With longer and more complex sales cycles, it’s harder than ever to capture and keep a prospects attention — let alone win in highly saturated, competitive markets. So the question is, how can organizations navigate these extended sales cycles and outperform their competitors?
In this fireside chat, Ross and Arnab Mishra, CEO of Xactly, discuss how to build a culture of excellence and win in competitive markets. Drawing on his extensive leadership experience, Arnab shares practical insights on defining the right behaviors, setting clear expectations, and maintaining an adaptive mindset.
Building a Culture of Excellence
Before you can build a culture of excellence, start out by understanding what behaviors you want to implement, and then ask yourself: how do we ingrain these behaviors into our team and empower them to live up to them?
Based on Arnab’s experience, there are three key principles to follow:
- Truth seeking behavior: You can only deliver on excellence if you have an objective view of the world, which is based on accurate, unbiased information. “The important thing is facing those truths, even when they’re uncomfortable and might challenge existing beliefs,” says Arnab. “You have to be honest with yourself as you’re asking questions, such as whether you have alignment with the power in the deal, or you know why a buyer is buying, you understand the timeline, the purchasing process, and so forth.”
- Embracing trends quickly with a bias toward action: The market changes quickly, and your ability to react to those changes is the difference between success and failure. Arnab explains, “Make sure you’re constantly listening, staying curious, and asking the fifth level of ‘why’ so you can uncover the root causes of the challenges you face and respond effectively.”
- Taking a long-term perspective: While near-term results keep the business afloat, lasting success requires thoughtful, future-focused decisions. Arnab recommends investing not only in your products, but also in enabling your people and building strong relationships with customers and partners. This way, you’re laying a strong foundation for sustainable growth.
Setting the Right Expectations
To set the right expectations from the get-go, Arnab takes a “model and measurement” approach.
“As leaders, you have to model these behaviors. You have to be intentional about it and have the humility to own up when you don’t live up to those standards. Explain how you learned from the experience and how you’ll do better.”
In addition to modeling best practices, measuring what people do is critical. Arnab points out that people often assume they’re performing at a certain level, but the data may tell a different story.
“Sometimes that perspective isn’t fully aligned with reality. Capturing accurate information — and surfacing that data through clear processes — allows people to see what they’re doing and self-modulate.”
Staying Ahead of the Curve & Winning in Competitive Markets
Organizations recognized as market leaders are typically those that respond quickly to new trends and are highly adaptable. “Companies that are nimble, agile, and understand how the world is changing are viewed as the market leaders,” says Arnab.
As Arnab explains, “Companies that are nimble, agile, and understand how the world is changing are viewed as the market leaders.” This adaptability relies on balancing innovation and operational efficiency — two forces that feed into one another. “You need innovation to fuel long-term growth, and operational efficiency to fund innovation because money isn’t as free flowing as it used to be,” he adds.
In practice, this balance often involves adopting Scaled Agile frameworks for product development, leveraging global staffing, and using data-driven roadmaps to guide investments. Generative AI further accelerates workflow by minimizing manual tasks and allowing teams to focus on high-value work. At Xactly, these operational improvements have led to a surge in new product launches and major enhancements, demonstrating how efficiency and innovation can work in tandem to propel rapid progress.
Another important factor of staying ahead and winning in competitive markets is leadership flexibility. Leaders who thrive in uncertain environments recognize when to pivot, how to meet emerging challenges, and how to adjust their management style based on what teams and circumstances demand. “The hardest thing about being a leader is adapting your style to the needs of the moment,” explains Arnab. “That requires one to be highly cognizant of what’s happening and having insight and intuition around what’s needed.”
Closing thoughts
To build and sustain a culture of excellence, clarity, measurement, and agility are all key. When you set the right expectations, and your team knows what their role is, how they’ll be measured, and what great looks like, then you create a foundation for consistent high performance. By focusing on operational efficiency and embracing market changes without losing sight of the long term, organizations can remain competitive.
