Here at SalesSource, we’re happy to say that business is growing! So, it’s vital for us to find top talent to serve the needs of our clients. As our team grows, we will be taking some time to introduce you to each person.

Getting to know each person on a professional and personal level will allow you to see what drives them and how they contribute to our team.

This week, we’re featuring Travis Henry, SalesSource’s Director of Inside Sales. He has worked in some of Silicon Valley’s top performing sales teams, most recently Oracle and scaling Bluewolf’s global SDR team from three to over thirty.

What is your role at SalesSource?

My title at SalesSource is “Director, Inside Sales Operations.” What that really means is I help our clients design, implement, and measure pipeline generation strategies, primarily in the form of high velocity inside sales and SDR teams. On any given day you can find me on-site with a client to lead an Ideal Customer Profile workshop or rolling up my sleeves to build out lead-to-cash processes in SFDC.          

 

What do you find most gratifying about the work you do with SalesSource’s clients?

My #1 job is making our clients successful – not only at a company level, but at a personal level as well. Revenue leaders and revops professionals today are under more pressure than ever to deliver efficient growth in an increasingly complicated environment. They are faced with a massive landscape of strategies, processes, and technologies to deliver results with very little margin for error. That’s a stressful job. I find it deeply gratifying when I can add clarity and confidence to the professional lives of my clients and watch the amazing things that happen as a result.  

Coming from Bluewolf and Oracle, what past experiences are most relevant in your work today?

When you’re advising companies on their pipeline and revenue generation strategies, it’s critical that you’ve been in their shoes before. I have the benefit of “seeing it before” at both the individual contributor and leadership levels. I like to say that joining Oracle as my first job out of school was like being initiated into the Marine Corps of sales. I received world-class training, faced high-performance standards, and worked in a very tough role setting up sales appointments with technical startup leaders. Ultimately my role as a consultant requires that I build strategies and process that make SDRs, like I was, more effective. Knowing what adds friction on a daily basis or drives an incremental 10% in pipeline makes me that much more effective in my engagements.

At Bluewolf, I had the privilege of stepping into a high growth business where inside sales had not been formally built. Over my time there, I built out the structure to support expansion from a handful of reps to a global team of over 30 (and have the mistakes and scars to prove it). My eyes opened to the power of this function when we were able to pull up real-time Salesforce dashboards for IBM executives and tell them the full story of our sales & marketing funnel. Shortly after, IBM completed a successful acquisition of Bluewolf. I bring those learnings into all of my engagements.

 

In your opinion, what will Sales Development look like in 5 or 10 years?

“AI” is all of the buzz right now for sales and almost every industry employing humans. Marc Benioff has dubbed it “the fourth industrial revolution.” I agree. In addition to shifting buyer behavior (more research, more consideration), AI will have an outsized effect on the function of Sales Development. Today’s SDRs provide the most value when they effectively orchestrate systems and data to understand and engage with potential buyers who are good fits for their product or service. Natural language processing can identify relevant content, machine learning can prioritize the best leads, and intelligent assistants can react to website visitors or provide basic education to outbound prospects. Will all of this intersect to replace the SDR? I don’t think so, at least not in the next decade. B2B purchases are too complicated, too considered, and too unpredictable for humans to be removed from the qualifying process. SDRs will be superpowered by AI to meet these demands for larger B2B sales. However, I do believe transactional business models will be the first to entirely migrate onto AI to source and qualify deals.

 

What are your favorite types of books to read?

I read almost all non-fiction books (I did study history in undergrad, so I guess that makes sense). My favorites are authors that challenge conventional ways of thinking and challenge assumptions about how the world works. Some of my top recommendations are Jared Diamond’sGuns, Germs, and Steel and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

 

If you were to live in any country other than the US, which one would it be and why?

I have never been to the Netherlands, but the way that friends have described Amsterdam makes it seem like a place that I’d find very livable. The people are friendly, the city is beautiful and walkable (and boatable!), it has some of the world’s best restaurants, and it seems to have the San Francisco balance of metropolis and easy neighborhood living.  

 

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I was lucky enough to grow up in Southern California where you can carve the mountains in the morning and be back in time for a few waves by sunset. While moving to the Bay Area has made surfing more difficult, I will find almost any excuse to convince my wife to pack up our skis and take a trip up to Tahoe or over to Mammoth. In the summertime, we will find new local spots to camp or quick domestic flights to visit friends and see new cities. When I’m not outdoors or traveling, you can find me tinkering on my home-built PC or hanging at a local brewery.

At the top of Northstar in Tahoe with my wife Gentry

 

Together, let’s make it work