Novel Sips with Sangram Vajre and Amista Vineyards
This Friday, Sangram Vajre, author and CMO turned CEO, joined Novel Sips to discuss his latest book, Move: The Four-Question Go-to-Market Framework. But, what’s a book club without wine? And, what’s wine without a little sparkle? (Answer: not as much fun, obviously.)
Let’s dive in!
In the glass
In true purple cork style, Amista’s proprietor Vicky Farrow generously supplied the Sparkling Syrah, which was new to most of the marketers on the call. She also joined the group to share her story and kick off the event.
Her story of winemaking began in the garage, where she and her husband made wine before moving to beautiful Dry Creek Valley (Sonoma County) and starting the winery. Today they produce 2600-3000 cases of Rhone varietals and sparkling wine.
Like many good things, the sparkling wine was a happy accident. A winemaker/teacher at a local college used her Rose Syrah and created a wonderful sparkling wine. One sip and Vicky was sold. “Sparkling wines just make life more joyful,” she explained. Today, Amista makes six sparkling wines and has fans around the globe.
MOVE: It’s time to rethink how your company goes to market.
After the tasting, Sangram provided the group of marketing leaders with the book’s backstory. MOVE is his third book. Each book he has written has helped him to build a company. “A book is the best business card there is,” he shared. This book addresses the changing business landscape and confusion around the definition of go-to-market (GTM) and who owns it within a company.
CEO as the owner
To try to gain some clarity, Sangram interviewed 40+ VCs, CEOs, CMOs, CROs to understand how they thought about GTM. What he found is that most CEOs think they own it… but that belief isn’t usually shared by the rest of their c-suite. Sometimes CMOs think that GTM is squarely in their camp. CROs think it’s theirs. And, when everyone owns it, no one owns it. Hence, the problem.
The book asserts that ultimately the CEO owns GTM, along with setting the vision and culture for the company. One CEO interviewed by Sangram even thinks of GTM like a product, requiring constant/almost daily iteration.
Coordinated decision making
At Terminus, where Sangram worked before forging his own path as CEO, the addition of a talented and enabled RevOps leader changed the trajectory of the company. Executive meetings were kicked off with her sharing a GTM dashboard that covered net new revenue, engagement metrics, retention and usage metrics. All of the sudden, the silos came down, the old school funnel disappeared, and the company was able to execute more seamlessly.
From there, conversation flowed freely, as did the wine. Some of Sangram’s beliefs were challenged; much of it was praised. Everyone left the hour thinking about how they could leverage his framework to reframe the conversation around GTM at their own companies.
Build your own community
Looking to bring together colleagues, partners or customers to talk about a book, a best practice or a challenge? It’s more fun with wine! Reach out to purple cork to learn more about hosting a virtual wine tasting and community event.
