Mohan Achar Vice President Customer Support, Outreach

Company

Outreach is an integrated sales engagement platform that helps sales reps and leaders increase productivity, generate more sales opportunities, and beat their sales goals.

The company was started in early 2014 by four founders with unmatched determination and a big dream for how technology can change the game for revenue teams. They’re on a mission to change the way companies engage with their customers throughout their lifecycle.

Outreach are a large team of passionate people working together and winning together. They are a proud paradox: balancing explosive growth with unwavering values. They believe in agility and pivoting quickly but won’t compromise on high standards or delivering the best quality for their 4,000+ customers.

To fuel their ambition, Outreach have raised $489m in funding from Salesforce Ventures, M12 (FKA Microsoft Ventures), Lone Pine Capital, Sands Capital, Mayfield, Trinity Ventures and others. With offices in three countries, they are valued at $4.4bn. Accolades include LinkedIn Top Startups (2018, 2019, 2020); Forbes Cloud 100 (2018, 2019, 2020); Inc Best Workplaces (2018, 2019); Comparably awards for Best CEO for Diversity, Best Leadership Team, and Best Company For Professional Development; Geekwire’s Next Tech Titan (2020) and many more.

Search Background

Outreach were scaling fast and their Customer function was beginning to feel strained. They knew the function could be a strategic lever for the company in value differentiation for their customers but didn’t have the world class leader who knew how to build scaled Technical Account Management and Customer Support teams across the world. This role was scoped to centre around the ability to recruit and nurture technical talent; marrying it to account strategy and enterprise customer needs.

Requirements

They were looking for that awesome blend of leadership, strategy, tactical execution, and customer urgency. Someone who could happily build in ambiguity, while laying track for scale and excellence. They would be a pivotal advocate for the customer into Product and Engineering and a sensible balancer of the business.

This needed to be a world class leader who knew how to build leading global teams. The successful candidate needed to know how to recruit and nurture technical talent able to talk to the business.

Result

Erevena identified and placed Mohan Achar, VP, Global Customer Support at 8×8. He is an accomplished leader with 15+ years of domestic and international experience in customer service.

Prior to this he spent over four years managing the transformation of Marketo’s global support function under Patricia Lughezzani: successfully changing their culture from an operational to a customer-focused one. His pedigree had been previously cemented over a 10-year run at CollabNet where he grew from an IC in India to lead their support and community teams worldwide.