Building an AI-Era Sales Machine | Chris McDonough (VP Sales, Campfire)

Chris McDonough has joined four companies right before they exploded. At the first, Motive, he was employee 40 and watched revenue go from $800K to $30M in about 100 days. The VP of Sales at Campfire joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down what he learned riding hypergrowth over and over, and why he thinks AI is about to split the sales profession in two. Chris gets tactical on the whole arc: how a two-week decision to sign a lease and move to SF changed his trajectory, what a federal mandate taught him about compelling events, why your career growth is tied directly to how fast your company grows, and how he now builds an AI-native sales org from scratch at Campfire (an AI-native ERP taking on the legacy giants). He also makes the contrarian case that AI won't replace reps but will widen the gap between them, why AI outbound is mostly spam for complex B2B, and why a strong SDR bench is existential. What you'll learn: The $800K-to-$30M-in-100-days story, and what a compelling event really looks like Why your career trajectory is tied to your company's growth rate ("you can't be a VP if there's no one to be VP of") The contrarian AI take: not labor replacement, but a top 30% worth triple and a bottom 20% that's hard to employ What he hires for now: not just skill, but whether you can self-learn from AI on day one How to build an AI-native sales org with no tech debt (the deal dashboard that grades every call against every win and loss) Why AI outbound mostly becomes a spam tool in complex B2B, and why the SDR bench matters more Why he leaves once a company is big enough to run Workday, and goes back downmarket How to sell into the "real economy," where nobody cares about your hot VC and references are hyper-local Regrettable churn: the retention metric behind Samsara's run, and why top reps compound One-way vs. two-way doors: how to make fast decisions at 70-80% of the data Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:17 Welcome, and a career of joining companies right before they explode 01:51 Employee 40 at Motive, and the two-week decision that changed everything 04:19 The federal mandate, and the hiring class that got promoted in 30 days 05:33 Why career growth is tied to company growth rate 07:12 The mandate story: from selling nothing to 70 demos a week 10:19 Was it the wrong decision? Believing through the objection 10:56 What 800-900 demos in 3 months does to a seller 12:11 Samsara: scaling an office 0 to 100, and 250 interviews in 90 days 13:42 The contrarian hiring philosophy: the 10x seller and the widening gap 15:59 Why he left Verkada for Campfire, and the "Workday rule" 18:41 Building an AI-native sales org with no tech debt 21:14 What Campfire is: AI-native ERP and one of software's last moats 25:25 Expanding the TAM and the recession-proof case 26:12 Selling into the real economy: hyper-local references, not hot logos 28:26 His honest take on AI outbound and AI SDRs 30:49 The SDR org as your existential talent bench 31:56 The metric he obsesses over: regrettable churn 33:45 Who Campfire is hiring, and "will Claude kill this company?" 35:33 Rapid fire: leadership, execution over competitors, one-way vs. two-way doors 40:19 Where to find Chris, and how to actually DM your way into a job Connect with Chris McDonough: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-mcdonough-94546626/ Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/ X: https://x.com/sophiebuona About the guest: Chris McDonough is VP of Sales at Campfire, an AI-native ERP company competing with legacy incumbents like NetSuite. He was previously at Verkada, and earlier helped scale Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) from $800K to roughly $100M in revenue and Samsara through hyperscale, opening new-market offices in Nashville and Atlanta. About GTMnow: GTMnow is the media arm of GTMfund, sharing the strategies, tactics, and stories from the operators and investors building the next generation of go-to-market. Visit us: https://gtmnow.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtmnow X: https://x.com/GTMnow_ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GTM_now The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth. Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.