⎯

min read

Series E Sales Playbook: Operating Blueprint for IPO-Ready GTM

Rishabh Jain

‍Series E Sales Playbook: Operating Blueprint for IPO-Ready GTM

1. Purpose of the Playbook

At Series E, the sales organization is expected to deliver:

Predictable, quarter-over-quarter revenue.
CAC efficiency under investor scrutiny.
Defensible enterprise wins against incumbents.
IPO-level consistency across global markets.

This playbook provides the operating system for achieving those outcomes.

2. ICP and Market Coverage

Focus Areas

Enterprise-first: Fortune 500 and Global 2000 accounts.
Verticals: Prioritize industries with proven traction (finance, healthcare, manufacturing, tech).
Geography: Expand deliberately into APAC/EMEA where credibility is strongest.

Non-Negotiables

No spray-and-pray expansion.
ICP definitions must flow into territory assignments and quota models.

3. Messaging and Positioning

Boardroom-Centric Messaging

CFO: CAC payback, efficiency, risk control.
CIO: Integration safety, enterprise scalability.
COO: Operational predictability, global rollouts.

Standards

Every pitch includes vertical case studies.
Persona-based battlecards are mandatory in discovery and proposal stages.

4. Sales Motions

Inbound Motion

Owned by demand-gen, supported by SDR qualification.
Objective: Accelerate mid-market pipeline.

Outbound Motion

Account-based orchestration for top 200 global logos.
Multi-threaded engagement (SDR, AE, exec sponsor, marketing).

Network Motion (GTN)

Institutionalized weekly motion.
Warm intros sourced through employees, investors, advisors, customers.
Powered by Vieu → maps relationships, automates pursuit plans, integrates with EBM (executive dinners, roundtables, gifting).

5. Enablement

Global Standards

30-60-90 onboarding with certifications.
Quarterly skill refreshers by region.
Centralized call library tagged by stage/region/persona.
Regional adaptations of objection-handling + competitor battlecards.

Outcome
Ramp time: ≤ 90 days. Consistency across 400+ sellers.

6. Metrics

Efficiency Metrics

Pipeline coverage: 4× quota.
CAC payback: < 12 months.
Ramp time: ≤ 90 days.
Warm-intro (GTN) win rate: ≥ 2× cold outbound.

Defensibility Metrics

% pipeline sourced via GTN.
Enterprise win rate vs. incumbents.
Regional expansion velocity (time-to-first-meeting in new market).

7. Governance

Playbook reviewed quarterly with CRO + RevOps.
Regional leads adapt but cannot dilute ICP/messaging standards.
GTN contribution tracked as a standalone KPI in board reporting.

8. Common Failure Modes

Over-expanding ICP instead of deepening proven markets.
Outbound-heavy models driving CAC inflation.
Playbooks treated as static documents.
Selling to operators instead of executives.
Failing to prove pipeline efficiency to investors.

9. The Vieu Advantage

Series E organizations cannot afford pipeline inefficiency or credibility gaps. Vieu embeds Go-to-Network (GTN) into the sales playbook as a formal, measurable motion:

Warm intro sourcing across the company’s ecosystem.
Automated pursuit plans for enterprise accounts.
Integration with executive-based marketing.
Attribution dashboards to prove CAC efficiency gains.

This makes pipeline predictable, efficient, and defensible — exactly what late-stage boards and IPO investors expect.

Your Series E sales playbook is the operating system for IPO readiness. If inbound builds scale and outbound builds coverage, only network-driven selling builds credibility at scale.

Ready to operationalize GTN? Book a demo with Vieu.

‍

more blogs