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When asked whether a new sales enablement hire would be a \u201cdirect report,\u201d Bill Koefoed, CFO of OneStream Software, replied: \u201cOrganization matters only when your processes and relationships don\u2019t.\u201d

It\u2019s an observation not shared widely perhaps among newbie CFOs, who upon their arrival are known to rely more on organizational reporting lines than relationship potential to assert their influence.

Nevertheless, four months and one pandemic into his latest CFO tour of duty, Koefoed has his relationship-building skills in high gear as he works alongside OneStream\u2019s sales leaders to better identify those factors contributing to sales productivity.

According to Koefoed, the challenge is not just about sales productivity, though, but also about how to make the team productive more quickly. Hence OneStream\u2019s new sales enablement hire.\xa0

Says Koefoed: \u201cPeople don\u2019t have to sit in finance to be effective, and having great partners and relationships in other areas of the business is just a great way to run the business.\u201d

In addition to sales, Koefoed\u2019s relationship-building skills also appear to be focused on OneStream\u2019s customers. How long a customer has been in the pipeline frequently correlates to deal size, says Koefoed, who concedes, \u201cObviously, big deals take longer.\u201d

Still, Koefoed says that his focus these days is more on something that he refers to as \u201ccustomer familiarity\u201d\u2014and here, too, he\u2019s looking for ways to accelerate OneStream\u2019s upward climb on his customer awareness meter.

\u201cThe more familiar somebody is with your company, the better able they are to make key decisions,\u201d adds Koefoed, who note that in the case of OneStream, \u201ckey decisions\u201d are what trigger the movement of customers to OneStream\u2019s software offerings and away from software provided by larger, more established rivals.\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney