Scaling as One

How do you build resilient organizations that can weather change, capitalize on moments of opportunities, and deliver lasting value? Thriving amidst uncertainty frequently requires more than just sound strategy—it demands bold leadership and a holistic approach to aligning people, processes, and priorities.

Luca Lazzaron, ICONIQ Growth GTM advisor and former CRO of Sprinklr, shares insights from his leadership experience alongside his counterparts at Sprinklr. Their collaboration fostered a "win-together" culture, aligned execution across all functions, and drove results. But above all, Luca emphasizes a top-down approach to leadership.

To equip founders with actionable insights and help them avoid making the mistake of actively implementing these strategies once they hit certain scale, we hosted three exclusive roundtables, alongside Luca, featuring Eileen Schloss (Board Member at Sprinklr), Pavitar Singh (Co-Founder & CEO of UnifyApps and former CTO of Sprinklr), and Chris Lynch (former CFO of Sprinklr). Their hard-earned wisdom reveals insights into how to integrate commercial and technical priorities, leverage the CFO’s role as a strategic driver, and scale teams without eroding culture. Let’s dive into these strategies and discover their insights into how great leadership can truly shape the future of your company.

1. Align GTM Strategies with Technology for Maximum Impact 

Foster a Collaborative and Customer-Centric Partnership

• Build trust by investing time to learn each other’s processes and challenges. At Sprinklr, Luca and Pavitar spent an hour daily discussing customer needs, lost deals, and team dynamics. This consistent alignment as the company continued to scale helped increase renewal rates.
• ‍Integrate Product into GTM processes. Include Product leaders in sales meetings, CRM access, and deal cycles. Sprinklr’s weekly forecast calls featured Product leaders to discuss progress, creating accountability and real-time collaboration.
• ‍Embed customer focus in both teams. Train GTM and Product teams in the same qualification methodology to create a universal language and shared focus on solving core customer pain points, such as creating a “One List”. This approach ensures every product or feature originates from a mutually agreed list that outlines key features, required investment resources and top priorities.‍
• ‍Create Unified goals and incentives, driving cross-functional success. At Sprinklr, revenue goals and retention targets became part of Product KPIs, ensuring alignment across both teams. Celebrating wins together—like recognizing Product team contributions in sales success emails—reinforced collaboration.

Use Collaboration to Drive Product Innovation and Sales Growth

• Unlock new growth opportunities through solving customer pain points. When Sprinklr’s GTM team identified a $1M customer pain point, the Product team prioritized solving it, even if it disrupted the existing pipeline. This agile response led to significantly growing the account and unlocked cross-sell opportunities.
• Adapt based on customer signals. Product teams should prioritize feature development that addresses widespread customer issues, even if initially flagged by a single account. At Sprinklr, identifying similar needs across accounts helped reprioritize features and expand total addressable market (TAM).

2. Redefine the CFO Role as a Strategic Partner

Establish Shared Frameworks and Policies

• Early alignment on goals, productivity models, and hiring plans is essential. Luca and Chris co-created a unified productivity model that informed budget planning and tested variables like ramp times for new reps.
• Maintain clear, documented policies that evolve with the business. Sprinklr’s booking policy was as detailed as its travel and expense policies, ensuring consistency and fairness. A committee reviewed policy exceptions quarterly to make joint decisions and adapt the policy over time, as needed.

Build a Growth Focused Finance Team

• Leverage your finance leader to help close strategic hires. Chris supported every senior hire at Sprinklr, explaining equity valuation and the company’s growth trajectory to candidates.
• ‍Experiment with small, controlled bets to test new markets or pricing structures. At Sprinklr, Chris allowed Luca to deploy small teams to explore new opportunities, ensuring knowledge retention and scalability.‍
• Build a "Navy SEAL"-style finance team to manage varied challenges, focusing on core functions like collections and revenue. Avoid premature software implementations; instead, prioritize adaptable systems and hires for early-stage scaling.

3. Scale Your Team Without Compromising Culture

Hire for Scale with Stage-Appropriate Talent

• Invest early in HR leadership. A senior HR leader should precede recruiters, as they set the stage for scalable organizational design and prevent future inefficiencies like title inflation or poor communication structures. At Sprinklr, Eileen implemented frameworks to identify critical roles and align top performers with needle-moving positions, ensuring long-term success.
• ‍Adapt leadership to growth phases. As companies grow, hiring leaders with "stage affinity" becomes crucial. While early-stage businesses may rely on junior talent with inflated titles, scaling companies should proactively uplevel senior leadership to prepare for new challenges and opportunities. Everyone on your leadership team cannot be in the biggest jobs they have been in - you need leaders around the table who have seen the journey before.‍
• Align on retention and compensation strategies. Consistent communication between GTM and HR is essential for retaining top talent. At Sprinklr, Luca and Eileen regularly reviewed compensation benchmarks to remain competitive and improve GTM tenure, resulting in better performance and morale.

Create a Culture and Organizational Structure that is Built to Scale

• Embed culture into organizational DNA. Building culture is a company-wide effort that requires time, resources, and leadership involvement. At Sprinklr, Luca and Eileen worked together to instill a culture employees were proud of, helping drive company-wide satisfaction and performance.
• Foster organizational understanding. Early investment in internal enablement strengthens employee alignment with company goals. Luca requested that a Head of Internal Enablement be hired before he joined Sprinklr, enabling employees to better understand the company’s products, processes, and playbook, thereby fostering a shared culture. Hiring someone to enable early within an organization's scaling journey is critical to the success and longevity of processes.
• Leverage cross-functional support for scaling. HR can lay the groundwork for GTM expansion by creating scalable structures for compensation, titles, and geographic support. At Sprinklr, Eileen collaborated with Luca on organizational design to effectively commercialize new regions while maintaining alignment with broader company goals.

Great leadership transcends managing processes—it’s about inspiring your team, aligning priorities across functions, and adapting to change. By implementing these strategies from our roundtable discussions, founders can build strong, cohesive organizations poised for sustainable growth.