Sales Leadership & Customer Identity ft. Susan St. Ledger - OKTA’s President of Worldwide Field Operations

We're joined by special guest Susan St. Leger, the President of Worldwide Field Operations at Okta, and the prior CRO at both Salesforce and Splunk.

In this episode, Daversa’s Jack Dunn guides the conversation around sales leadership, customer identity and diversity across executive teams.

Contact:

Plus, don’t forget to check out our site: daversapartners.com

Stay up-to-date: News & Insights

Contact us through email

Sign-up for our newsletter

You can find all of our episodes here

Check out our social media sites:

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

Show Notes:

00:00 - Start

01:15 - Why did you join Okta? How did you navigate that decision?

04:51 - How do you think about go-to-market company transitions as a leader?

07:42 - What did you learn at Splunk? How did your original mandate match up to what you actually spent your time on? What
did you take away from that time? 

09:55 - Journey from CRO to President at Splunk

10:26 - Did you find that that was a substantive transition about how you spend your time and what you focused on? How would you coach people who are looking to make that type of transition?

12:00 - I’ve heard you describe yourself as a “pacer” before - Did you find you had to balance that as you assumed a leadership role over other functions? 

14:36 - When you are meeting someone as a candidate, what are you focusing on?

17:56 - Tell me about if you’re talking to a senior sales leader, what are the hallmarks that you’re looking for? 

20:22 - How do you like to see people talk about stories that weren’t successful? What do you look for people to take away from struggle or failure?

22:20 - Are there any pieces of difficult feedback you’ve received that have really stuck with you?

26:25 - Do you have personal heuristics that you push your team on specifically that expand on Okta’s standards? 

28:07 - Why did you choose the board at HashiCorp? What do you try to bring to the table as a board member?

30:25 - How do you think about what you can bring from that slightly higher level perspective to your board role? 

31:57 - Have you been approached many times from companies that are making that exact transition from promising early
growth to scale, in terms of pitfalls you’re helping Hashi avoid? What do you think founders, CEOs misunderstand about the shift in that journey?

34:55 - What advice would you give to someone in the early stages of building a career in software in the go-to-market side of the world today?

38:07 - End