitan. Nicole, I don't want to spoil the hot take. I'm going to let you get right to it and cook. So what do you got today?
Nicole Kawamoto [00:00:22]:
I'm really excited to talk about individual quota for solutions engineers. I know this can be a hot take, but I truly believe that this is the key to a really high-performing SE team. So I'd love to talk about how we've done that at ServiceTitan.
Jarod Greene [00:00:36]:
Get into it. Let's go.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:00:38]:
Awesome. So we didn't start out with individual quota. When I originally joined the team and first became a manager, we based our quota off of just generally how did the overall team do towards our annual operating plan, which was great in some ways. It created a really team dynamic, right? Of everyone helping each other out because as long as we're all winning, it's all going towards this big number. So there's definitely benefits. It was easy to set up and it was okay. Right.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:01:06]:
There was never any stress of who you got paired up with as an SE, which sometimes, you know, can cause a little bit of anxiety. If I want to be aligned with who I'd consider to be a top ae. So there were some benefits, but really there was some kind of growing concerns, but also a couple challenges we wanted to overcome where we started to think about maybe we want to change how we do quota for our team. So the main thing is wanted to drive some type of urgency for the solutions engineers. Right. Since we weren't carrying an individual quota, there was a growing concern that we weren't as aligned with the sales team who was so quota-driven, driving towards the end of month, every month, if we didn't have that same level of financial tie to the number as well. So that was a big one. And then just wanting to reward top performers.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:01:53]:
Right. I had seas on the team who were working crazy hours to close these certain deals, logging all this time on it and it was going up towards a bigger number, which is great. But for me as a leader, my goal was to have a really tenured, skilled team and if I wasn't finding ways to compensate them and make them feel really motivated, I was worried I wasn't going to keep some of those top performers and they're going to move on to AE roles. Other roles, other companies either where they can see a bigger financial gain. That is where we made the switch. So we switched to 50-50. We maintain half of it based off of that overall team attainment to kind of keep some of that team morale. But we did introduce this 50% individual quota component which has been awesome the way we do it.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:02:38]:
Just because my team specifically we sell a suite of Pro Products, they're basically like our add-ons on top of our core software. Each person on the team, they have an individual quota based, it's still aligned with our annual operating plan, but it's based on those products and it's opened up this awesome opportunity for financial gain and to really overachieve as a solutions engineer. It's been really exciting. I think I've grown the tenure on the team because without this so much of the motivation would come towards striving for that next promotion. As, you know, like there's not always going to be a promotion available. So I've noticed that this really helps SEs find career satisfaction in their current role because if they work their butts off, they can be, you know, way over 100% towards an individual quota hit. Accelerators have all of those benefits, all while the sales team also feels like they have an SE team in the trenches with them.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:03:36]:
I think that's been the biggest impact is being able to really feel like we're on the same page as them and we're all driving towards closing deals. It's been overall great for the team dynamic.
Jarod Greene [00:03:48]:
Awesome, awesome. Love to hear. Yeah, and it sounds like there hasn't been much of a trade-off in the performance. Right. Like, nothing you did impacts the way that they show up. They actually speed up. And I love the notion of being on the same side with the reps. I think we spent a lot of time talking about removing friction in the deal cycle, and I think with this change you've completely removed the friction, put everyone on the same side, and got the morale to boot.
Jarod Greene [00:04:10]:
Sounds awesome.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:04:11]:
It's been pretty easy to maintain. If anything, it just puts a little bit more weight on us as leaders that we need to maintain a really positive team culture and dynamic. We just kind of made that a baseline as an SE, you have to help each other out, you have to help with new hires. And I've been really impressed how the team has stepped up. Like, didn't need to create some type of change to commission to maintain that dynamic. They all want to help each other out because they appreciate their team and they learn from them. So it's been really nice.
Jarod Greene [00:04:38]:
Absolutely. If an SC or any rose by any other name is ServiceTitan hiring, I mean, this sounds like a great plan. I don't find many organizations in. You guys got open roles you want to promote?
Nicole Kawamoto [00:04:50]:
Yes, I'm actually opening a role right now on my team specifically, but throughout time, and we'll see next year, too. We've been on an awesome trajectory as a company, so I assume we'll continue opening over time.
Jarod Greene [00:05:05]:
Awesome. Yeah, we'll drop the link here in the show in case anyone's interested. This is a model I think a lot of people would want to buy into. So, Nicole, it's been five minutes. Thank you so much for indulging us with the hot take.
Nicole Kawamoto [00:05:16]:
Of course. Thanks for having me.
Jarod Greene [00:05:17]:
Really appreciate it. Thank you.