Revenue Builders

Enterprise sellers often lose deal quality by moving too quickly from customer pain to product answers. In this Revenue Builders minisode, Stuart Gwynn of MongoDB explains why the best sellers slow down in discovery, hold the line with the customer, and use disciplined qualification to determine whether a problem is real, urgent, and worth solving. Stuart shares how pipeline creates the courage to qualify out, why team preparation matters before strategic customer conversations, and how trust is built when sellers demonstrate that they understand the customer’s business before prescribing a solution.

Stuart Gwynn is an enterprise sales leader at MongoDB who has exceeded goal every year since joining the company in 2019. Before MongoDB, he spent seven years at Pure Storage, rising from SDR to named account rep and finishing as one of the company’s top performers before moving into strategic enterprise selling.

Connect with Stuart:

LinkedIn

Episodes mentioned:

The Discipline Behind Scaling from PLG to Enterprise with Sahir Azam

Why Sales Execution Wins in an AI-First World with Brian McCarthy, President of Global Revenue and Field Operations at Cursor

Listen to the full episode:

The Discipline Behind Nine-Figure Deals with Stuart Gwynn

Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.

This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.

Connect with Us:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Force Management

Senior leaders are often judged in moments they could not plan for. Mark Thurmond’s path from sales rep to co-CEO of Tenable was built through consistent execution, difficult operating assignments, and crises that demanded calm before certainty. He explains what the RSA breach taught him about transparency and customer trust, how he and Steve Vintz kept Tenable moving after the death of CEO Amit Yoran, and why the strongest leaders build followership before they need it. The conversation also covers choosing learning over title, using AI to raise seller productivity, and leading a product-to-platform shift as a company-wide operating change.

Mark Thurmond is Co-Chief Executive Officer of Tenable, where he oversees the company’s go-to-market functions across sales, marketing, customer success, professional services, and technical support. His career includes senior operating and sales leadership roles at EMC, RSA, Qlik, and Turbonomic.

Connect with Mark:

LinkedIn

Key takeaways from this episode: 

00:00 - What early international experience teaches leaders about operating across markets, cultures, and teams.

04:34 - Why transparency during a crisis can strengthen customer trust instead of weakening it.

10:19 - What leaders must control when uncertainty, emotion, and outside pressure start to take over.

12:22 - Why rigid career planning can distract high performers from the opportunities that actually move them forward.

15:05 - What a leader’s ability to attract former colleagues reveals about their credibility and influence.

17:04 - Why the most valuable career moves often create discomfort before they create advancement.

29:00 - A look inside what leadership demands when personal grief and business continuity collide.

34:08 - What executives often overlook about the connection between proactive health and decision-making capacity.

41:30 - Why a company’s approach to AI partnerships may determine whether it separates or falls behind.

53:00 - What many leaders underestimate about moving from a product business to a platform strategy.

Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.

This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.

Connect with Us:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Force Management

In this clip, Alex Bilmes, CEO of Endgame, joins Revenue Builders to share what his team learned from analyzing more than 30,000 real AI workflows across go-to-market teams. The data shows AI gaining traction in account intelligence, conversation readiness, deal acceleration, pipeline inspection, and team enablement. But the larger lesson is that the strongest teams are not just using AI to generate decks, briefs, or follow-ups faster. They are using it to create shared understanding across reps, managers, executives, RevOps, and cross-functional teams. For revenue leaders, the opportunity is not simply more automation. It is connecting the organization around the same account context, methodology, and customer truth.

Alex Bilmes is the CEO and founder of Endgame, a revenue intelligence platform built for go-to-market teams. His work focuses on helping revenue organizations centralize customer, methodology, and account knowledge so both humans and AI agents can operate from a consistent foundation.

Connect with Alex:

LinkedIn

Listen to the full episode:

Revenue per Employee Is the New Endgame with Alex Bilmes

Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.

This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.

Connect with Us:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Force Management

AI partnerships are no longer won by managing a channel or securing a marketplace listing. Leaders must understand how countries, power, cooling, chip fabrication, hyperscalers, model providers, software companies, and enterprise risk fit together before they can build an effective partner strategy. Returning to Revenue Builders, Alan Chhabra explains how Cerebras navigated the technical and political realities of working with AWS, why successful partner leaders need more than relationships, and how sovereignty is changing infrastructure, model selection, and cloud decisions. He also examines why software companies are moving aggressively on AI while traditional enterprises remain more cautious.

Alan Chhabra is the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Partnerships at Cerebras Systems, where he leads global partner expansion across hyperscalers and the broader AI ecosystem. He previously spent nearly a decade building MongoDB’s global partner network and held senior leadership roles at BMC Software.

Connect with Alan:

LinkedIn

Other Revenue Builders episodes with Alan:

The Ideal Partnership with Alan Chhabra

Key takeaways from this episode: 

00:00 - Why the infrastructure behind AI may matter more than the applications built on top of it.

12:26 - What the shift from data to AI changes about how partner leaders map the market.

16:06 - Why understanding the full AI stack is a prerequisite for building the right partnerships.

27:48 - A look inside what it really takes to navigate the politics of a hyperscaler partnership.

36:00 - The four capabilities CEOs should test before hiring an AI partner leader.

48:34 - What leaders often overlook about the role of sovereignty in shaping AI infrastructure decisions.

56:25 - Why software companies and traditional enterprises are moving at very different speeds on AI adoption.

Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.

This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.

Connect with Us:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Force Management

High-pressure sales moments test a leader’s ability to stay composed, present, and clear when the outcome matters. In this minisode, Dr. Michael Gervais explains how elite performers manage activation before critical moments, from major buyer meetings to executive presentations. He breaks down the difference between useful nerves and disruptive anxiety, then outlines the mental skills that help leaders regulate pressure: awareness, breathing, and self-talk. For revenue leaders, this conversation offers a practical lens on preparing the mind before the stakes arrive.

Dr. Michael Gervais is a performance psychologist, the founder of Finding Mastery, host of the Finding Mastery podcast, co-creator of the Performance Science Institute at the University of Southern California, and author of The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. He has worked with Olympians, world champions, MMA fighters, Fortune 100 CEOs, and elite teams to help them train their minds for high-pressure performance.

Connect with Dr. Gervais:

Website

Podcast

IG

Facebook

LinkedIn

Resources mentioned:

Dr. Michael Gervais' Morning Mindset Routine

The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You by Michael Gervais, PhD

Rethinking Success: Eight Essential Practices for Finding Meaning in Work and Life by J. Douglas Holladay

Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

Listen to the full episode:

Training the Mind for High-Stakes Sales: How FOPO Hurts Executive Presence with Dr. Michael Gervais

Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.

This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.

Connect with Us:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Force Management