Sahil Mansuri
Sahil Mansuri is the CEO of Bravado, the world’s largest online sales community. Sahil is passionate about sales, and his experience dates all the way back to 2008, working for Obama’s presidential campaign. During his time at Glassdoor, Sahil was able to close some incredible accounts, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Growth Skills
When market conditions shift, be willing to break traditional SaaS pricing models to lower the barrier to entry and match customer budget constraints.
"Change your pricing strategy... Try charging a thousand dollars a month and going month to month. Try charging 20 bucks a day and going day by day... You got to completely change the rules of the game..."
In a downturn, prioritize protecting existing revenue by moving top sales talent into customer success roles.
"Take your best sales people and make them CSMs... What we cannot under any circumstances do is lose our existing customers because replacing them is going to be impossible. So it's kind of like you go..."
Leadership Skills
Use a conservative baseline plan with performance-based triggers to authorize additional spending or growth as visibility improves.
"So the way I think about setting up a plan when you have limited visibility and some major headwinds is setting up a really conservative plan and then having milestones, short term milestones that unl..."
Product Management Skills
Move away from static annual forecasts toward dynamic, milestone-based planning to mitigate founder optimism bias.
"My suggestion is to really think about forecasting conservatively, setting up checkpoints and milestones around what future success may or may not look like. If you hit those goals, then decelerating..."
Sales & GTM Skills
High-stakes sales require high-touch communication like text messaging and leveraging social pressure from mutual connections.
"Stop using email. Email is where deals go to die. Text message is where deals get done... I don't take the introer off the thread... It holds the person's feet to the fire to actually show up for the..."
Close major accounts by providing deep, customized research that changes the prospect's perspective on their own business.
"I personally work with Microsoft. So I have a little bit of insight in this. Here's what your employees think about you. Here's what Mark's approval rating looks like versus others, et cetera, et cete..."
Modernize sales compensation by rewarding long-term retention and customer value rather than just top-line new business.
"What we haven't done is built a modern technical sales compensation plan that actually aligns the needs and incentives of the business, the customer and the rep... I think that setting up a longer hor..."
The guest provides a deep, technical critique of the standard 50-50 OTE split and offers a specific framework for aligning sales pay with long-term retention and net dollar retention.
"Sales comp plans are stuck in the stone ages... What we haven't done is built a modern technical sales compensation plan that actually aligns the needs and incentives of the business, the customer and..."