At Cockroach Labs, we value not only our company’s collective culture, but sharing a view into the culture driving teams across the company. In the Meet the Team series, you’ll meet wonderful Roachers who help Enable Every Developer to Build World-Changing Applications.
This entry is part one in our feature of the East Sales team, where we sat down with Vincent Giacomazza, Vice President of Sales, East.
What is the East Sales team responsible for at Cockroach Labs?
The East Sales team is responsible for driving company revenue, including new business, expansion, renewals, and strategic partnerships along the East Coast. Field Sales plays a very vital role within Cockroach Labs. We help educate, validate, and work with prospective clients in adopting CockroachDB. The team consists of Account Executives working in Commercial, Enterprise, and Strategic capacities.
Each sales individual has a set number of accounts/prospects in which they carry an annual sales quota and attainment goal. They are deeply committed to driving CockroachDB Dedicated and Self Hosted revenue by winning the opportunity and customers' workloads. This is achieved by continuous skill development with an emphasis on qualifying opportunities, helping organizations solve pain points and challenges, and working towards a collective long-term deployment partnership.
How does your team fit within the rest of the organization to drive results?
Sales must work and collaborate daily with other organizations at Cockroach Labs. We are dependent on these groups in order to achieve revenue goals. Although Account Executives carry a direct quota, we all work with a One Team mindset to ensure our customers' success. In fact, we believe partnership all across the company makes our work possible.
Here are some examples:
- We work directly with Product on roadmap items, technical challenges, and customer feedback;
- Marketing on driving the message, competition, and helping drive qualified opportunities to the field;
- The rest of the Revenue team: our Customer Success partnership is key to ensuring that our clients are deploying and getting into production quickly. Solution Engineers, the channel team, and more work to expand the sales that are possible.
- Legal and Finance are true partners within the sales organization. We work with them closely on contracts, billing, and payments.
- HR and Recruiting help add amazing team members and support our existing team in their roles.
All of these groups play a very important role in revenue success. Their collaborative support and partnership is greatly appreciated.
Tell us about your background. How did you reach this point in your career?
I have always been driven by creating and surpassing goals. Sales and entrepreneurship are part of my DNA and what motivates me daily. I believe I learned the importance of a good work ethic from my father at a very young age. He was an Ironworker in NYC, and I grew up seeing the effort he made to support his family. I was the first in my family to go off to college. My goal at the time was to graduate with a law degree and eventually become an FBI agent, but this plan did not last very long.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year when I took my first direct sales role at an Arizona car dealership for some spending money. I thought: “well, I enjoy working with people, I’m knowledgeable around cars and trucks, and I get to determine how much money I make based on direct work effort,” and fell in love with sales. I was driven to work harder and smarter than I ever had. I put in more time, focused on customer relationships, and returning buyers. I set higher and higher goals. I saw that pursuing a career that forced you to continue to invest in yourself and grow personally gave you the ability to be in charge of the outcome— that it was up to me to better prepare, educate, and learn from others so that I could handle whatever was thrown at me.
After graduation, I had great success early on in sales. I remember the advice of someone I looked up to: “if you’re thinking about making a career in sales, then start with something highly competitive and challenging. See if you like prospecting, managing rejection, and going door-to-door selling something that’s not always top of mind,” which led me to copier sales. I did this for two years and found that I had a knack for leading my team in quota attainment. Not to date myself, but this was when the internet was really taking off. I knew then I wanted to be in technology and software sales. I took a job at a software startup called OpenTable first, as employee number 29. Then, I went to VMware, Cognos/IBM, Hortonworks, CoreOS, and finally, Cockroach Labs. Three of those companies went to an IPO, and the other two were acquired. As I look back on my career choices and track record, there is no doubt I made the right decision to join Cockroach Labs. My background has always been in sales and I am excited by finding creative ways to get deals done.
I reached this point in my career by continuing to prove myself as a top producer while maintaining key relationships and honing my skills on learning new technologies. I am constantly looking for ways to grow, and believe that being flexible and open to new ways of working is key to success.
How has Cockroach Labs helped you grow?
I truly didn’t know what to expect when joining Cockroach Labs. I knew that CockroachDB was game-changing and that the executive team I met prior was very impressive. I was immediately welcomed into a company culture that was different from any others that I had been a part of. They were very transparent and open with all communication. They would share weekly progress results, challenges, and a direct view into future aspirations. You had access to this information no matter what your role was within the company.
The company’s leaders made it clear that in order to achieve our goals, we operate on a model of respect and inclusiveness. It is really great to be part of a company culture that of course emphasizes the need to drive results, but also truly concerned about life balance and social responsibility. This has helped me grow in my role and be more open to other ways of thinking when working with my team.
What’s the upside to joining your team and Cockroach Labs overall?
This is an easy one. Let me break this down: when I’ve faced career decisions in the past, I would put together a spreadsheet of pros and cons. Then, I would seek others that I trusted and respected to ask for advice and guidance if the decision wasn’t clear. The choice to join Cockroach Labs was easy from the beginning. In fact, the whole “con” column was empty when I went to write it out.
I was immediately drawn to the company, as it was solving a problem that I would hear from my customers directly. The market timing was perfect, the executive team was exceptional and impressive in every way. The product worked and I believed in it. The company seemed headed in the right direction, building the database from the ground up, and with a customer success mindset.
As a salesperson or someone thinking about joining Cockroach Labs, these factors matter, as you want to do right by your customers. You want to feel like part of something bigger and know that there is a team behind you every step of the way; that you are all working towards a collective goal. That’s Cockroach Labs.
If you want to be part of a team that respects one another, supports each other to over-achieve, and commits to excellence without sacrificing work/life balance then this is the right team for you. Check out our careers page to learn more about our openings.
