Sales

Welcome to the Sales team homepage

The GitLab Field team includes multiple functions: Enterprise Sales, Commercial Sales, Customer Success, Channel Partners, Alliances, Field Operations.

• This page serves as our home base. From here, you can find a wealth of resources from all of the teams in our department.
• Interested in collaborating with the Sales team? See our How We Work and Communicating with the Team sections.
• Want to learn more about our goals? Check out our most recent Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Quick Reference Guide

Who We Are

The Sales team is led by the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Reporting into this individual are the:

• VP, Enterprise Sales
• VP, Commercial Sales (Mid-Market and SMB)
• VP, Field Operations
• VP, Customer Success
• VP, Global Channels
• VP, Alliances
• Chief of Staff, CRO

The Sales team is organized into Large, Mid-Market, and SMB segments. (Descriptions of Sales segments can be found in the Field Operations Handbook - Segmentation section.)

The people working with each segment and their quota are:

• Large: Strategic Account Executive (SAE)
• Mid-Market: Mid-Market Account Executive (MM AE)
• SMB: SMB Account Executive (SMB AE)

How We Work

The GitLab Sales team embodies our CREDIT values in every aspect of our work. Specifically, we constantly work to overperform and achieve strong results. We prioritize efficiency in our processes and operations. We succeed because of transparent, cross-functional collaboration. We are committed to hiring for and celebrating diversity, and we strive to create an environment of inclusiveness and belonging for all. And, we embrace a spirit of iteration, understanding that we can always improve.

Sales Tech Stack

For information regarding the tech stack at GitLab, please visit the Tech Stack Applications page of the Business Operations handbook where we maintain a quick reference table of who should have access to various tools and the designated owner for each to contact with questions. To see a full list of the tools that make up our tech stack, visit the Tech Stack Details page.

Collaborating with the Team

Please use the Handbook as much as possible to document important information. You should also use the Handbook as a starting point for any questions. Read here for guidance on how we take notes on the GitLab Sales team.

Dogfood GitLab whenever you can – to collaborate on ideas, gather feedback, organize projects, and more.

When you have to use office applications, always use G Suite applications instead of Microsoft Office; for example, Google Sheets instead of Excel, Google Docs instead of Word, and Google Slides instead of Keynote or Powerpoint. Give the entire company editing rights whenever possible so everyone can contribute.

Communicating with the Team

• The Sales team primarily communicates via Slack in our day-to-day work. Our main team channels are #sales, our general channel, and #field-fyi, our read-only channel for official field team announcements.
  • Email is used in some segments where customer privacy dictates additional security measures.
  • For a full breakdown of all Field Slack groups and the hierarchy of our Google Groups, see the Communicating with the Field Handbook page.
• Please reference the Sales Support and Sales Operation Handbook page for a summary of how to engage with deal desk resources.
• Chatter @contracts on the specific record in Salesforce where you will need assistance from the legal team.

Please avoid contacting individuals directly so that discussions can be available for everyone to review and learn from. We strongly encourage every team member to review the GitLab Communication Handbook page upon joining the team, and occasionally return to it during your tenure here as a refresher. (You can also get certified on communication at GitLab.)

Supporting Teams

The Sales team works cross-functionally, both with teams within and outside of our organization. These teams include:

Customer Success

The Customer Success department is part of the GitLab Sales function and partners with our large and strategic customers to deliver value throughout their journey with GitLab. See our Customer Success page in the Handbook for more details.

Inside Sales

The Inside Sales department is part of the GitLab Sales function and partners with the sales and customer success teams to deliver maximum value to GitLab customers throughout their journey with GitLab. See our Inside Sales page in the handbook for more details.

Channels & Alliances

These teams help accelerate GitLab’s trajectory by connecting our business and customers to companies that can help compliment our product mission and/or drive customer adoption and usage of the GitLab platform. See our Channel and Alliances Handbook pages for more details.

Sales Development Organization

Sales Development Representative (SDR) - focused on inbound leads

Business Development Represenative (BDR) - focused on outbound leads

This team sits within the Marketing department and provides territory support to Sales team members through outreach, prospecting, and lead qualification. Key priorities include:

1. Align on accounts and prioritize prospecting targets (both on the account and title levels).
2. BDRs and SDRs are to set ‘at bat’ meetings utilizing sales development best practices
3. Drive brand awareness within target accounts

See the Sales Development page in the Handbook for more details.

Support

This team provides technical support to GitLab.com and Self-Managed GitLab customers. For an overview of support levels based on plan tier, see the Support Page. The Support → Customer Success Manager (CSM) escalation process can be found here.

During the sales cycle, potential customers who have questions that are not within the scope of Sales can have their queries escalated in different ways depending on the account size:

1. For Strategic/Large accounts that will have a dedicated Solutions Architect, engage the SA so that they can triage and develop the request.
2. For questions that you think technical staff can answer in less than 10 minutes, please use the #questions Slack channel. For more information, see the internal support section of the Support Handbook.
3. By default, trial licenses do not include support. If you’ve been contacted by a prospect whose evaluation of GitLab includes evaluating support expertise or SLA performance, as a member of the Sales team you can grant temporary support for their trial license. See the Internal Support Handbook for more details.
4. If your customer contacts you requiring technical support, please immediately direct them to open a ticket through the Support Portal(https://support.gitlab.com/). Please do not open a support ticket on behalf of a customer. More details here.
5. For escalating a Support ticket, see the I want to escalate a ticket section.

Product

We work with the Product team to help drive the GitLab Direction based on customer feedback and needs.

When you hear of feedback or you personally have feedback, you are encouraged to comment within the issue, if one exists, or create your own issue on our Issue Tracker.

When you have an organization that is interested in a feature and you have commented in the issue and added a link to the account in Salesforce, please follow the process outlined on the Product Handbook to arrange a call with the product manager and account to further discuss the feature request.

If a client has a question or suggestion about a particular part of the product, find out which individual on the Product team you need to speak by looking under DevOps Stages on the Product stages, groups, and categories page.

Coronavirus Impact to Business Tracking

To standardize our messaging around Coronavirus and the impact it is having on our prospects and customers, please reference the below processes:

• Use this for guidance on a standardized conversation
• Use this to capture anecdotal feedback from prospects & customers
• Add the string #covid in the SFDC Opportunity field [CP] Close Plan to indicate you have had this conversation with your prospect/customer and use this report to confirm your Opportunity is tagged correctly: COVID Mentions in CP Close Plan
• Assess and flag each SFDC Deal using the “COVID-19 Risk Scale” field with the following definitions:

1. Blank: No conversation or insight has been gathered yet
2. Pending: Engaged with customer to validate current situation
3. No impact: Oppty proceeding on close plan in customer’s words
4. Med: Customer validates change to budget or timing but some “high priority” purchases still happening
5. High - Budget Change: Customer’s words: all budget gone in formal response to economy
6. High - Priority Change: Customer’s words: Timing must push in direct response to economy

• Add high-level summary of impact to “COVID Comment” and original amount prior to impact in “Pre-COVID iACV” SFDC fields on the opportunity
• A note for Commercial Account Owners: add the string c19 to any activity record where a discussion was held.

Export Control Classification, and Countries We Do Not Do Business In

GitLab’s Export Control Classification (or ECCN) is 5D992.c. As a consequence of this classification, we currently do not do business in: Iran, Sudan, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and the Crimea, Donetsk, or Luhansk regions of the Ukraine.

Performance Indicators

Sales KPIs are Not Public and documented in the Internal handbook.

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