Jaye Vernon

After successfully leading the entire Sales team for North Star and in preparation for the acquisition by Braze, I was promoted to lead our Enterprise team. Although we didn't achieve 100%, I am proud to have led the Enterprise sales team to 82% of our target through what was a turbulent FY24 with the acquisition and as we had built an entirely new team, with 4 new ramping hires.

After having learned so much and in an interest to continue being a student of sales, I thought I'd offer my time to give back to those wanting to enter the world of sales.

Earlywork provide an accelerated education program for graduates wanting to enter the world of tech sales. Solving two problems; no universities teach the skills required in tech sales, and sales leaders looking to hire entry level sales roles often have a heavy lift in order to effectively ramp them.

Highlights from this role:

• Mentoring a newly minted BDR into being promoted to an AE within their first year in their new role
• Being an advisor to the Earlywork team as they build out their curriculum
• Featuring on webinars and as a guest speaker at events of theirs

After consistently hitting my number as an individual contributor and having been a leader within the sales team for the prior 2 years, I was promoted to formally lead our entire sales team.

Working closely with Christopher in this role, I successfully led the team to achieving 100%+ of our quota.

Highlights from this role:

• Consistent performance with over 100% quota attainment each year
• Building out our Scale, Enterprise, and BDR teams from 3 to 15
• Nurturing the growth of all reps in my ream to achieve results they didn't were possible. This ranges for 260% quota attainments from people like Martin, to professional development leading to promotions in people like Ferris, Dan, and Ben.

After successfully being convinced by Christopher and Lewis to take the leap of faith into leading the GTM efforts for a company named Appboy at the time, I joined the team as the first Account Executive in ANZ.

This meant that I was foundational to the building blocks of what become North Star and involved me taking on; territory analysis and target account list building, developing a streamlined training and onboarding program for new hires, building pipeline, closing new business opportunities, hiring BDRs to support our team, collaborating and learning from Braze HQ, and so much more.

Highlights from this role:

• Being first boots on the ground meant I got exposure to every aspect of the business, not just pre-sales
• Closing some of our largest accounts: Vodafone, Jumbo Interactive, Sportsbet, Scentre Group and many more.
• Creating a conduit between our GTM activities and best practices at Braze HQ
• Beginning to build out the team

After successfully over delivering on my monthly quota, I was promoted into leading our independent agency sales team. This was an incredibly fast paced role given the MRR targets we had meaning high outbound activity whilst maintaining relationships with those we had previously sold campaigns to.

Highlights from this role:

• Growing out independent agency footprint by 200%
• Building relationships with the CEO and Founders of these agencies who often invited me to present as an advisor
• Getting exposure to sales leadership, forecasting, and upward management

As a result of my experience in equity trading at ANZ, I was head hunted to be the first employee in Australia for MiQ, a UK based Programmatic Ad vendor. In this highly technical role I was responsible for developing profitable trading strategies by conducting thorough market analysis and identifying trends.

Highlights from this role:

• I was responsible for ~$5M per month worth of ad spend on behalf of customers like AMEX, Toyota, Hilton Hotel Group, the NRL and many others. I would assess hourly market conditions to look for hedge and arbitrage opportunities, continually optimising on their behalf.
• Leant python to efficiently optimise campaign performance
• Built strong relationships with clients by providing insightful market commentary and personalised investment advice.

This was my first graduate role out of university where I was responsible for the management of a book of clients within ANZ Share Investing's portfolio. In this role I learned the importance of operational excellence, time management and customer service.

Highlights in this role:

• #1 seller of ANZ margin loans
• Top 3 in operational efficiency - speed to executing orders
• Selected as one of five individuals to go through the AML and Equity Trading program at ANZ

This was the role where my sales career was born and where I met Christopher Fennell for the first time.

I was responsible for effectively being the outsources BDR for organisations like Sugar CRM, IBM, Twitter, Near Maps and others. 100% of our activity was cold calling it's where I cut my teeth in prospecting.

Highlights from this role:

• Working for and learning from Christopher - It was a formative experience for me and something I look back on often as the breading ground of the sales person I am today
• I was consistently the top performing Account Manager out performing all of my peers