20. Dan Yeates, Director of Sales at Metaview - From ClickUp to Metaview's $60M Series C, How to Build Champions That Close Enterprise Deals

Dan Yeates has helped build sales teams at some of the fastest-growing software companies around. He started out selling £5k road bikes in his family's shop, dropped out of a maths master's with a UBS grad job lined up and made 100 cold calls a day in recruitment before moving into tech at AppDynamics. He was the first commercial rep in Europe at Harness, then helped ClickUp grow from $50M to $350M ARR. He's now Sales Director at Metaview, the AI recruiting platform that's just raised a $60M Series C led by Insight Partners.

In this episode Dan explains how he tests whether a champion can actually influence a deal, why a rep with two years in enterprise might have worked only 25 opportunities, and why cold calling works better the more senior the buyer. He also covers how ClickUp mixed product-led and sales-led growth, how Metaview's AI agents and Filmore (its recruiting coworker that lives in Slack) are changing hiring, and why the seller's job is moving from explaining the product to helping buyers build the business case.

We also talk about the hardest stretch of his life. Three months into his job at Harness, Dan was diagnosed with leukaemia. He worked through his treatment and had to give up on leading teams for a while before he found his way back.

If you're building a sales team, moving into enterprise or trying to get better at building champions, this one's worth your time.