Sprinklr calls itself the world’s #1 social suite, helping brands with social listening across 350 million sources of public data. The platform has a range of functionality, allowing management of social engagement, advertising, advocacy and customer care.
Luca Lazzaron is Chief Revenue Officer and perfectly placed to give us some insight into life at an enterprise software platform.
If you’d like to be featured in the ‘Day in the Life’ column, let us know.
Hi Luca. Please describe your job: What do you do?
I’m Sprinklr’s Chief Revenue Officer. I am in charge of bringing in revenue for Sprinklr…and keeping it.
I spend most of my time building the best possible team and focusing on people: hiring, coaching, developing, retaining and promoting. I also ensure that my team has a consistent way to execute on a common process and playbook.
A typical day would be spent in meetings or on calls with either customers or other Sprinklrites. Sprinklr is an enterprise software platform that helps the world’s largest brands understand the conversations that matter most on modern channels such as social, messaging, apps, and review sites in order to make customers happier. Sprinklr has 24 offices in 15 countries and covers all 24 time zones for our global clients – so it’s an exciting place to be.
Whereabouts do you sit within the organisation? Who do you report to?
I report to Ragy Thomas, CEO and Founder of Sprinklr and I am part of the executive leadership team. The executive leadership team working well together is key for any successful company.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
Sprinklr is the world’s first unified platform for modern channels. Our mission is to enable every organization on the planet to make their customers happier.
As a software company that is growing fast, the ability to build a team with a great culture that can last is the key to overcoming daily challenges. Great leaders have the ability to inspire, coach and inspect. I keep trying to get better at this every day.
You definitely need a growth mindset – as author Carol Dweck says in her book Mindset – to be effective in a role like mine as the Chief Revenue Officer.
Tell us about a typical working day…
I have a global responsibility with employees all around the world in all 24 time zones. This means I can be in meetings with customers or supporting my team on an internal call all day long. So, it’s critical for me to prioritize the most impactful actions to achieve revenue goals and retention goals. I’m focused on having enough sales capacity, enough pipeline and making our customers happy.
One of the best things about my typical working day is when I get to spend time with my team in person.
What do you love about your job? What don’t you like?
I’ve worked in sales leadership for a long time. It’s something I love. Everyday it’s important to learn and get better at what you do. Learning from the people I work with and helping them grow as well gives me a feeling of pride and accomplishment.
I am very fortunate to see the world due to my extensive travel. However, this travel takes time away from my family who is a significantly important part of my life. I try to ensure I’m home every weekend and every special occasion. My family is the fundamental key to my success.
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
As you’d expect I have the usual goals of a CRO, which include increase sales productivity, create visible pipeline and retain a full sales capacity.
But going beyond this, my goals are to live The Sprinklr Way and help my team do this as well. We have five core values of living, working and being that make up The Sprinklr Way:
- It’s Ok. Be Fearless.
- Sprinklr Don’t Shout. Keep Moving Forward.
- Fix It, Don’t Complain.
- Never, Ever, Give Up Ever!
- Passionately, Genuinely Care.
These resonate with me and are important for me and all Sprinklrites to remember when thinking of our goals not only in work, but also in life.
Sprinklr as a company tracks progress against goals with the Employee Happiness Index, which requires every employee once a quarter to explain how happy they are on a scale of 1-10 and provide three things they can do to improve their happiness. We also have a Customer Happiness Index and ask our customers to tell us how happy they are with our platform and support. We use these metrics to measure our success within and outside of the company and to help us continuously improve based on customer and employee feedback.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
I am grateful for Sprinklr’s Gold Deck – which includes slides with our new positioning, branding and product names. In just a few weeks of having our entire company use this, I’ve seen outstanding results in the way our employees introduce Sprinklr.
One of the other tools I use on a daily basis is reminding my team to always ask The 3 WHYS – why do anything? why now? Why Sprinklr?
Every salesperson should focus on validating Sprinklr to the customer. This is a great tool to identify the client’s specific pain point, show them why now is the right time to find a solution and help clients understand why we can provide a solution better than any of our competition.
How did you end up at Sprinklr, and where might you go from here?
I met Sprinklr’s founder and CEO, Ragy Thomas, back in 2013 through Sprinklr board member Neeraj Agrawal from Battery Ventures whom I worked previously worked with at another software company. Ragy invited me to join Sprinklr as an advisor. I embraced the opportunity with enthusiasm since I knew that Sprinklr had an unmatched enterprise software platform with the potential to completely change the way brands manage every customer-facing interaction. Since then, the role has evolved with me becoming Sprinklr’s first CRO.
Sprinklr is now the first unified front office platform for modern channels. The front office is every customer-facing function of the enterprise – marketing, advertising, research, care, and engagement. This year it’s our 10-year anniversary but we’re just getting started. I know we can dominate this space for decades to come.
Which social campaigns or marketing experiences have impressed you lately?
I am going to the Cannes Lions event and I’m sure there will be plenty of campaigns that impress me there. But, I also have many stories of groundbreaking campaigns and marketing experiences from Sprinklr customers like McDonald’s, Nike, L’Oreal, Verizon, Santander, Microsoft and many others that make me proud to support them. For example, Sprinklr helped McDonald’s analyze five years of historical Twitter data in order to discover that all-day breakfast was a universal customer request. As a result, they added All Day Breakfast to their menu and reversed 14 quarters of consecutive revenue decline.
Do you have any advice for brands trying to get more value from social?
Of course — all you need to do is come and speak to Sprinklr!