How to Build a Multi-Segment Sales Motion

This piece is adapted from Jeff Perry’s talk on building a multi-segment sales motion, which he gave at SCALE: Sales on June 25th, 2025, in San Francisco.

SCALE INSIGHTS features practical lessons and strategies shared by speakers at Rock Yard Ventures’ SCALE events.

How to Build a Multi-Segment Sales Motion

Startups love to say, “We serve everyone.” But scaling across segments isn’t easy; it takes intention and focus. From round-robin chaos to segment-specific sales engines, you’ll need to build the infrastructure, talent, and routing systems to support dramatically different sales motions.

For founders building toward a multi-segment scale, the message is simple: you can’t fake structure. To win both speed and depth, you need to develop distinct sales motions tailored to serve very different customer profiles.

Most GTM journeys start with SMB. But winning in enterprise requires a new motion.

Carta started with the cap table business, and that was early-stage founders: really small customers, small ACVs - but high volume and high velocity. That’s a typical path: start where the friction is low, then move upmarket as deal size and complexity increase.

As Carta expanded into fund administration, the sales motion shifted completely, with both an SMB team focused on cap table products and an enterprise team working on 18-month sales cycles and multimillion-dollar deals.

While the emergence of an enterprise segment is a huge milestone for any company, it definitely comes with challenges.

Without meaningful segmentation, leads end up in the wrong hands

Early on at Carta, reps were labeled SMB or enterprise, but leads weren’t segmented the same way. The result was a chaotic misallocation of leads.

Our top enterprise rep was doing 15 SMB demos a day. Meanwhile, our most junior AE was working the biggest enterprise deal the company had ever seen. There was no lead routing and segmentation to get those leads into the hands of the right people.

The solution was to hire a sales ops lead to help build real segmentation, lead routing, and territory design. By just committing to put a structure in place, we saw significant improvements in rep performance, resource allocations, and overall outcomes.

There’s often pressure to move as quickly as possible, but misallocated leads are often wasted leads. It’s pretty simple. Founders should take the time to lay a foundation, so the right leads get to the right people.

But it doesn’t stop there.

You can’t scale chaos. Repeatable processes are a must.

Once Carta’s lead segmentation was really in place, we focused on our processes. We brought in the Sandler process to build a foundation. That ensured that every rep, regardless of segment, spoke the same language and followed a set playbook.

Whether you’re a founder at a company with five employees or working sales at a billion-dollar company, it's important that sales is prepared and able to consistently speak to the value of the business.

You can only rely on superstar salespeople for so long. At some point you need to build a repeatable process that gives even average reps the necessary tools to close deals.

But even the best process has limits as the product matures and deal complexity grows.

Complex deals require specialized teams.

Early in a company’s life, a generalist sales rep can sell multiple products. But as Carta’s suite of offerings grew to include cap tables, tax tools, and fund modeling (among others) it became unrealistic to expect the same reps to sell more products.

So we evolved to have three distinct sales orgs, each focusing on a different buyer: portfolio companies, VCs, or private equity firms. Each of these orgs, in turn, owns its full cross-sell and upsell motion.

Brass Tacks:

1. Build Distinct Motions for SMB and Enterprise Early

   1. Tactic: Don’t rely on a one-size-fits-all sales approach.

   2. Start with your high-velocity SMB motion, but intentionally build a separate enterprise motion as complexity and deal size grow. This includes longer cycles, more stakeholders, and deeper value selling. Each motion needs its own strategy, pacing, and tools.

2. Segment Leads and Route Them with Precision

   1. Tactic: Implement clear segmentation and lead routing as soon as you have more than one type of customer.

   2. Reps should only work with leads that match their level and focus. Without proper routing, top reps waste time on small deals while junior reps can be unprepared or overwhelmed by big, high-value prospects.

3. Specialize Your Teams as Products and Buyers Multiply

   1. Tactic: As your product suite expands, build dedicated teams for distinct buyer types.

   2. Generalists won’t cut it forever. Carta created focused sales orgs for portfolio companies, VCs, and private equity firms —each owning their own cross-sell/upsell pipeline. That specialization increases close rates and deepens customer relationships.

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