“Alignment between Sales and Marketing in most B2B software companies is a delusion. A fallacy. Chris and Denise represented the epitome of Sales and Marketing alignment. Flawless coordination. Military precision. Denise was the air force, creating customer awareness and demand before Chris’s army arrived to discuss customer needs and closed deals.”
―John McMahon, 5-time CRO; Founding Snowflake Board Member
“Absolute alignment between sales and marketing is rare. Yet, everyone and everything suffers without it. Chris and Denise built a constantly evolving go-to-market machine that generates enormous mindshare and helps customers surpass even their own aspirations.”
―Frank Slootman, Former CEO of Snowflake, ServiceNow and DataDomain; National Bestselling Author of Amp It Up
“Snowflake would not be Snowflake without Denise and Chris. Theirs is the longest working relationship between a company’s chief revenue officer and its chief marketing officer. It’s like one brain in two bodies. Make It Snow is a raw and real perspective on how GTM can be in perfect alignment, how to create and deliver on such a relationship, and what could happen to your company once you accomplish this.”
―Mike Speiser, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures; Founding Investor and Board Member of Snowflake
Make It Snow informs and inspires executives, entrepreneurs, board members, and anyone else who wants to advance a startup from ground zero to a billion-dollar powerhouse. Denise Persson and Chris Degnan, founding CMO and CRO of Snowflake, take readers on a decade-long journey that reveals how they created, aligned and deployed their organizations to establish Snowflake as a global enterprise software company.
This is no history lesson. Denise and Chris detail how they jump-started Snowflake’s marketing and sales teams, and the strategies they executed to help the company sail through the stealth, build and scale stages that most startups struggle to survive. They established demand generation, customer acquisition and revenue goals well above industry norms and blew past them. All the while, Snowflake was rated as one of the best places to work.
Learn how Chris grew Snowflake’s sales team at a near-impossible rate without breaking the company. He details his established and unconventional methods of hiring, promoting and expanding the team while avoiding the temptations that can drive a startup out of existence. Chris restructured the team more than once, and on the fly, to keep pace with product innovation, market demand and to transform Snowflake from just a technology to an enterprise business solution. He also tells the other side of the story, revealing the mistakes he made along the way.
Denise told Chris in her interview: “You are my customer.” From that day forward, marketing owned and generated Snowflake’s sales pipeline. Denise built a marketing powerhouse rooted in demand generation and brand storytelling, with the customer always at the core.
From there, she surrounded that machine with lean, agile and driven teams to enable unique and impactful product, partner, content, brand and account-based marketing strategies and programs. Denise also pioneered a data-driven approach that most marketing organizations aspire to―one that identifies, targets, and nurtures loyal customers who become true brand ambassadors.
What made Snowflake’s sales and marketing even greater than the sum of their parts? Absolute alignment from day one and holding their teams to the company’s number one value: Put customers first. Make It Snow explains to entrepreneurs and executives how to achieve this alignment and maintain customer centricity throughout all stages of a startup, with proven and actionable principles you can apply to your own organization.
From the Back Cover
PRAISE FOR MAKE IT SNOW
“Chris and Denise represent the epitome of sales and marketing alignment: flawless coordination and execution. Denise was the air force, creating customer awareness and demand before Chris’s team arrived to discuss customer needs and close deals.”
―JOHN MCMAHON, 5-time CRO; Founding Snowflake Board Member
“Absolute alignment between sales and marketing is rare. Yet, everyone and everything suffers without it. Chris and Denise built a constantly evolving go-to-market machine that generates enormous mindshare and helps customers surpass even their own aspirations.”
―FRANK SLOOTMAN, Former CEO of Snowflake, ServiceNow and Data Domain; National Bestselling Author of Amp It Up
“Make It Snow is a raw and real perspective on how GTM teams can be in perfect alignment, how to create and deliver on such a relationship, and what could happen to your company once you accomplish this. Snowflake would not be Snowflake without Denise and Chris.”
―MIKE SPEISER, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures; Founding Investor and Board Member of Snowflake
About the Author
DENISE PERSSON is a four-time chief marketing officer and has been Snowflake’s CMO for nearly a decade. From the ground up, she built a team of 700 who own the sales pipeline and create global brand awareness for Snowflake.
CHRIS DEGNAN was Snowflake’s first sales rep and spent more than 11 years as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer. He grew Snowflake’s annual revenue from zero to more than $3 billion, while expanding his organization to thousands of employees that span dozens of countries.
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