A seasoned sales exec (now sales coach) reflects on transformation in tech

My background is in design and technology. I was actually a touring musician in a rock band for a dozen years before teaching myself design and engineering and opening my own software company (not HR tech). It was later sold in 2014.

My guest on this episode of “Unusual Attitudes” has had a seat behind home plate for some of the biggest tech innovations in the last few decades – from mainframe to client-server systems to cloud and, of course, artificial intelligence.

Ed LaPerche didn’t witness these transformative shifts as an engineer or developer, but as a sales executive. Over a 35-year career he worked at some major companies (i.e., Oracle and SAP) during hyper-growth periods. LaPerche was also a part of several companies when they began trading publicly, including Salesforce and Workday.

Today he’s president of Vendre Advisors, a South Carolina-based go-to-market advisory firm for CEOs and sales leaders of emerging tech companies.

A conduit between HR & IT

Viewing tech through his lens is important because the people organization and the technology organization are now starting to work hand-in-hand to create shared measures of success. Twenty years ago, they were almost two different functions entirely.

His job, therefore, is to be the conduit that brings both sides together. I asked LaPerche about that.

Watch our full conversation, listen to the episode, or continue reading for some quick takeaways.

Listen & learn

The sales playbook of old is not the playbook of today.

One of the keys to LaPerche’s success and longevity in a business that burns people out is continuous learning. Salespeople have to be willing, interested, and seek out opportunities to grow professionally. Learn about what's coming and changing. Because one of the things about the technology industry, compared to all other traditional industries in the world, is that its pace of change is much more rapid than anything else out there.

“So when you walk into a company with $60 million or so in revenue, you certainly have a vision of what you want to do and how you want to get there, but you've got to continue to evolve and change as you go,” he said.

“Your CEO, Mahe [Bayireddi], is a creature of this domain as well. Every time I meet with him, he always teaches me something new.”

CHROs, CTOs in alignment

Rather than having chief human resources officers buy a piece of technology they think is best and telling IT after the fact, “I see a much more collegial approach,” said LaPerche. He expects that to continue as they figure out how technology brings greater benefits to the enterprise.

I have written about this subject before. Organizations are finding greater efficiencies and effectiveness in partnering the people and technology teams. It wouldn’t be surprising if one day companies add a new position to the C-suite – chief productivity officer.

Until that happens, the CHRO’s portfolio will continue to expand. The number of unique skills CHROs are expected to bring to the table increased by 23% over the last five years, the highest of all C-suite roles, according to a Deloitte analysis.

The impacts of GenAI and other technological advancements are already creating new kinds of strategic imperatives for the CHRO, such as implementing AI systems across the workforce. This implementation can benefit from the kind of quantitative and technical skills that have become table stakes for the CHRO in recent years, the Deloitte study added.

Building trust in a different way

Getting the C-suite’s attention is a real challenge. Painting a broad vision of how technologies work from a sales capacity are a must in this new age of selling. No longer are demos the main event of a sales campaign.

“That's not what the client needs,” said LaPerche. “They need somebody to help tell them, ‘how this technology changes where we’re going as a company?’ They need vision and leadership from that team.”

His counsel to sales leadership — figure out how to transform your teams to be that consultative seller, that strategic thought leader, to help others understand how to materialize that vision. “Because tooling my team to just be capable in features and functions is not going to get it done,” LaPerche said.