- In the time I've been with Asana, some incredibly talented people have come and gone, this is natural in all orgs, but I deem some of this attrition as avoidable and a result of mis-management and a lack of talent identification sooner. When you hire GTM talent, don't forget what made them shine in the interview process, and in past roles, trust talent, provide the platform and time to add to what we have
- In the EMEA org headcount has grown exponentially. However there are few headline cases showing bets taken on internal hires vs external candidates. As a team this has made some second guess there long-term opportunities at Asana as talent is the preference more often than not
- While the businesses ARR has grown like mad, its clear the business is at an inflexion point with fewer sales people hitting number now than in previous quarters. Growth matters, but striking the balance between macro growth and individuals feeling like they are winning individually also matters
- For some sales people, the bottoms up nature of asana's business (i.e small groups of people trialling and account growing from the ground up) isn't how many people have worked before. Often customers know the product even better than you do as a new sales person and so controlling big deals is a challenge (but this is also a blessing for some too) - this can lead to multiple small transactions on accounts and more of a account management style sales role vs a one deal and done style role.
- Internal systems can be frustratingly slow for sales people. When you win a new customer, it takes so much work to actually see this and this drains the energy out of every single sales rep. We are assured this will change, but it is crazy that it is still a problem.
