The Holy Grail of Growth

October 6, 2022 Mimi Torrignton

flourishing plant signifying business growth strategies background

As amazing as it might sound some companies do find the Holy Grail of growth! In doing so their sales and revenues increase by astonishing numbers. But business growth is just the beginning, the real challenge is sustaining it and managing it successfully as well as engaging the right strategies at the right time. Chad Gold, the Chief Financial Officer at Salesloft, shares his strategies and wisdom on how CFOs can manage fast-growing companies.

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Welcome back to CFO Weekly, where we're talking with financial leaders about how to build efficiency in their teams, create time for strategy, and ultimately get results, with your host, Megan Weis. Let's jump right in.

Megan Weis: Today, my guest is Chad Gold, Chief Financial Officer SalesLoft. Since 2018, Chad has served as Chief Financial Officer for Sales SalesLoft and has overseen a period of significant growth with annual recurring revenue growing by more than 450%. In addition to managing the company's financial performance, Chad is responsible for investor relations, legal, strategic business development, real estate, and facilities.

Before joining SalesLoft, Chad served as Chief Financial Officer for Rubicon Global. Prior to that, he served as Global Vice President and Chief Financial officer at SAP Ariba, where he led a global team that provided the scalability and infrastructure to more than double cloud subscription revenue. He also held multiple finance leadership roles at the Home Depot in financial planning and analysis, international, and M&A. He began his career working as a senior consultant in business valuation in the Atlanta office of Ernst & Young. Chad has a bachelor's in finance from the University of Florida and an MBA from Emory University. Chad, thank you very much for joining me on this episode of CFO Weekly.

Chad Gold: Welcome. Megan, thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Megan: Today, we'll be learning about your career journey and SalesLoft, and getting advice on how to manage fast-growing companies, and prepare them for the next steps. Looking forward to this and learning from you, so let's get going.

Chad: That sounds great.

Megan: First, as always, let's start with you and your career journey and how it is that you got to where you are today.

Chad: Sure. Well, I did my undergrad at the University of Florida, actually in finance. That doesn't mean I knew I was going to be a CFO from the beginning, but came out of college and my first job was doing corporate finance at Ernst & Young, EY, today. What was great about that was learning how to build models. Got a really strong foundation in thinking about how to look at financials, but you don't get to go very deep into companies, so I realized I wanted to get more operational.

After about two years of EY, I left and went to the Home Depot and spent the next eight years of my career in a myriad of different finance roles at Home Depot. I did a little bit of internal audit, I did mergers and acquisitions, I did financial planning and analysis, I was in an operational finance role. It really taught me how to translate financials into operating metrics that the business can understand.

After eight years, had a great run, got to work with incredible leaders like Carol Tome and Ted Decker, who's now the CEO of Home Depot, and just realized that retail wasn't a passion for me. Retail can be very repetitive, and very seasonal, and finance is already like that already, and was fortunate enough to have an old colleague from EY that recruited me over to Ariba and got me into the software space.

For the last nine years, I have worked in cloud technology, spent about four and a half years at Ariba, which is a division of SAP as the Division CFO there, then left there in 2017 for my first standalone CFO job as the CFO of a company called Rubicon Global at the time. It's now called Rubicon Technologies, which is a waste and recycling startup that at the time was headquartered in Atlanta.

What was great about that role was the first to venture back CFO job was able to raise a significant amount of capital, really learn how to work with investors, and just really round out my skillset, and all of that really led me to then ultimately in 2018 joining SalesLoft. Literally, I think Megan, a week from tomorrow is my four-year anniversary at SalesLoft. It's been the greatest joy of my career, not just to be able to do it at an incredible company like SalesLoft but to be able to grow the company in the Atlanta business and technology community.

Since I've been here, we've grown revenues about 500%, we've seen employee headcount up about 300%, and all of that has translated to about a 10x growth. When I got here, SalesLoft was valued a little bit north of 200 million and last year we did a majority recap transaction with Vista, where a deal was valued at 2.3 billion, we raised our enterprise value by about 10x.

Megan: You've been there since 2018. When was the company started?

Chad: The company was originally started in 2011 by Kyle Porter, who's still our CEO today. There was kind of a version one of the products that came out, and then really in that 2014, 2015 fine line was when really the product that now is the foundation of SalesLoft, today, our platform was built. Yes, the company's been around for over 10 years.

Megan: Let's talk about SalesLoft. What is it that you guys do?

Chad: Most people are familiar with the modern CRM, so think of Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and HubSpot, really the CRM is just a database that people load data for people like me to look at. What SalesLoft is, is an engagement platform. It's a layer that sits on top of the CRM, and sellers can use our platform to really do all of their digital selling tasks, so think we can be their multichannel communication system for their customers, their email, their phone, we can connect to their calendar, they can also use our system to interact with customers, to transcribe and record calls, and they can also use our system to forecast.

If you think as a seller, whereas you didn't use to want to go in the CRM for your day-to-day job, you can do all of your tasks in SalesLoft, and then we make you so much more efficient because we're designed for you to interact with customers and sell whatever it is you need to sell, and then we feed all of that data back to the CRM so that the company can still have visibility to what's going on, but it makes the sellers more effective and it actually makes the fidelity of the data and the CRM better as well.

Megan: Do you guys have a perfect client? Are the clients that are better than others for you guys or who's your target audience?

Chad: I hate to give you the cop-out an answer that basically anybody that sells anything and interacts with customers could be a target client. Really if you look at our customer base in the early days it was very heavy technology companies, so some of our biggest customers are on companies like IBM, and Google, but LinkedIn is a big customer of ours.

Over the years we've seen digital selling and modern sales methods really roll out to companies in any industry. 3M is a big customer of ours, Cargill, Comcast, and Verizon. You think about business services, telecommunications, supply chains, and healthcare. Really any of those companies can find a use case for our technology, and especially as they digitize how they sell, they quickly realize that if you don't have sales engagement technology like SalesLoft, you're really at a disadvantage because your sellers will be less productive.

Megan: I've heard over the last two years that digitization has been sped up by let's say a decade or more. How have the last two years been for you guys?

Chad: Look, I think COVID has definitely accelerated a trend and I think the two years happens to align with was really when everybody started working remotely. What we saw was it was no longer-- It used to be a conversation about inside sales versus field sales, and that at the time people viewed technology like ours around inside sales, but then it quickly became you're either a digital seller or you're not, and people are working from everywhere. We've certainly seen that accelerate the trend for us over the last two years and our growth rate accelerated through COVID, and it didn't decelerate.

What we saw was companies that didn't have sales engagement quickly realized that they needed technology like this, and we saw buying cycles actually accelerate because they realized that if they didn't do this, they wouldn't be making the right investments in their sales stack. The trend of remote work, hybrid work, and then investments in digital technology have all been positive trends for our business for sure.

Megan: Do you guys have competitors? If so, what differentiates you from them?

Chad: It's interesting, I'd say the biggest difference between SalesLoft and our competition is we're the only one that's a true platform, as I talked about digital selling, I think we bring together a modern workflow. Oftentimes we use the word cadence along with a conversation intelligence platform so that you can record and transcribe calls and then a deals and forecasting solution all in one platform.

highlight that to say we have competitors that compete in point components. I'd say our closest workflow competitor is a company called Outreach out of Seattle, for our conversations product there's a company called Gong, and then for our deals product, there are a few competitors there, a company called Claire, it might come to mind, but there's nobody that competes with us head-to-head across the entire platform.

Megan: Since joining Salesloft in 2018. You mentioned that you guys have seen significant growth. I see that recurring revenue has grown by more than 450%. What do you attribute this growth to?

Chad: I think it's a combination of number one, software companies are ultimately going to grow if there's product market fit, so there's obviously an incredible need for what we're providing in the market, and then I think we've been very fortunate to bring on incredible leaders who've helped us not just to grow and take advantage of that product market fit, but really we've grown into new segments. As an example, four years ago when I got here Salesloft's mix of business, if you think about the size of companies, was probably 80% on the SMB side or the smaller side and 20% on the enterprise, think larger companies as I referenced before. Over the last four years that 20% has gone north of 40%. Our enterprise business has been growing at a significant rate, which has helped our growth. We've also invested in growing internationally. About three years ago we opened a London office and launched Salesloft UK, and now the Europe region makes up roughly 15% of our revenue today. Then this year we launched in Asia/Pacific, and I expect that by the end of this year international revenue will probably be roughly 20% of our business, which was essentially nothing four years ago.

Megan: I'm curious, how have you guys targeted those enterprises? I assume that the growth from 20-40% of your sales was due to some sort of effort, so how did you guys make that switch?

Chad: Yes, I think it's a few things. One is there are different sellers that sell into bigger enterprises than potentially into an SMB solution. I think it was bringing on the talent that we needed to be able to sell to those larger customers. Also the maturity of our platform, we made significant investments in the platform in terms of security and controls, things that modern enterprises are going to insist on having.

I think talent, our technology, and then I think some if it's just if you look at most technology adoption it generally starts in smaller companies, so the reality is that over the last four years we've seen that enterprises are now realizing that this is something they have to have. All of those factors combined, along with the intentional cross-functional investments you'd expect in terms of not just sales, but marketing, we talked about product. Also, the post-sales component for our company is the ability to not just sell software to large enterprises, but to be able to implement them and then make them successful so that they adopt. We've really invested in all of those areas to drive that growth.

Megan: Is it pretty much off the shelf, or does it require a lot of customization?

Chad: It's pretty much off the shelf. There are certain customizations that we can do as part of the implementation, but we are certainly not creating features for individual customers. It is one of those things where with some adjustments to your selling process along with our technology you can get maximum ROI pretty easily off the shelf.

Megan: Let's switch gears and talk about managing fast-growing companies. What is the key to successfully doing this?

Chad: One of the things I learned pretty early in my career is finance is just the expression of everything that happens in the business. If you're going to successfully manage a fast-growth company you have to be involved in all of the operations all the way up the chain to make sure that ultimately when the numbers come out that they're what you expected them to be.

One of the things that I talk about is this idea, when you work in finance in a high-growth company there are two types of finance teams. There are those that report the news and there are those teams that help make it. I've always been of the mindset you got to make the news and really drive the company forward. We built a finance organization that's engaged in every facet of the company, and that allows us to help not just manage the financials but to really help drive growth in partnership with the business and to make decisions as to what are the right levers that we can pull to keep growth at the levels that we want to see.

Megan: I'm curious, how is it that you build a team to do that? To drive the news rather than just report it. What goes into that?

Chad: That's a great question. I think there are a few things. One, I'd say I've been very fortunate to have exceptional leaders that I've worked with in other companies that have joined me at Salesloft, so people that know the type of team that I want to build and are very aligned to that vision. One is building out an incredible leadership team that wants to execute on a vision, and then two, it's something where how you interview people, how you identify candidates. It starts with the hiring process.

Then also, too, it's about building those cross-functional partnerships with the business so that they view you as a partner and not just as someone who can answer questions whenever they need it. I viewed it one of the most important things I did in my first six months on the job was to establish really strong cross-functional partnerships with all of my fellow executives. Recognizing, "Look, I'm here to make you successful, I want you to lean on my team for that," and by building that foundation, they could get comfortable that, "Finance isn't here to police me or to tell me no, but to figure out a way to help me be successful and get to a yes."

Megan: I think that's great. I think that's so important, especially these days, to knock down the silos that have been in place forever and really work cross-functionally to achieve the goals of the company.

Chad: It's interesting, back to your comment about high growth, as well, I think one of the biggest mistakes companies can make as they're growing really fast is looking across all of the different functions. If you're not careful and you overinvest in one area and underinvest in others because you're growing really fast those cracks form a lot faster.

Having your pulse on all the different functions, all the key performance indicators that they're looking at, customer health, customer success, all of those things are so important because if you don't watch it you might-- What people say in technology, "It's one thing to sell the software, it's another thing to make the customer successful," which is what we're all about doing.

Megan: As the company's growing really fast how do you put processes into place but still keep an entrepreneurial spirit alive?

Chad: That's a great question, and I think it's probably one of the biggest challenges for any incoming CFO of a high-growth business. What I would say is there's the crawl-walk-run mentality. There are certain things that you have to put in place. You have to close your financials, you have to make sure you can consult who can pay people and things like that, and you have to have tight controls around payroll.

There are certain things in the business that there's a continuum where there's not a right or wrong answer as to how much control you put in place. What we've done at Salesloft is certainly in the areas that needed it immediately we put in processes, we invested in new technology, but then in other areas, we implemented things over time, recognizing that you have to meet the organization where it is and help it to grow.

An example is, I think about our selling motion. It used to be where we were small enough that every salesperson could come to me and ask me for approval on a deal or get my thoughts on how to structure it. Over time we've built a deal desk function that's now staffed to help them grow and scale and be successful with customers. We weren't going to do that when we were a small company just scrappy growing fast, but as you scale you have to look for those different teams, those different processes, and those different systems that you have to invest in to help the company continue to make improvements in those areas.

I know one of the things that I've always said about Salesloft is we want to run like a public company even when we're not public. We've been doing that for a few years now. Really it's all about investing in those systems and them making constant improvements as we go.

Megan: Earlier this year you announced a massive growth investment from Vista Equity Partners. Can you tell us a little bit about what went into making this happen?

Chad: What's incredible about Vista as a partner is they only invest in software companies, and they are a top-tier private equity firm with years of experience working with software companies. We viewed them as a great potential partner for us even before the deal ever happened. Back in I want to say the fall of last year we looked and we had north of 20 Vista portfolio companies that were Salesloft customers.

Part of that comment about running like a public company before you're public is that allows you to be ready for anything. With a deal of that scale there's an incredible amount of due diligence, an incredible amount of analysis, and document generation that needs to exist, and we had all those pillars in place because we were running like a public company before the deal ever happened. I think that put us in the best possible position to be successful and also to be successful with an incredibly sophisticated investor in Vista.

What's been great about Vista is they've been an incredible partner of post deal on helping us to continue to fulfill that mission of growing really fast, and taking care of our customers. We realized that they were going to be the right partner for us, and they've proven to be that ever since the deal.

Megan: You've actually said that one of your favorite parts of the job is spending time externally with investors. Can you talk to us about your advice for financial professionals when it comes to meeting and engaging an investor?

Chad: Look, I think that there's a couple of pieces to it that I'd say. As part of this, Megan, I went back and looked, I think I've raised probably about $300 million of venture capital long before we did the Vista deal. Some of the things that I've found that have made me successful there, one is, there's this idea of lines, not dots. What I mean by that is you should be establishing relationships with investors long before you ever actually are in the process of wanting to raise capital or you need something from them. If you do that if you establish that, and what I mean by lines is you meet with them periodically and you give them insights on what's going on with the company.

"Hey, I said, the company would do this. We actually achieve that and more." When you get the time where you actually do need them, where you're thinking about raising capital, you have this incredible relationship and connection where it's not just starting from a place of an actual transaction. That's one I would say for sure investing in having relationships with investors even when you're not raising money.

I think that's the mistake a lot of companies make, and especially a lot of finance leaders that haven't done it before is building those relationships. If I go back and look at some of the fundraisers that we've done, these are investors that my CEO or, we may have met a few years earlier, but that connection together helped us to ultimately get the positive outcome and get the right investors on board when we were doing it.

The other thing I would say that is good advice as you think about investor interaction is, the running joke I always have is working with investors is probably the most sales thing you get to do as a finance leader. It's about learning how to tell the story of your company, and not just through the lens of numbers, but through the lens of the customers, through the lens of your operating metrics. If you can connect those then back to the numbers, it's going to tell a really powerful story.

What I love is, even after the Vista transaction, we've continued to have those interactions with investors at conferences. You always learn something new too. The other thing I'd say if I go back to one more piece of advice is, one of the great things about interacting with investors is they tend to be really smart and they ask you really good questions. If you're open to learning and listening, you can learn a lot from the questions investors are asking you too. That helps to make you a better leader. It also helps you to learn how to better tell your story as well.

Megan: That's really great advice. I like the advice about learning to tell your company's story. I think it's really important these days for CFOs to be a storyteller or for the finance department to be a storyteller with more than just numbers.

Chad: You're totally spot on. Then not just to connect it to the company, but also to connect it to the macro environment. Look, companies nowadays are dealing with an unprecedented amount of external factors, whether that be inflation, whether that be a little bit of global unrest and financial ability to look around corners, and keep the business going during those times is really what the function is supposed to do, and that ties back into being able to tell the story in all different seasons of the company as well.

Megan: SalesLoft has an opportunity to potentially be public one day. You already mentioned acting like a public company before you're public, but what else can be done to drive a company in this direction?

Chad: I think when you think about being a public company, it comes down to a couple of things. One is you have to focus on your customers and you have to grow your company in a healthy way to even have an option to be a public company. That's something that we've been focused on at SalesLoft for many years now. You have to be willing to invest in the people, the processes, and the technology to give you the visibility that you need to meet some of, I think the demands of being a public company.

I think for SalesLoft, the beauty of what we have is, look, I can't tell you today whether we're going to be a public company one day or not. I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that my job and the job of my finance and corporate services organization is to make sure that the company's ready for that if it does become an option one day. In the meantime, continue to be a partner in the business to drive growth, to drive customer success, to drive employee engagement, all of the foundational things that drive a healthy company that can be public one day.

Megan: You mentioned investing in technologies, but are there any specific technologies you are looking at or thinking about making investments in, in let's say the next two to three years? What's your focus there?

Chad: I'd say for us as a company, it's been such an incredible partnership across the executive team. I think we've made a lot of the infrastructure investments that we needed. As an example, as a finance leader, the first thing you may often have to change is your accounting or what's called an ERP system.

Early on in my days at SalesLoft, we migrated from QuickBooks to NetSuite. NetSuite is a tool that allows us to scale to being a billion-dollar revenue company and north of that. At some point you have to automate your commission. If you have a lot of sellers, you have to automate your commission payments. A lot of companies do that in spreadsheets. We put a tool in place a few years ago to automate that process. You have to have a tool in place to drive planning and scenario analysis. There are a few different tools out there for that. We happen to use Adaptive Insights at SalesLoft today, but there are incredible tools out there like Anaplan, I mentioned Adaptively.

For us, we've put a lot of the systems in place. Really it's just about optimization now. It's about what are the things that need to work better together because a lot of companies have a tendency to implement a system and then you have to work with it for a little while to figure out how to make it optimized and integrated the right way. We are investing heavily there to make sure that the flow of information, the flow of data is very clean and through all of our systems, which then gives us the ability to look at the business in a lot of different ways.

Megan: As you look at SalesLoft and then specify your team and function, what are the biggest challenges facing you guys today, both the company and your department?

Chad: From a company perspective, I think there just becomes an element of, as you scale a business, it's not easy. SalesLoft's growing north of 50% today. It is entirely challenging to grow a company at 50% at scale consistently.

Megan: Where do you find the people? [laughs]

Chad: Exactly. That's right. You got to find the people. The thing is, you think about it, if you're doubling the company every 18 months to two years, you're essentially building a new company again, which means you might break many of the things that you just put in place. Part of what we've spent a lot of time on is back to a challenge for my own team is, let's think about the process, not for a sales office about-- We're about roughly 900 employees today. Let's not put in the process for 1,000 personal company. Let's make sure we have a process in place that can support 10,000 people. Let's not just put in a process to support a couple of hundred million in revenue, we got to support a few billion in revenue.

The idea here is you don't want to have to be redoing everything every 18 months because that gets to be incredibly taxing on the organization. Certainly looking around corners and thinking about ways to keep scaling the company is a big challenge for my team.

I think another challenge for my team is the macro-- There are not a lot of people who have operated in a high inflation environment with some potential instability across the globe. Thinking about the ways that could impact your business and having your pulse on the scenarios and the leading indicators, so not just the financial metrics at the end, but all the indicators that are upstream that you can see earlier to make sure that you put the business in the best possible position no matter what happens. I view that as a responsibility and a big challenge for my team.

Look, I think as any team scales, it's continuing to identify talent. Megan, you said where do you find the people? Inevitably in finance and G&A-type organizations, you are not going to grow your headcount as fast as the company grows. You just simply can't do it. The ability to hire employees is a privilege. You have to be really intentional about getting the right people in the sea, and then investing in them, growing their career, learning, and having opportunities because if you make a good hire, a good employee can be worth five employees if you treat them the right way and grow them. You got to get that right, identifying talent on the front end for sure.

Megan: Any tips on how to do that? Identify the right talents and then [crosstalk] attract them?

Chad: I think there are a couple of things. I think one is, at a company level, you have to invest in employee health and engagement, especially as you think about in a remote environment. I think one of the things I've loved about SalesLoft, our CEO a saying, SalesLoft is a place to do more, to be more to become more. We invest in training programs, whether they're technical, like in finance, but then also leadership across the company. You got to invest in those types of programs to make it a place where people want to work. You have to have really strong core values.

I know people did not just the core values that sit on a wall, but the core values where your employees actually want to quote them and live by them. Then look, I think, back to my comment about investors, I think this concept of lines, not dots applies to recruiting as well. The longer you work, and I know I'll date myself, I've been in the workforce north of 20 years. There are people that I've interacted with, across my entire career that I'm still in touch with today, and some of those people work with me still, but certainly, other folks that are in other companies, we all look out for each other and help each other to identify talents. Maintaining those relationships becomes really important.

Megan: Yes, that point definitely highlights the value of relationships.

Chad: Yes. Then, I think you'd asked me early on in this too, it's you got to have a really strong point of view about how you want your team to operate. You said to me, "How do I find people that want to make the news not just reported." I think you tailor your interview process, and example questions and things to put people in situations that you know, they might encounter working in your team, and those situational questions, then give you a lens into how are they going to act in a certain situation. I think that helps as well.

Megan: That's great advice. Last question, but what advice do you have for CFOs, who are looking to drive strategic value within their organizations?

Chad: Yes. I'd say a couple of things. I think the first thing is that finance should be the hub at the center of every business decision. You have to build those cross-functional relationships across, and you got to build that trust with your fellow leaders, and show them that you're really there to make them successful. That doesn't mean to say yes to everything, because you can, but they know you're there and make them successful and help them to navigate whatever situation and I think that's one of the relationships in that foundational stress with all the different functions.

The other thing that I would say is having a really strong pulse on how your operational metrics connect to the financials. One of the examples and one of the first things I did SalesLoft was, built a multi-year model that connected the data operating metrics of the company with ultimately the financials so that the income statement, the balance sheet, and cash flow so that I can have a conversation with our chief revenue officer or chief marketing officer about a metric that's important to them, that I knew I could have a connection back to what does that mean in terms of the financials of the business.

I think that helped us to then say, "Hey, look, I need you to drive your metrics in this direction so that we get the financial outcomes that we want." It's really having that strong connection there as well.

I think the last thing I'd say is, the type of finance organization that you should run is one that I always say it's like the give leaders in place for people based that say, they don't just say no, all the time. You just can't do that. I think in some organizations, I'm not saying it's global, but in some organizations, I think finance has a reputation for being the no police. You can't do [crosstalk] I think--

Megan: I heard that a little while ago.

Chad: Yes. But what I coached my team on is, is that you're going to often be asked questions that you know you can't say yes to, but what you can do is you could say, "No, but here are some things you can do." You give them an opportunity to have another direction they can take, or the business might have something you want to do where you feel like you can get behind it, but you need to make some tweaks and you say, "Yes, and I need you to do these other things. There's no butt or yes and."

Don't be the type of finance leader or organization where you don't give the business alternatives when they come to you and stuff, because then it starts to stifle creativity, especially to your question about high growth. In high-growth companies, there is a balance of art and science. You're only going to have so much data to make every decision, and so you're going to have to take some risks. Ultimately, your job as the finance leader and the CFO is, how do you take calculated risks and have your pulse on the business so you can make adjustments as you need to. I think that becomes really important as you're scaling really fast.

Megan: Chad, that's great advice. I just like to say thank you so much for being my guest today.

Chad: Oh, man. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for the great questions, I really enjoyed it.

Megan: Yes, I really enjoyed speaking with you too. Hearing about your experiences and all of the resulting insights and of course, I wish you the best and Salesforce the best. To all of our listeners, please tune in next week, and until then take care.

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In this episode, we discuss what factors make a business grow fast, what is the key to managing fast-growing companies successfully, why CFOs should build cross-functional partnerships with all business teams, and how to establish and manage the right processes in a high-growing company, what the main functions of finance are, among many other interesting topics.

What Factors Make a Business Grow? - Growth Strategies

Quote business growth strategies

Since Chad joined Salesloft in 2018, the company has seen significant growth. During his time with the company its recurring revenue has grown by more than 450%, and sales increased from twenty to forty percent. Chad believes this growth is due to a combination of factors, including the increasing need of the market for this type of platform, the company's leadership, international investment, the post-sales and customer service components, and great marketing.

“Software companies will ultimately grow if there's product market fit.”

What Is the Key to Managing Fast-Growing Companies Successfully?

Quote Chad Gold, the Chief Financial Officer at Salesloft

Finance is the expression of everything that happens in the business. If you want to successfully manage a fast-growth company, get involved in all operations to ensure you will get the expected numbers. Build a finance organization that engages in every facet of the company and allows it to help manage the financials and drive growth.

“When you work in finance in a high-growth company, there are two types of finance teams. Some report the news, and others help make it. And you have to make the news and drive the company forward.”

How to Establish and Manage the Right Processes in a High-Growing Company?

Quote high growing companies strategies

One of the biggest challenges for any incoming CFO of a high-growth business is setting up the right processes while maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit. As you scale, there are particular processes and systems that you have to invest in and make constant improvements to in order to help the company grow.

“You have to meet the organization where it is and help it to grow.”

For more interviews and tips on business growth strategies from the CFO Weekly podcast, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

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