5 questions with Vise's chief sales officer

We are so excited to welcome Tyler John as Vise’s newest Chief Sales Officer. 

Tyler joins Vise as a dynamic sales leader with extensive experience developing and scaling sales teams for Silicon Valley brands. His focus on building high performing GTM teams w/strong culture and operational efficiency has helped drive business impact at all his previous stops.

Most recently, Tyler was the Senior Vice President of Sales at TripActions, where he oversaw and expanded the highest growing regions for the company. Before TripActions, Tyler led teams at Zenefits and Yelp, and he’s also spent time as an entrepreneur.  

To get to know him better, we asked him five questions:

Why did you join Vise?

Over my career, I’ve been drawn to innovative companies that challenge and disrupt the status quo. For me, it’s an opportunity to build something new, challenge myself to grow, and work with like-minded people. 

When I spoke to Samir and Runik, I quickly learned that Vise checked all those boxes. Providing financial freedom to the world is a tall task, but one that I felt Vise was well-positioned to tackle. From a TAM (total addressable market) perspective, the opportunity was undeniable. Currently, there are nearly $110 trillion in assets being managed by nearly 14,000 financial advisors that Vise can directly impact. 

As the world shifts it's investment preferences from legacy portfolios,  with mutual funds and ETFs, to more personalized strategies, with single stock investments and somewhat taboo investments like cryptocurrencies, financial advisors will need a tech-forward way to manage their clients' money. Just as Salesforce figured out CRM at the right time, Vise is uniquely positioned to empower advisors and consumers to achieve financial freedom for decades to come. Being a part of such a critical shift in wealth management triggered the lightbulb for me and made Vise an easy choice!

What’s the most important career advice you’ve received?

“Your greatest weakness is your greatest strength.” I didn’t fully understand what it meant at the time, but it made more sense as my career progressed. At the time, however, the piece of advice pushed me to pursue more leadership opportunities. I had been somewhat fearful of managing people. I didn’t want to be who people saw as “the boss,” and I knew my reports would depend on me to put them in positions to succeed now and in the future. The expectations would change from not letting myself down to not letting others down. I eventually came around to the idea of stepping out of my comfort zone, and it helped me progress a lot further in my career. Today, I believe this still holds true for myself and the people around me; they have to develop their areas of weakness to get where they want to be. 

How do past colleagues describe your leadership style?

That he builds strong teams and culture. The order there is important! If you recruit A+ players, enable them to succeed, and truly invest in your people personally and professionally, a legendary culture will form. As it turns out, legendary cultures attract A+ players, which creates a flywheel that fuels the rocketship. And perhaps most importantly, a thriving culture is what helps salespeople be more empathetic and confident in their interactions with clients. .

Another key to strong teams and culture is building a flat sales organization. Everyone should have the ability to impact their future, the team’s future, and the organization’s future. It doesn’t matter if they are a first-year salesperson or an industry vet. This typically happens in a few steps:

• Removing all roadblocks that stand in my team’s way

• Enabling the team to have ownership of their roles

• Creating an open environment where the team can speak candidly about the company, their role, and what they need to be the best at their job.

What’s some advice you give new salespeople?

The greatest thing you can do is self-assess and adapt based on your self-assessment. This advice applies to a new grad closing their first deal or the top producer of a Fortune 500 company. What I mean by self-assessment is not just taking a hard look at yourself in the mirror. Sure, that helps. But what you need to do is provide your self-assessment to those around you, sharing what you learned from this introspection and how you plan on improving going forward. Over time, you will gain confidence that this regular introspection and feedback loop will put you in a position to improve. 

I also emphasize process to new sales hires. They should dissect the areas of the sales process they need to win and start at the beginning. Many new salespeople will come in wanting to close a deal but forget that the precursor to that is to set a meeting. If they just focus on being the best at setting up meetings, they will eventually have more opportunities to win deals. 

What fills your free time?

Entertaining, cooking and traveling. For me, the three play off each other. I’ll taste the local cuisine with friends wherever I’m visiting and try to bring that experience to friends and family at home. I'll replicate the dish when I get home or infuse the same ingredients in a dish I’m familiar with. Last time I was in Greece and Croatia, I picked up some tips on cooking with seafood, which inspired my specialty dish: a creamy lobster and pasta (paired with a nice white wine of course). Everything is homemade, including the pasta, and the lobster is freshly caught.