In this episode, Vladan talks with Richard Schenzel — founder of Atscale and former sales leader at companies like Criteo and Channable. With Atscale, Richard helps VC- and PE-backed companies build high-performing sales organizations, runs commercial due diligence, and develops sales rep excellence. Topics: whether AI will replace BDRs, what makes a sales engine truly scalable, breaking silos between marketing, sales and CS, the underestimated transition from rep to first-time manager, a four-pillar hiring framework, and how to use AI tools without breaking your sales process.
Vladan: Richard — in the coming five years, we will witness the extinction of the BDR.
Richard: Well, that’s a good one. I think it really depends on what you want to achieve with BDRs. I think we need to rethink the position and the tactics that we use with them. Because if you have BDRs just for sending emails and dishing out calls and LinkedIn messages — yes, you can replace that with AI. But for me, if I look at it, it’s about building connections, building meaningful conversations, and that always starts from human to human. So if you want to replace BDRs with AI — yes, you can, but that’s just the volume business. If you want to create meaningful connections and meaningful conversations, you still need humans for this. We need to rethink the position itself, and find the right ways to sell from human to human.
Vladan: Interesting answer. So does that mean they will be extinct?
Richard: Not at all.
Vladan: Good — I tend to agree.
Commercial due diligence: what investors really look for
Vladan: Obviously, Richard, you’ve been a sales leader for a long time, with companies like Criteo and Channable. Then you started your own consultancy, Atscale, where you help companies build sales engines and create sales rep excellence — and you also help PE and VC firms with commercial due diligence. That’s something I’d like to learn more about. Does that mean you work with a PE or VC firm when they’re about to invest in a startup, and you do the commercial due diligence — looking at the systems, people, processes, et cetera?
Richard: Correct. When we started, we had our traditional engagements, where we look at different topics divided into two streams: sales excellence and sales machine. These were operating partner engagements — really working with companies to not only show frameworks and run workshops, but really implement. The start of those engagements was always a very strong audit, or diagnosis. And when firms saw this part, they asked us to separate it out for DD purposes — or sometimes a commercial diagnosis for founders as well, when they see something is off in their sales team, things can be improved, but they don’t know what it really is. We come in a few days a week — depends a bit on the size of the company — to review and audit the entire commercial organization, give our key takeaways and recommendations, and build a plan for six to twelve months to improve. That’s how it started. But now, when deals are at term sheet stage, VCs and PE firms ask us to perform commercial DDs next to the tech DDs, the financial DDs, the legal DDs, et cetera.
Vladan: That’s really cool. And what are VCs looking for in that commercial due diligence?
Richard: At the end of the day, what they really look for is scalability. What are we investing in? What is the current state? Is it scalable — or what do we need to do? How do we need to deploy the investment to scale and grow this team, to ultimately improve sales performance?
Vladan: That makes sense. And typically, what makes a sales engine scalable?
Richard: That comes down to processes, technology and people. What I see a lot is actually the other way around: you start with a lot of people, then to keep things in control you maybe put some technology on it and some processes — but at some point, when you grow, this gets out of hand. Every stage of a company needs a different way of working, which means rebuilding the organization, or building the foundations for the next stage of growth.
So what is needed? The right process for the right time. Do you have the right people? Do you have the right process to hire, to onboard, to train, to run performance management, to manage your talent as well? How do you manage your underperformance, your overperformance? How are the silos today between marketing, sales, customer success or existing business teams? How is RevOps done? These are the eight building blocks we look at for companies: how are they organized today, how are they scoring today — one is non-existent, five is best in class. We always give a one-out-of-five ranking per building block, and that’s how we build our engagements or programs for them to grow and build the fundamentals for the next stage of growth.
Vladan: That’s interesting. And at which stage are you typically brought on board?
Richard: That really depends. When we started about five years ago, we looked at companies aiming for a Series B, or just post-Series B. But over time we changed this. So we’re working with companies from four or five million ARR up to 250 million ARR, and anything in between — scale-ups and startups. That’s something we find really important: you know exactly what it could look like, and on top of that you know the pace and the chaotic phase of starters as well. The best of both worlds, basically.
Vladan: Looking at your current track record or client portfolio — which phase have you worked with the most? For example, from 1 to 10 million, or 5 to 10?
Richard: It’s between 10 and 30, I would say. But that doesn’t mean we don’t work with companies below that — this year I had one engagement with a company around 6 million, and at the same time an engagement around 125 million. And the funny thing is that a lot of topics still come back, not necessarily depending on the size. If you look at how processes are built, or how they want to build a new go-to-market motion — pivoting from inbound to outbound, or building an outbound motion on top of your inbound motion — it doesn’t really matter which stage you’re at. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. The stage doesn’t really matter in terms of revenue.
“ICP is not a marketing task, a sales task or a management task. It’s a company-wide task — including product.”
The typical challenges: silos and first-time managers
Vladan: Makes sense. And what do you typically see with companies that are at, let’s say, the 5 million ARR stage and take investment to go into the next stage? What are the typical challenges, or the typical things that can be improved from a sales engine perspective?
Richard: A couple of things. I think it starts with breaking silos. You’re at a stage where you’re building your departments, and then you can get into a system where marketing is on track on their KPIs — they’re sending the leads to the sales team. The sales team doesn’t follow up on the leads, because they don’t like the quality. They start to be creative to hit their target — they’re signing non-ICP customers. And then customer success or the account manager is dealing with customers that are not a fit. So it actually starts with breaking those silos and having the right ICP defined across the board. ICP is not a marketing task, a sales task or a management task — it’s a company-wide task, including product, to make sure you’re completely aligned on this. That’s something a lot of companies waste a lot of time on.
Next to that, what I see a lot around this stage: typically one of the first sales reps becomes a leader. There’s no time and no resources to actually help, grow or educate this first-time leader. You have a first-time, first-line manager hiring new reps with good intentions and a good feeling, but not able to scale, grow or structure the team. I think this is a common mistake for a lot of companies — not spending enough time on educating the transition from IC to first-line manager.
You end up with a full team, most probably with a lot of mini-mes. They hire people that are like them, but they don’t look at the cultural add. Quite often we look for cultural alignment or cultural fit, which is important — but at the same time you should look at your team as well. What do I have today, and what do I need in the future? What are my gaps, and what do I need to hire? Do I need more experienced people? Do I need people from the industry? Do I need more energy? Use a couple of those personality-type frameworks, maybe DISC. You can have very outgoing, extroverted reps that are super people-focused, a lot of fun — but are they actually able to achieve it? So look at the balance of your team, and how you can make sure you have a well-rounded, balanced team that’s ready for your next stage of growth.
Vladan: I think this is something we’ve also seen a lot with clients — an IC that grows into a managerial role and then needs a lot of training and onboarding to actually become that leader.
Richard: Yeah. And the importance of this transition is really underestimated.
Vladan: A hundred percent — the sales leader can make such a huge impact on the trajectory of the whole company, particularly at this stage. What would you give as your number one tip for that first-time manager, or that IC moving into a managerial role?
Richard: What you really need to work on is building leadership skills with this person. Send them to a leadership course, find someone to partner with — even as a sparring partner, for instance — but really spend time and resources to make sure they fully understand what leadership is. Because they were peers yesterday. They’re still friends, and at some point you need to take difficult decisions. Are you able to do this? Are you able to separate yourself from this? Can you guide the team through tough times as well? It’s all about leadership.
Train people on leadership skills — and leadership style as well. If you force a leadership style on someone, it’s not authentic. I think it’s very underestimated how important it is to find your own leadership style. Let them make mistakes, but guide them, and make sure they fully understand their new position. If you look at a company: at the top you’re responsible for your mission, your vision, your strategy. Your management team translates that into tactics, and then execution. Your reps are working on the executional part — and tomorrow they need to work on the tactics, and translate the strategy into tactics. It’s a completely different ball game. So you need to have them understand that this is their new role, and how they can play a part in it.
Second of all, they need to understand that the way they work is not always the best way for everybody. Today they manage themselves and they know exactly what to do. But they need to understand how to guide a team, how to inspire a team, and how to level up a team. I definitely believe this is something that needs more attention.
Sales rep excellence: hiring on four pillars
Vladan: Interesting — and clearly something you’re passionate about and work on a lot with your clients. I think you mentioned it as sales rep excellence. Maybe walk us through what that means — what’s your top tip for implementing sales rep excellence within a company?
Richard: Sales excellence is basically one of the two streams within the building blocks we use. It’s really about hiring, onboarding and ramp-up, enablement, performance management and talent management. If we break it down into hiring and ramp-up, for instance: especially with first-time, first-line managers, it’s extremely important to train them on hiring as well. For me, it’s the number one skill for leaders. I know Steve Jobs used to say: I only need to hire the best people in the right place, and then I play the orchestra. Which is obviously, in an ideal world, what you want to do — sounds easy, but it’s harder than you think.
Make sure you have a process in place to assess your candidates consistently. I’ve broken it down into four pillars that I look at when hiring: role alignment, intellectual horsepower, ownership, and cultural add. What does it mean? Role alignment — can someone do the job? Assess this with role plays, et cetera. Intellectual horsepower is the curiosity, the eagerness to learn — are they able to translate complex matters into simple language? Ownership — do they take ownership and accountability, or do they blame others? And then the cultural add, as mentioned before — do they add value to your next stage?
When you constantly assess people on those four pillars, you will decrease your hiring mistakes. It’s a simple method that’s used by bigger tech companies — not that I invented it — but I would definitely recommend having a consistent assessment methodology in place to avoid mis-hires. Because if you hire fast, you can end up with a team that’s not performing at all, and then you go through really tough times.
I experienced it myself when I was under high pressure to hire a lot at Criteo. At some point I lowered the standard — I was not too picky. I grew the team massively, but at some point I had serious performance challenges. That’s when I decided to be really, really tough in the selection phase and the hiring part, to make sure that would never, ever happen again. That’s something I learned through a massive mistake — and I wish I’d be the last one to make it, but I’m afraid this is going to repeat in the future for others as well.
Vladan: This will definitely repeat itself, in the future and in history. But I love your methodology, and it really correlates a lot with our own methodology of assessing candidates. And I think there’s a difference between hiring fast and hiring carelessly, right? You can still have a super fast, tight process — as long as you don’t skip any steps, and as long as you apply the assessment throughout the stages, consistently, with each candidate. That’s a very good point, because then you measure apples with apples every time, instead of freewheeling the process and having a lot of variables — which leads to a lack of consistency in hiring.
“Master AI tooling — but make sure you have the fundamentals right first. Otherwise it becomes a spider web of tools.”
AI and the sales stack: fundamentals first
Vladan: Interesting. And then — what is your number one tip here? Because there are a lot of tools out there currently, a lot of methodologies, a lot of new hip-and-happening AI companies in the sales tech space. What’s been working for you and your clients recently?
Richard: I went to an AI sales stack event a few weeks ago, and one of the highlights — a key takeaway for me — was that there are on average 13 new AI tools coming out every day. So there’s a lot to choose from. I think it comes down to: what do you have already? It’s super cool to use all these AI tools, and they can definitely help you. I think it’s a skill to develop for everybody — to make sure you master AI, because this is a game changer for everybody.
But I think 75–80% of companies are not ready to onboard more tooling, because they’re still figuring out how to use their current tooling and how to connect the right tech stack. So it’s really about taking a step back. What do we have today? What is working, what is not working? What do we want to achieve, and how can AI help with this? Instead of jumping on the AI train and adding more tools, because then you get to a phase where people get tool-fatigued. It’s important to make sure your current CRM is up and running, that the tools connected to it are well synced, that you get the right things out of it, that it aligns with your process and helps you. So yes — have a look at it, master AI tooling, but make sure you have the fundamentals right to absorb more tooling. Otherwise it becomes a spider web of random tooling. That’s what I see a lot: there’s a lot of tooling, but people don’t know how to use it, or it’s not well synced — a lot of data leakage, incorrect data — and then it becomes irrelevant. So that’s the first step: make sure you have the fundamentals right before onboarding even more.
Vladan: Fully agree with that. And once you have those fundamentals right — is there anything specific you’ve seen lately that stands out, something that’s worked for you in outbound sales, a specific process or tool?
Richard: I’m a huge fan of tools like Gong or Modjo — call recording tools where you can get a lot of insights. Before, you had to listen to recordings one by one, and you’d cover maybe one or two conversations. Now you have a full library with all the insights, completely synced with your CRM. There is so much more data available right now. So definitely look into these types of tools, especially if you start with outbound. You want to test the market, you want to test your messaging — what’s working, what’s not working, what are the common objections, questions, topics. You can get all of this from such a tool. You can get so much more intel, so much faster, that it really helps you develop the right outbound motion — and to coach your reps with it as well.
Vladan: And do you then use those insights — do you translate that back to marketing, or how do you use it to improve the proposition?
Richard: Yeah, we bring it back to marketing. It takes about 100 calls for a rep before you have enough data to say something relevant. If you have a team of ten, that means you have statistics on a thousand calls — that’s a pool big enough to say something relevant. At one company at the moment, we’re sitting down with the marketing team bi-weekly in the beginning — we’ll go to once a month — and on the other end they have the dashboards and insights as well, to really see what valuable information they see there, and how we need to optimize our messaging and our campaigns.
Vladan: That’s awesome — to have that direct feedback loop. Incredible. Richard, thanks a lot for all your insights and your time here today. It was super valuable. And thank you guys for listening. If you want to learn more about Richard and his company Atscale, you can of course follow him on LinkedIn. If you like this content and want to see more of it, make sure to give this podcast a follow — and looking forward to seeing you all next time. Cheers.
