Meet Tim Lambert, Openprise’s new Chief Revenue Officer

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Tim Lambert, our new Chief Revenue Officer. His Chief Revenue Officer role will focus on sales and business development. But in this wide-ranging conversation, we covered topics from coffee to collaboration.

What was it about Openprise that made you say to yourself, “I gotta work here?”

The people. There are lots of great products, lots of great companies out there doing interesting things. But I’ve learned in my career, it’s the people you work with who matter. One of the key values of Openprise is trust. And working with people I trust is important.

Beyond that, in all my previous roles one of the most frustrating things was not being able to have the correct data. Lead assignment, scoring, routing, and—all those things—were always a pain point for the organization. So, I saw this as an opportunity to help other companies solve that problem.

The vision of Openprise is to help marketing and sales operations teams and business IT teams really make sense of this massive amount of data coming in and really distilling it down to the right people with the right information at the right time. And we’re already seeing the impact our product is having in helping companies be successful.

So, working with great people and a great product that customers love were the things I was looking for. And it seems like I’ve found it at Openprise.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned so far?

The noise and confusion in the market and how marketing and sales ops organizations continue to try one platform after another, without getting the results they need.

I recently spoke with a sales ops person about her frustration with trying different platforms, each one not performing as it should. Eventually, it came to the point where she finally realized, “OK, that didn’t work. Now, what are we gonna do?”

There’s a level of fatigue and frustration with the martech stack and how to get it aligned. That tells me there’s an opportunity for us to show how we can solve this very real problem.

Let’s switch gears a little bit. Sales people are often about “I.” “I have my quota. I have this territory. This is my customer.” But there’s no “I” in team. What makes for a winning sales team?

One of the things I always tell sales people when they come to work for a startup is that “You are the CEO of your own market.” But I also tell them, “You being successful in your own market is not enough. The company won’t be successful because you succeeded in your territory. You have to lift up your peers and help them just as much as you help yourself. We have to work as a team to get to the promised land.” And especially at a startup, this level of collaboration extends beyond sales to the entire team.

I see my role as instilling a culture of collaboration and removing roadblocks to success.

When I have meetings it’s not about me telling people what to do. I ask the more senior and successful team members to share their insights and skills and mentor their peers. Bringing the team together in this way reinforces the idea that real success transcends the efforts of a few individuals.

OK, so of course you didn’t come here just for the free lunches. What are your plans for sales to ensure Openprise’s world domination?

(Laughter) My plans are to build an organization that we can scale across the world, and a sales team that cares about their customers because the customer comes first. One thing I’ve learned from my SaaS background is that if you don’t take care of your customer, you’re not going to acquire more customers. In the world we live in now—with all the information at the fingertips of the buyer, they’re doing their research. They already know so much more about you than you think they do. And so, it’s really important that we care about the full spectrum of a customer lifecycle and really take care of it. If I can help build that, we’re going to have happy customers bringing in more happy customers.

Tech companies are notorious for being pressure cookers. What’s something fun you do to blow off steam?

I’m a bit of a sports nut. I grew up playing multiple sports like football, baseball, and basketball. While now I’m just a fan of my favorite pro teams in those sports, I actually still play volleyball with my wife. But there’s one game from my childhood that I recently started playing again and it’s called pickleball. (What? You’ve never heard of pickleball?) You play on a mini tennis court, with a whiffle ball and wood rackets. And essentially, it’s like a mini version of tennis and racquetball.

I started playing in the backyard with my dad when I was about 8 years old. And now, it’s one of the fastest-growing sports in the US.  It even has a national championship, go figure!

Right now, I play with my family; everyone’s gotten back into it. My cousins in Idaho even built their own court in their backyard. But I’m looking forward to getting into some leagues here in the Bay Area.

At Openprise we’re all data geeks. So how does that data geekiness manifest itself in your daily life?

Coming from sales, we’re not always called “data geeks.” (Laughter) But I do love to jump into data—in Salesforce—to really understand the analytics of my business and the KPIs that I need for the team to be successful. I actually really enjoy getting in and spending time building my own reports.

And then the other place I “geek out” is around my coffee. Coffee is extremely important to me every morning. And I’ve become quite particular about having the right kind of beans. In fact, just got back from Costa Rica where I went on a coffee tour and learned about the entire process. So I enjoy a good cup of coffee and making sure that I have the right ratio of beans, and the right amount of water, brewed for the right amount of time. It’s the only way to start my day.