Welcome to Season 3 of 10/10 GTM: The Podcast for Revenue Leaders!
Our guest for Episode 82 is Sean Brophy, Head of Global Sales, Pigment. With over two decades of sales experience focused on data and analytics, Sean brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation.
In this episode, Ross and Sean discuss Sean’s three vital focus areas that drive sales excellence — people, pipeline, and enablement. When these elements are refined and aligned, they create a circular effect that fuels fuel pipeline growth and ARR.
Listen to the episode here, and get the key takeaways from our conversation below.
My focus has been on helping clients make faster data driven decisions by turning their data into actionable information.
People
“Building a sales culture is essentially the combined personas of a team,” explains Sean. “And it’s funny because we talk about teams, but sales is an individual sport. You have a quota. I have a quota. And I might have a bunch of people help me support my quota, but successful teams are built by leaders who bring in the right people at the right time.”
Sean knows firsthand how important it is to hire for where the business is at, not just for where it's headed. He’s experienced what happens when hires are a mismatch for the current stage of the company. Even highly talented individuals can slow momentum if they’re not aligned with immediate needs.
“In any organization that you’re building, it goes without saying that the right people will help you go further, faster and the wrong people will set you back months, quarters, or even years,” stresses Sean.
That’s why Sean believes in refining the hiring profile and process to be as intentional and transparent as possible. He looks for individuals who bring:
- A competitive spirit
- A love for collaboration
- Shared values and mindset
For Sean, culture fit is fundamental to building a successful sales organization. “We talk a lot about building a culture of vulnerability, trust, and transparency,” he says. “Those qualities show up in people who are naturally curious and highly coachable. When you have that, there’s almost nothing you can’t solve together.”
To support and sustain this kind of culture, Sean emphasizes the need for a clearly defined enablement and coaching process. Clear checkpoints help create and maintain alignment, reinforce expectations, and give the team a shared roadmap for growth and success.
Pipeline
Once the right people are in place, the next focus is pipeline. As Sean puts it, “Pipeline is the lifeblood of any sales team.” But building pipeline is more difficult than ever. “I’ve seen sellers working four or five times as hard, and in some cases making less, just to reach an average quota attainment, which across the industry is currently around 53%,” he continues.
The bottom line is that pipeline is the leading indicator of a company’s success. So when leadership teams meet, they’re reviewing key data points like:
- Win rates
- Pipeline coverage
- Weighted pipeline
Setting the tone and culture for pipeline generation early on isn’t easy. “It takes an army,” Sean says, referring to the coordination needed across marketing, sales, and RevOps. “And it requires commitment from both leaders and sellers alike.” To help drive this culture, Sean and his team run PG Days every Thursday, a dedicated time when cross-functional teams align around generating qualified pipeline.
To keep things engaging, Sean’s teams use gamification strategies like Formula P in Europe and March Madness brackets in North America, rewarding the top-performing AE-BDR pairs. These programs turn pipeline building into something collaborative, competitive, and even fun.
“Pipeline generation is hard. Pipeline generation where you're sitting at home by yourself is even harder,” Sean explains. That’s why, once a month, the team gathers in-office to build pipeline together.”
Enablement
Even with the right people in place, if you don’t enable them to be successful, the results won’t be either. “We’ve hired and built a world-class enablement team,” explains Sean. “We look at what we call ‘Gold Standards’ for our AEs and BDRs, and we use the Pigment platform to track performance. It tells us how people are doing on key inputs — whether that’s number of calls, number of meetings, or other role-based activities.”
Pigment’s Gold Standard process includes evaluating whether reps are:
- Earning skills badges
- Communicating effectively with prospects and customers
- Speaking confidently about competitors
- Staying current on AI capabilities
“These are things, whether you're getting badged or certified, that are all part of the enablement experience,” says Sean. “Tracking this, along with pipeline generation, gives us an early read on who might need extra coaching or support. In a complex enterprise sale that can take 9 to 12 months, I can’t wait until month seven to realize there’s a problem.”
Sean’s team also looks for patterns among top performers to identify the inputs that matter most. These KPIs are made fully transparent so everyone knows exactly where they stand.
“It creates this sense of community where sellers can learn from each other,” Sean explains. “If I’m in the red, I can reach out to someone in the gold and find out what they’re doing right. And it removes surprises, there’s nothing worse than having a hard conversation with someone who’s totally shocked. This process eliminates that. Everyone knows where they stand at all times.”
Sean’s big takeaway? When you hire the right people, build pipeline with purpose, and enable your team to execute, you create a culture where sales excellence is possible and repeatable.
About Sean
Sean is a seasoned sales leader with over 20 years of experience in data and analytics, having worked with industry leaders like webMethods, Actuate, Tableau, Alteryx, and now Pigment. Throughout his career, he has helped clients make faster data driven decisions by turning their data into actionable information.
To learn more about Sean or connect with him directly, follow him on LinkedIn.
