Say hello to Teri Hatfield, Iterable’s new Chief Revenue Officer, who joins us with a career built on results, candor, and curiosity. I sat down with Teri to learn what drew her to Iterable, how she thinks about customer success, and what drives growth in a modern go-to-market organization.
1. What first got you into sales and this career path?
Completely by accident.
I was working in retail and driving about 80 miles each way from Erie to Cleveland every day. At some point you spend enough hours alone in a car that you start questioning your life choices. I saw an opening at Verizon, faxed in my resume — which tells you how long ago this was — and got an interview. Someone told me it would be the hardest job I had ever had. My reaction was basically, okay, I want to do that.
I ended up loving sales because there is a scoreboard. I like hard problems, I like figuring out why something is not working, and I like being accountable for an outcome.
Over time my jobs got bigger, but that part really never changed. Give me a complicated problem, a bunch of imperfect information and a result we have to get to, and I am pretty happy.
2. What’s one thing people find surprising about you?
I read the end of a book first. I know. Apparently this is offensive to people. But I want to know where we are going. Then I decide whether I care about the journey.
I do the same thing at work. When something gets complicated, my instinct is to figure out the end state first. What are we actually trying to accomplish? What would have to be true for us to call this successful? Once I know that, I am pretty comfortable with chaos in the middle.
I think that is also why I tend to stay relatively calm when things are messy. Messy does not bother me nearly as much as not knowing what we are trying to do
3. What do you believe about sales that other people might disagree with?
I think salespeople say yes too much. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can tell a customer is, “No, that is not going to work.” Or, “You are not ready for this yet.” Or, “We can do it, but here is what is going to make it hard.”
I do not think the job is to convince someone to buy something. The job is to understand what they are trying to accomplish, figure out whether you can actually help them do it and be very clear about what it will take. Clarity creates confidence. Customers can make a decision when they understand what is true. I would rather lose a deal for the right reason than win one we should never have sold.
Trust is key. Tell people early what’s not going to work, and don’t be afraid to do it. Brené Brown has this line, clarity is kind, and I believe that all the way down. You may not have the answer to every problem a customer has, but if you’re willing to be honest about what will and won’t work, that’s what builds the foundation of a great relationship.
4. What drew you to Iterable specifically?
I have spent most of my career somewhere around data, but I have never been particularly interested in data for the sake of data. I am interested in what people do differently because they know something. That was a huge part of what I loved about Tableau. You could suddenly see something that changed the way you understood the business.
Iterable is one step further down that path. Now I know something. What should I do? Who should I engage? What should I say? When should I say it? What channel should I use? What should happen next? And did any of it actually work?
That gets really interesting when you add AI, because we are moving from software that helps people execute decisions to software that can increasingly help make them.
Iterable has a very capable product, really smart people, customers doing sophisticated things, and a market that is changing incredibly quickly.
5. How do you build trust quickly with a new team?
I ask questions. A lot of them.
What are you great at? What is making your job harder than it should be? What is working? What is clearly not working? What do you think leadership does not understand? What would you change if nobody got defensive about it? And then I listen for patterns.
I rarely assume one person’s version of a problem is the whole answer. I want to hear it from different angles, look at the data and understand where the stories line up — and where they do not. I am also pretty transparent about what I think. That does not mean I think I am always right. I change my mind all the time when somebody shows me something I did not know. But I do not want people spending their time trying to decode me.
If I think you are doing exceptional work, you will know. If I think we have a problem, you will know that too.
6. What does customer success mean to you?
The customer is better off because they bought us. That is the test.
We can come up with a hundred internal measures — adoption, utilization, health scores, QBRs, whatever — and they can all be useful. But none of them are the actual point.
Did the customer get the outcome? Did they grow revenue? Improve retention? Create a better customer experience? Move faster? Get more intelligent about how they engage people? Do something they could not reasonably do before? And can they see it?
Look at brands like Calm, PGA of America, or Square — when a team can build a real, personalized journey across email, SMS, push, wherever their customers actually are, and watch it move the needle, that’s what success looks like to me.
One of my strongest beliefs is that you cannot separate selling from customer success. If we sold something the customer cannot implement, cannot operate or does not have the capabilities to get value from, that is not a CS problem. That started much earlier.
For me the revenue job is pretty simple to describe: build pipeline, close pipeline, ensure customer success. You need all three.
7. How is the way companies buy software changing, and what does that mean for the market?
Buyers are much more skeptical. They should be. There was a period in software where companies bought a lot of technology based on what it could do.
That is getting harder to get away with. The CFO is in the room. Procurement is tougher. Technical teams are involved earlier. There are more people who can say no, and every investment is competing with a lot of other things a company could spend money on.
So the question is increasingly not just: Does your product have this feature? It is also: If we buy this, are we actually going to get the result? That forces a much better conversation.
What data do you have? What resources do you have? Who is going to own this? What are you replacing? What has to change operationally? What is the economic impact? Where is this likely to fail?
I think software companies have historically spent too much time defining ideal customers by what the customer is — industry, employee count, revenue — and not enough time understanding what the customer is actually capable of doing. Those capabilities can be much more predictive of success. The companies that understand that are going to sell better and, more importantly, create better customers.
8. Are you a believer in AI as a force multiplier for teams?
Absolutely, no hesitation. We are an AI-powered platform, so we’d better be an AI-powered company. Customers are already getting real value out of it, and just as telling, our own people are building agents and tools internally. It’s incredible to see the level of innovation within the walls of Iterable.
Completely. But I think “force multiplier” may actually be too small a way to think about it. AI is not just making the existing job faster. It is changing what the job is.
Someone who could not analyze a giant dataset can suddenly interrogate it. Someone who could not code can build something useful. A seller can have product, competitive, customer and deal intelligence sitting next to them while they work instead of scheduling four meetings to get it. A leader can ask questions of an organization that previously took a team of people a week to answer.
That changes organizational design. And that is the part I am obsessed with.
At Iterable, people are already building agents and solving problems that six months ago probably would have turned into a request for another tool, another headcount or another process.
9. You’ve mentioned being a secret introvert. How does that show up in how you work?
Nobody believes me when I say this, but I am definitely an introvert. I love people. I love customers. I love being out. I will talk to anyone. And then I need everyone to go away.
Where I really get energy is one-on-one. I love sitting with somebody and getting underneath what is actually happening. Not the polished version. What is really going on in the business? What are you worried about? What is not working? What are you trying to get done that you cannot get done?
Those conversations are where I learn the most. It is also probably why I ask so many questions in meetings. I am not particularly interested in getting through the deck. I am interested in finding the thing underneath the deck.
So if you see me at Activate NYC, definitely come say hello. Better yet, tell me something that is broken.
10. Last one, how do you keep your energy up? Any guilty pleasures?
Sugar Free Red Bull. Original only. The flavored ones should not exist. And if I am really treating myself, Sugar Free Red Bull with strawberry syrup and cream from a drive-through coffee shop. Everyone makes the same face when I say that. They are wrong.
Welcome to Iterable, Teri. We can’t wait to see what the next chapter looks like.
Connect with Teri on LinkedIn – or find her for a Sugar Free Red Bull and 1:1 conversation at Active Tour NYC!