Reinventing Culture for a Collaborative, Scalable, and Risk-Aware Future with Dan Zugelder of Dynatrace

This episode features an interview with Dan Zugelder, Chief Revenue Officer at Dynatrace. 

With his extensive sales background, Dan offers valuable insights into building a customer-centric culture that fosters collaboration—a crucial element for driving scalable growth. Drawing on his experience, Dan shares advice for revenue leaders on empowering teams to work together seamlessly, including leveraging data and customer feedback, driving innovation, and effectively managing risks.

About Dan:

Dan joined Dynatrace in July 2023 as Chief Revenue Officer. He oversees Dynatrace’s go-to-market strategies and revenue generation activities. He brings over 30 years of leadership and expertise in sales, client relationship development, and business management. Prior to joining Dynatrace, Dan served as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas at VMware, Inc. Prior to that, he served as Senior Vice President, Global Accounts at VMware, Inc. He has also held leadership positions at Dell EMC and ADP. Outside of work, Dan enjoys spending time at the beach with his wife Lori, and 3 adult children. He is an avid sports enthusiast and reader.

About Dynatrace:

Dynatrace exists to make software work perfectly. The Dynatrace platform unifies observability, business, and security data at a massive scale (Grail) with continually updated topology and dependency mapping (Smartscape) to capture and retain full-stack data context. It leverages hypermodal AI (Davis), combining predictive AI to anticipate future behaviors, causal AI to deliver precise answers and intelligent automation, and generative AI to automatically provide recommendations, create suggested workflows or dashboards, and let people use natural language to explore, solve, and complete tasks. Dynatrace analytics and automation capabilities enable teams to modernize and optimize cloud operations, deliver software faster and more securely, and ensure flawless digital experiences.

According to Dan:

“A big push of ours is to better understand what's resonating with our customers: where they see the value, feedback they have, what are their needs, how are their needs changing, and how can we be positioned to help them? Remember, product development is not something that you turn on in a matter of days, weeks, or months. It's sometimes years to do product development. You want to make sure you understand where your customers are going and what their needs are in advance.”

“One thing about all the decisions a CRO makes is that it can distract you from your focus. Typically, we start our year with a business plan signed off by the board. We're saying, ‘These are the major things we need to accomplish this year.’ Now, you have a new opportunity come across. Do we lose our focus on the existing things? If we don't look at new things and as things change, are we missing an opportunity? I find that to be one of the hardest things I do.”

“Whether it's Marketing, Product, or Customer Success, you need to be in it with them. That's where you achieve outcomes. I sometimes get focused on my own organization and what we're supposed to deliver, but knowing that, ultimately, the best is when it's highly collaborative. We'll achieve a lot more that way… Everybody has their targets that are put in for good reason, but to get too heads-down and not pick your head up enough could be a mistake.”

Episode Timestamps:

*(00:35) - Dan’s Role at Dynatrace and Background

*(00:50) - Transitioning and Scaling at Dynatrace

*(07:35) - Creating a Collaborative Customer-Centric Culture

*(14:30) - Managing Innovation with Collaborative Decision-Making

*(37:30) - Advice for Transforming Revenue Generation

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