Yext’s newly named President & CRO David Rudnitsky is a bona fide enterprise sales superstar. Before he joined Yext in 2017, he established himself as a top sales leader at some major big tech players, past and present. Names like Ariba, Netscape, and Oracle. And then there was Salesforce, where he scaled up an enterprise sales team that took the company from $51 million in revenue at IPO to nearly $6 billion when he left in early 2015.
In fact, Rudnitsky’s sales prowess is such that he poured his philosophy of enterprise sales into The Rudnitzky Sales Playbook, an internal sales treatise the guided how Salesforce’s sales teams approached the art of selling. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff dedicated an entire chapter of his best-selling book Behind the Cloud to Rudnitsky’s killer sales methods.
Rudnitsky on Sales
So here are some bon mots from Rudnitsky’s playbook, as presented in Benioff’s book.
“Don’t dial for dollars. Never cold call. Always call with a plan. Learn about the company from your network and find the right individual(s) to approach.”
“If the deal is ready, close it. This elimnates such risks as the buyer leaving..or the market tanking.”
“Great salespeople have the confidence to say no. Always consider what esle you can get before you say yes. Ask for more users, a cerain close date, or a press release about the deal.”
“Celebrate successes — and learn from them. Send the great e-mails and great proposals to the rest of the team so they can see what’s worked and use them in other deals.”
Unifying Global Sales
Before his promotion, Rudnitsky ran Yext’s North American enterprise sales organization. Given his track record, it’s no surprise that Rudnisty has risen to the top at Yext. What’s interesting is the combination of the titles President and Chief Revenue Officer. It’s not a combination you see every day. And perhaps it speaks to how important enterprise deals for Answers and other Yext solutions are to the company. Perhaps the times call for a Closer in Chief.
Here’s what Yext Founder & CEO Howard Lerman said about Rudnitsky’s promotion.
“Yext is disrupting the search category and Dave has, quite literally, written the book on technology sales disruption,” Howard said. “I’m thrilled to unify our global sales organization under his incredible leadership. His background and proven track record of success make him uniquely qualified to lead us into the next phase of growth and category disruption.”
If you’d like to learn more about what’s going on with Yext, check out the recent Localogy Insider interview my colleague Mike Boland conducted with Howard.
