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Podcast

20Sales- Inside ElevenLabs $330M ARR Sales Machine | the 20x Sales Comp Plan Reps Must Hit | How to Land and Expand in a World of AI | Why Product-Market-Fit Is BS, Reps Should Not Be in the Office and Outbound Is King With Carles Reina

Startup Funding | The Pitch

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  • Ruthless 20x Quota Rule
    • Set quotas at ~20x a rep’s base to demand elite output and clarity on expectations.
    • Fire or exit reps who cannot hit that ruthless threshold after coaching and transparency. Transcript: Carles Reina We ask everyone to bring 20 times their base salary. That’s your quota, right? So if I pay you 100K a year, your quota is $2 million. If you don’t achieve your quota, then you’re going to be out, right? And we’re ruthless on that end. When I see my sales team in the office, like multiple days, I start getting worried. Because like, if you’re a salesperson, you need to be on the road. When you join 11 Labs, you need to have signed your (Time 0:00:00)
  • Early $20k Bet That Scaled
    • Carles invested $20k at $5M pre-seed in ElevenLabs and stayed deeply involved.
    • That stake later returned roughly $16M in value from subsequent liquidity. Transcript: Carles Reina Yes, at 5 million valuation, pre-seed. So I met Matty through a common friend, Paolo. We used to work together at Tractable AI back in the day. He messaged me one day being like, hey, I have this friend. We used to work together at BlackRock. He’s thinking about something about AI voices and so on. I have no idea, but you’ve been in that space. Do you want to talk to him? I was like, absolutely. And then that’s when I met Matty. And within 30 minutes of the first conversation, I was like, I’m all in. How much money do you want? And I will introduce it to my friends. And that was pretty much it. Harry Stebbings How much did you put in? Carles Reina I put it 20K. 20K? Harry Stebbings Yes. Have you kept it all? Carles Reina I sold up a tiny, tiny portion through one of the secondaries, but that’s tiny portion. What is 20k worth now? It’s probably like, it’s like 800k in returns. So that’s probably like what, 16 million, something like that? (Time 0:06:24)
  • Skepticism Toward Product‑Market Fit
    • PLG volume hides which segments actually convert and where true ICPs lie.
    • Carles doesn’t call product-market-fit until one ICP has produced >$10M in revenue. Transcript: Carles Reina Did it is like the PLG motion gave us a ton of like volume of leads, which 90 plus percent of those were like extremely bad. But the interesting portion is like you started seeing like some patterns of like where people were finding interest and where you would essentially have were having meaningful conversation. So that for me was like instrumental to understand later on and building name account list and going after specific accounts from an album basis because I was seeing some level of traction. And like investors were telling us like, God, you have product market fit because you’re doing all of these millions. And I was telling them like, no, no, no, no, like we don’t have it. Like I don’t believe in product market fit until in one single ICP you’ve made more than $10 million. So you keep experimenting and you build a list and then one week you tackle a specific persona and another week you tackle a completely different vertical to actually understand what Moves quicker, what is the pitch that actually resonates better and so on. That’s how we essentially started doing it. (Time 0:10:10)
  • Ignore Firmographics; Qualify Fast
    • Early enterprise traction can come from unexpected places like Gmail accounts and single developers.
    • Qualification in 30 minutes reveals true intent and speed to buy more than firmographics do. Transcript: Carles Reina At all. It was like so random, like I had absolutely no idea. Like in the early days, we were signing like enterprise contract with Gmail accounts. So we remember like this is like early days of chat GPT. People were building applications left and right and thinking like, I might need to add some voice here or there, even if it’s like for like some dubbing or for like voicing some of the Narrations and all of that stuff. The reality is like there will be all of these like developers, like single developer shops, using a Gmail account saying, well, I want to add voice, but your self service plans are not Enough because they have like some limitations, some caps. And essentially I would need all of these additional things. I was like, okay, fantastic. Then enterprise is the right path. We’ll customize it for you, blah, blah, blah. And what I used to do is like, it got to a point where like I was doing like 30 minutes calls and I would do maybe like 50, 60 calls in a single week back to back. And I would tell them like, within 30 minutes, I knew if they were qualified or not. I knew they were interested, if they could move quickly. So what I would do is like, I would set up a trial by the end of the day. I will commit on the call on the spot being by the end of the day, you will have heard from me, I will set up your trial, you will have access to the contracts that you can start reviewing it. And if you need anything, just bring me at any time. And this is my WhatsApp. (Time 0:13:03)
  • When To Go Rep‑Led Vs PLG
    • Start rep-led selling when ACV is around $1k–$2k/month and customers need handholding.
    • Prefer smaller land deals (~$12k/year) to get one-layer approvals and expand later quickly. Transcript: Carles Reina I think it’s like it needs to be at least $1,000 a month, right? The trick is like, how much money do you feel that you can put in your credit card without having to explain anything? If you are comfortable putting like $1,000 a month, absolutely fine. Then your threshold should be $2,000, right? But if like the majority of people putting $1,000 on their credit cards, even if it’s like for a business transaction, they still need to explain quite a lot of stuff. So then that’s the moment in which like they need handholding, they need convincing, they need to show ROI. That’s the one that you want to tackle them because then you treat it as like a PLG motion with a land and expand. It’s like, don’t worry, we’ll sort everything. We’ll help you. Like $12,000, it is a lot of money. Acknowledge that it is a lot of money for them because it is a lot of money. Then work with them on an expansion plan. But if you do it much higher, then I see a lot of founders telling me like, no, no, it needs to be like investors have been telling me like I need to go proper enterprise and proper enterprise Like six figure deals and so on. I was like, forget about it. Like it’s going to take you months to get that contract done. The beautiful side is like if you sign a $12,000 contract, there is probably one layer of approval, maximum two layers of approval for a bigger company. (Time 0:16:36)
  • Turn Land Into Outbound Expansion
    • Treat every signed inbound land as an outbound expansion opportunity across the full org.
    • Incentivize AEs to keep selling into accounts after handoff to CSMs to drive growth. Transcript: Carles Reina So we’ve had that as well at 11 Labs like multiple times, right? There’s a portion of the customers that we oversold and then like they kept kind of flat. Part of the big effort always is like how do you find new use cases for them and how do you show them like additional value? So there is like you need to knock on people’s doors. Like even if you sign an inbound deal, that is one deal that is inbound, but you should not be thinking that like that is done. It’s like, then you need to transform it into like an outbound opportunity as well. And then to do it outbound opportunities like, okay, now I have an MSA signed with an order form. Let’s actually go and outbound every single other team that might be relevant across the entire organization to show them what the capabilities are, right? That is the only way you actually expand a deal. But not only that, like the most important question is, how do you retain them forever? Because if there is only one team that uses you, that team at some point might get pissed, someone might pitch them, you lose the deal. Who’s responsible for this internally? Harry Stebbings Is it CS? Is it product? Is it sales? Carles Reina Depends how you want to organize it. Some companies it account management right so what do you do we do like as account execs and customer success so for us like once a deal is signed we transfer it to like customer success Customer success is responsible for like the upselling negotiations all of that stuff now the difference is in the enterprise segment so very large customers right so name account Lists companies that have like over 2 000 employees and like that. Then for those ones, my request to the account execs, like your job is not finished. Even if you transfer it to a customer success manager, I still want you to go and upsell and find new opportunities in the account because you’re incentivized. And if I’m an account exec, like, let’s be very honest, like everyone loves money and making money as an account exec. So your incentive to say, you went through hell for the past 60 days to close an enterprise contract. Fantastic. Then that contract is signed. (Time 0:18:26)
  • Comp For Joint Upsell Incentives
    • Comp both AEs and CSMs on upsells within 12 months so both parties push expansion.
    • Pay accelerators (higher commission tiers) to reward overperformance and retain hunger. Transcript: Carles Reina But the interesting piece like on the upsell side is we compensate both the account exec and the CSM. If the contract is upsold, if we upsell a company within the first 12 months, the account exec continues to accrue like quarter retirement and also like commissions and the csm is compensated An nrr right so i’m paying double but i don’t care it makes perfect sense because then i have these two people busting their ass to make sure that they actually can make more money which Harry Stebbings Is fantastic for me as a company totally get that again i just want to pick on some things you said. You said that 80% is phenomenal given the ambitiousness of 20x. If you’re advising me as a founder, is that 20x a good rule of thumb, or do you think that’s specific to the margin profile of 11 labs? I think the reality is every business will be slightly different depending on the industry you’re selling, right? Carles Reina So what I always tell everyone is, let’s start with 20x, then you can adjust. What I told everyone in the company, the first account execs that I hired was like, guys, I have absolutely no clue if 20X is going to be the right number or not. The standard in SaaS is that like you have like somewhere under like six to seven, maybe eight, maybe 10, right? That is the standard. I know this is what you are expecting. This is not how we’re going to be building a company at 11. If you’re thinking about doing the same that you’ve been doing at Notion or all of these places like Salesforce and so on, then you’re in the wrong place. So we’ll experiment. If we get it wrong, absolutely fine. We’ll compensate you correctly. And then essentially, we will change the entire compensation structure. But if we get it right, which I think it is the right number, this is what we’re going to keep. And we’ve kept this since I won. We’ve been running with this for the past two and a half years. (Time 0:21:12)
  • Monthly Remote Pipeline Reviews
    • Run monthly remote pipeline reviews where reps present deals and forecast the next 30 days.
    • Publicly call out poor pipeline work and list blockers to drive faster improvement. Transcript: Harry Stebbings And they’re in person or remote? Carles Reina All remote. This is an interesting thing. I know how some people are about being in an office and all of that stuff. And when I see my sales team in the office multiple days, I start getting worried. Because if you’re a salesperson, you need to be on the road. I travel 75% of my time. In the past three weeks, I was in San Francisco, I was in Mexico City, in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Singapore, in London, and I’m heading to Dubai. That is the standard thing. Salespeople need to be on the road talking to their customers, whether that is in the UK, that is across Europe, or that is in Cancun. I do not care. If you constantly in the office doing virtual meetings only with your customers, you’re doing it wrong. How do you build a sales culture remotely? By being ruthless. You need to be on top of it. It’s like it requires extra time, and it requires people to be forced to actually like be on the road. It’s like we will have multiple touch points, but I don’t hire people that are junior. I hire people that are actually like autonomous, very energetic, very passionate will accept like a million no’s fundamentally because like building sales is tough building sales Harry Stebbings Remotely is even tougher and you just need to be on top of it we’re going to get to actually the people but i just want to stay on these meetings case we have them separate we have them remote We have them monthly let’s start on the like sales team side before we move to the CSMs. What are you expecting them to bring? Should they send pipeline ahead of time with notes? Carles Reina What’s that prep phase pre-meeting? And essentially, like we start going to the deals, right? We talk about like the biggest deals and all of that stuff. And then I always like look while they’re talking, I look at their pipeline and I pull up some random deals. So the two understand like whether they have a full grasp of what they’re talking about. Because sometimes, you know, like sales teams, like they can end up like cheating and then having a bigger pipeline that is inflated, but it’s not moving, right? And catch them. But for me, the key item that I always tell them is like at the end when they present, I keep interacting them and giving them feedback and asking questions. But at the end of it, I’m like, the question is always the same. What are the blockers that you have and how can I help you? And for me, what I do is like, I build a list of the blockers for each one of them, like summarize them later on and then post it across the entire organization being like, hey, if we solve All of these blockers in Europe, we could be making a lot more money. In India, these are the blockers. In Spanish, LATAM, these are the blockers. In Middle East, these are the blockers, right? Then everyone is like understands what are we, what are we in each one of the regions. Harry Stebbings Okay. And so we have that. And when they come to you and they say something, because I’m on a lot of boards, and very often it’s like, that one that slipped to next quarter what do you say when you get reps who say that Carles Reina And what’s the right way to deal with that i mean there’s always like deals that will end up like moving towards the next quarter that’s inevitable right it was like the question you do This story by the way in front of everyone yes you don’t do it one by one no no one has enough time to do it one by one i think like everyone can benefit from like like doing it in front of other People it’s the pressure it’s the fact like you you can give them what you’re doing bad feedback people learn from it right so the learning come like components i think it’s important Specifically from a sales perspective how do you do that without shaming people i don’t know you need to shame them like if someone hasn’t done their job they haven’t done their job and You need to actually publicly tell them so that like they understand they haven’t done their job and everyone else knows that like they’re getting shit for it. You don’t agree with the praise in public, criticized in private? No, I don’t agree. I think like I need to tell you like what is right and what is wrong. Of course, I’m not going to tell you like this is like full shit. Like you’re going to get fired. I’m not going to say that. But at the same time, I’m not going to hold back on saying if you haven’t done a good job. And for instance, there was, like, a case earlier this year of one of my account execs that I told the person, like, you just were lucky. And you’ve closed these deals just for pure luck, but you haven’t done any good job. And then, like, the next one, there was, like, it was so funny. Like, there was exactly two people, the same case. And then the next one that came in presenting was I told him like, you have done exactly the same thing, but you have not been lucky as the previous person. And that’s why you haven’t actually closed anything. Both of them, the following month, absolutely smashed it. Sales people need to be on their toes all the time and they need to be told. And if they’re good at their job, they’re going to accept the criticism, learn from it, and then improve. How long are those meetings? We end up putting usually an hour and a half and then people have like about like seven, eight minutes to present. And then like, it’s very, very quick in general. (Time 0:26:27)
  • Get Reps Out Of The Office
    • Prioritize reps being on the road and meeting customers over being in the office.
    • Hire autonomous, senior reps able to handle rejection and run outbound when remote. Transcript: Carles Reina Because if you’re a salesperson, you need to be on the road. I travel 75% of my time. In the past three weeks, I was in San Francisco, I was in Mexico City, in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Singapore, in London, and I’m heading to Dubai. That is the standard thing. Salespeople need to be on the road talking to their customers, whether that is in the UK, that is across Europe, or that is in Cancun. I do not care. If you constantly in the office doing virtual meetings only with your customers, you’re doing it wrong. How do you build a sales culture remotely? By being ruthless. You need to be on top of it. It’s like it requires extra time, and it requires people to be forced to actually like be on the road. It’s like we will have multiple touch points, but I don’t hire people that are junior. (Time 0:26:41)
  • Forecast Pessimistically
    • Require reps to forecast conservatively; underestimate rather than inflate pipeline.
    • Use the lowest plausible numbers for board reports to avoid unrealistic expectations. Transcript: Carles Reina Notes? What’s that prep phase pre-meeting? And essentially, like we start going to the deals, right? We talk about like the biggest deals and all of that stuff. And then I always like look while they’re talking, I look at their pipeline and I pull up some random deals. So the two understand like whether they have a full grasp of what they’re talking about. Because sometimes, you know, like sales teams, like they can end up like cheating and then having a bigger pipeline that is inflated, but it’s not moving, right? And catch them. But for me, the key item that I always tell them is like at the end when they present, I keep interacting them and giving them feedback and asking questions. But at the end of it, I’m like, the question is always the same. What are the blockers that you have and how can I help you? And for me, what I do is like, I build a list of the blockers for each one of them, like summarize them later on and then post it across the entire organization being like, hey, if we solve All of these blockers in Europe, we could be making a lot more money. In India, these are the blockers. In Spanish, LATAM, these are the blockers. In Middle East, these are the blockers, right? Then everyone is like understands what are we, what are we in each one of the regions. Harry Stebbings Okay. And so we have that. And when they come to you and they say something, because I’m on a lot of boards, and very often it’s like, that one that slipped to next quarter what do you say when you get reps who say that Carles Reina And what’s the right way to deal with that i mean there’s always like deals that will end up like moving towards the next quarter that’s inevitable right it was like the question you do This story by the way in front of everyone yes you don’t do it one by one no (Time 0:27:50)
  • CEO Cold Outreach Wins Deals
    • Carles personally outbounded Razer’s CEO and secured an in-person meeting in Singapore.
    • He uses founder/CEO outreach as a high-leverage outbound tactic frequently. Transcript: Carles Reina Absolutely love the brand. And then that came out because like I outbounded the CEO and I messaged him like, Matt and I are going to be in Singapore in a few days. Like we’d love to actually meet and figure out how we can talk, how we can figure out like a partnership. And he replied saying like, yes, let’s do it. So we ended up spending like a good hour in their offices, which is fantastic. I do it all the time. And then I pass it to the team because I do believe like a good leader needs to be a good outbounder. (Time 0:32:01)
  • Weekly Outbound Accountability
    • Publicly track weekly outbound activity and name underperformers to shift behaviour.
    • Make outbound non-optional and reward people who consistently hit activity targets. Transcript: Harry Stebbings The fastest ways i think to create distrust obviously when you have investors look at your company obviously you share pipe often of what you expect it to be yes when we do reference calls As all investors do with friends who are ceos of those companies and like dude would never spend more than 25k on this and they’ve got it in for 250 fastest way to lose credit correct correct Carles Reina And there is another item in there is like if you always underestimate or undervalue your pipeline it means that like to reach the numbers that you had you need to have a higher pipeline Like there is a lot of consequence of all of this there’s like you’ll end up working twice as hard because your pipeline is not big enough for the year-end number or the quota and number That you needed. So you just kind of, it’s a forcing mechanism to have the right culture in place. We went through this like cultural change early this year because I actually got obsessed. We were doing the majority of deals, like 90% of the deals were mostly inbounds, right? (Time 0:36:07)
  • Make Outbound A Cultural Priority
    • Force outbound adoption with a clear target (e.g., 50/50 inbound/outbound) and weekly public reporting.
    • Call out underperformers on outbound metrics and celebrate consistent performers. Transcript: Carles Reina We went through this like cultural change early this year because I actually got obsessed. We were doing the majority of deals, like 90% of the deals were mostly inbounds, right? And as the team keeps growing, I was like getting extremely worried that like we were not building the right mentality in the team. It’s like if at some point the pipeline drives up, then you essentially end up dying. Right. So I put a goal saying like we need to migrate to 50 percent outbound, 50 percent inbound by the end of the year. So kept hammering absolutely everyone. I still put together a report every single week with every single account exec and SDR in the team telling them, like, you’ve achieved your target on a weekly basis. You haven’t achieved it. And if people don’t achieve it, then I call them out. I did it so often that I ended up, like, getting, like, people make jokes about outbound, outbound, outbound. It’s like, I’m the outbound king. Yes, I love it. And people know that if you are on that list of people that are not doing that outbound, I’m going to call you out. And if at some point I call you out too many times, then we’re going to have a problem, right? It’s a cultural thing. (Time 0:36:50)
  • Blend Tools, LinkedIn, Cold Calls
    • Use modern sequencing tools (e.g., Lemlist) plus LinkedIn and cold calls for outbound.
    • Cold calling still works and varies by market; use WhatsApp for LATAM/India. Transcript: Carles Reina Fantastic those guys are doing super well we use linkedin and there’s a lot of cold calling. The traditional method works. And it depends on the market. You literally cold call? 100%, yes. I was in the office yesterday and early today and I had like some of my team members actually cold calling. I was like so happy. I was smiling. (Time 0:38:19)