Beyond the Order Taker: Shaunt Voskanian on Building Figma’s $1B ARR Sales Machine

Building a sales organization in the shadow of a product-led growth (PLG) titan like

requires more than just scaling a headcount; it demands a fundamental reimagining of how humans add value to software. In the early days of any product-led success, the temptation is to view sales as a secondary support function to a viral engine. However, as

Shaunt Voskanian

reveals, the shift from a $50 million company to a $1 billion powerhouse happens when a leadership team realizes that PLG is not the destination, but the starting line.

At the core of this transition is the move from curiosity to prescriptiveness. While curiosity remains the bedrock of understanding a customer’s pain points, the modern enterprise rep cannot simply ask questions and hope for a lead. They must provide insights. They must teach the customer something about their own business that they hadn't realized. This evolution marks the end of the traditional order-taker era and the rise of the strategic advisor who navigates complex, multi-stakeholder environments to bridge the gap between a product’s current utility and its potential impact.

Challenging the Orthodoxies of Sales Structure

The traditional sales stack—composed of

at the top, Account Executives in the middle, and

Customer Success

at the bottom—is often accepted as gospel. Yet, the most innovative companies are dismantling these silos to foster deeper focus.

Figma

has notoriously eschewed traditional

Customer Success

and standard

SDR

roles in favor of a model that prioritizes aggressive hunting even within the existing customer base.

This structure stems from a first-principles analysis of the customer journey. If a customer discovers a tool via a credit card and a link, they have already validated the basic utility. The salesperson’s job is no longer to "onboard" them in the traditional sense, but to expand the vision of what is possible. By removing the safety net of a separate CS team, the responsibility for growth and retention is unified. It forces the sales rep to stay in the boat with the customer, ensuring that every expansion is rooted in realized value rather than just a seat-count upgrade. This lean approach reduces the "noise" of too many hands in an account and ensures that the person responsible for the revenue is also the person architecting the long-term solution.

The Quota Paradox: Strategic Work vs. Made-up Numbers

Perhaps the most controversial stance in modern sales leadership is the deconstruction of the quota. Many VCs and CROs treat quotas as a mathematical certainty to derisk the year—if you need $500 million, you dish out $600 million in quota.

argues that this is largely an illusion. Quotas are often made-up constructs that have little to do with actual human performance and everything to do with a false sense of administrative comfort.

Instead of viewing quotas as a risk-mitigation tool, visionary leaders see them as a rewards philosophy. At

, for example, enterprise reps often have quotas that are only 3 to 4 times their

OTE

. In a world where

11 Labs

might push for 20x ratios, the

Figma

approach is intentionally counter-intuitive. Why? Because strategic work is hard. If you want a rep to map a global organization, build internal champions, and drive multi-product adoption, you cannot treat them like a transactional machine. High quotas in strategic segments often lead to short-termism and "mercenary" behavior. By keeping quotas attainable for the hardest work, a company attracts "missionaries"—high-caliber talent who will invest the time required to build a best-in-class deployment rather than just chasing the next quick win.

Hiring for Grit and the Red Flags of the Mercenary

Scaling to 500 people in a revenue org is a lesson in pattern recognition. The greatest hiring mistake is not picking someone who lacks industry knowledge—that can be taught. The mistake is hiring for the wrong motivation. The "mercenary" rep, focused on maximizing their W2 or title at the expense of growth and learning, is a toxic asset in a high-growth environment.

One of the most telling indicators is the "jumpy" resume. While the modern job market is more fluid, a pattern of 12-to-18-month stints across four different companies is a glaring signal of a lack of perseverance. Sales is inherently about enduring the dip. When the initial honeymoon phase of a new product or territory ends and the hard work of building pipeline begins, the mercenary leaves. The missionary stays. To identify this, leaders must look past the polished demo and drill into the "arcs" of a candidate’s career. Did they stick through the hard times? Did they take a failing territory and turn it around? This grit, combined with a willingness to do the heavy lifting of a take-home discovery exercise, separates the top 5% from the rest.

Performance Management Beyond Lagging Indicators

If quotas are made up, how do you actually judge a rep? Lazy leadership relies on the scoreboard at the end of the quarter. Great leadership obsesses over behaviors and competencies. Quota is a lagging indicator; by the time you see the number, the window to coach has already closed.

A robust performance framework must be built on real-time inputs: the quality of discovery calls, the effectiveness of pipeline generation (PG), and the ability to leverage methodologies like

. If a rep is executing every behavior correctly—busting their butt on PG, showing up with high-quality insights, and collaborating with the team—but hasn't hit their number yet, the answer isn't to fire them. The answer is to evaluate if the quota was wrong or if the territory needs more time to mature. This "patience for the process" is what allows a company to retain future stars who might have been prematurely pushed out of a more transactional environment. High-octane growth is a marathon of strategic sprints, and you cannot win the marathon if you fire your best runners because they tripped in the first mile.

The Future of the Sales Force: Specialization and Efficiency

As the tech ecosystem matures, the "generalist" sales rep is becoming obsolete. The future belongs to specialization. Whether it is segmentation by company size or verticalization by industry, the goal is to reduce the cognitive load on the individual rep. If you ask a single person to master five different products, three different personas, and four different industries, you ensure they will be mediocre at all of them.

At

, this specialization manifests in a clear divide between the PLG-focused

SMB

segment and the sales-led enterprise motion. The former is a high-volume, signal-driven engine that knows exactly when to intercept a customer based on product usage. The latter is a deep-dive strategic play. Looking ahead, the integration of

AI

and agentic solutions will likely take over the "drudgery" of data entry and transactional renewals, allowing humans to move even further into the realm of strategic consulting. The winners in the next decade will not be the companies with the largest sales teams, but those with the most specialized and efficient ones—teams that treat every customer interaction as an opportunity to deliver prescriptive value rather than just another transaction.