Snowflake's initial go-to-market strategy wasn't broad; it was a surgical strike against Amazon Redshift users. By identifying specific pains of the market leader's "not a good product," they created highly effective targeted campaigns that converted frustrated customers.
Market leader Teradata dismissed the cloud and new competitors like Snowflake, believing their position was unassailable. This "arrogance," as described by Snowflake's CRO, created a massive blind spot, allowing Snowflake to capitalize on the cloud migration wave and ultimately crush the incumbent.
Snowflake's first CRO, Chris Degnan, joined two years before the product launched. His primary role was not selling but gathering customer feedback to guide engineering, acting as a "shadow CTO." This redefined the initial sales function as a product discovery and validation role.
In Snowflake's consumption model, a salesperson's job isn't done at signing. They have separate quotas for bookings (the commitment) and consumption (actual usage). This structure forces them to act as a long-term business partner, ensuring the customer successfully adopts and uses the platform.
Snowflake's initial high-velocity sales model hit a wall with large enterprises. New CEO Frank Slootman mandated a change, forcing CRO Chris Degnan to "rip the bandaid off" and restructure the entire GTM organization in the middle of a fiscal year to create a dedicated enterprise sales motion.
Despite immense success, Snowflake's CRO Chris Degnan operates as if he has a 90-day employment contract. This self-imposed pressure, rooted in a fear of failure, ensures he never becomes complacent and continuously adapts to the company's evolving needs, a key to his long tenure.
To recruit its first sales leader, Chris Degnan, pre-product Snowflake had to overcome his hesitation about the lack of leadership. The deal was sealed only after the VC, Sutter Hill, agreed to his condition: adding a specific, trusted advisor to the board to ensure he had support.
Snowflake's CRO argues that while large enterprise deals are attractive, a business built solely on them is fragile. He championed a parallel high-velocity motion focused on acquiring new logos of all sizes, creating a more predictable and ultimately larger market over the long term.
Snowflake invested seven months of its entire engineering team's effort to solve a specific clustering problem for one customer, Localytics. This seemingly costly detour created a core feature that became the key to winning major enterprise accounts like Nielsen, proving that bending for the right customer can redefine the product.
Snowflake's CRO, Chris Degnan, kept his job through multiple growth stages where he could have been replaced. His longevity wasn't due to a pre-existing "scale" playbook, but his intense coachability and ability to "morph" and adapt his strategies based on direct feedback from the board and new leadership.