The Commercial Sales department is part of the overall GitLab Sales functional group. We focus on SMB and Mid-Market customers to deliver maximum value throughout the entire journey with GitLab.
The Center of Excellence (COE) in the Commercial Sales context refers to the team's research and development of a particular focus area to drive new initiatives and improvements across the organization.
Why call it Center of Excellence?
How?
Here are the current active topics for individual team members on COE alignment. This center in its first iteration started with the team's QBR in 2019.
The ultimate purpose of attending any GitLab field event is to gain insight and add value. Sid Sijbrandij, our CEO, talks about the importance of conferences and events here. He believes the main goal of GitLab team participation should always be to connect with our customers and prospects and not to solely attend presentations. Trip notes are our internal process for tracking and capturing this data.
Trip notes are required for the entire Commercial Sales Team anytime a team member travels for the company while working at GitLab. We believe it would be fun and valuable if you also shared trip notes when you traveled for personal reasons; however, that is up to your discretion.
Please follow the best practice process and use the trip note template as a format to prepare for your future trip.
The Give Back Project is a self-selected opportunity to help the Commercial Sales team achieve better results. It is a finite project that, upon completion, is to be adopted by no less than 70% of the Commercial Sales team and used at least once a month.
The Give Back Project is assigned to all new Commercial Sales team members and is required to be completed as part of their on-boarding process.
Customer AMAs: Meetings for GitLab team members with current customers that provide an opportunity to ask them about anything in regards to their experience with GitLab
Customer Meetings: Sharing the best practices for conducting any kind of external meeting at GitLab
Trip Notes: allows team members who attend field events to track and capture data in order for the rest of the team to gain insight
Doing Business with Partners/Channels: Guidelines on how to work with partners and resellers in order to ensure value is maximized in these areas
How to Handle New Customers After They Purchase: Best practices for handling new GitLab customers based on the scope of their purchase
Technical Evaluation of Customers: How to properly evaluate a customer’s current technical environment in order to create organizational alignment and prescribe how GitLab can best solve their problems
For a complete list of our Give Back Projects and other Onboarding assignments our team is working on, please click the private link here.
SMB Advocates act as a primary point of contact and the face of GitLab for SMB prospects and customers. They are responsible for working new business in their territory as well as handling the customer journey for new and existing customers. SMB Customer Advocates will assist prospects through their evaluation and buying process and will be the customer's point of contact for any renewal and expansion discussions.
Midmarket Account Executives are the primary point of contact between prospective and existing customers of Gitlab within a space defined as mid-market, which currently works with companies that employ between 500 to 2,000 employees. These Gitlab team members manage the spectrum of project sizes, ranging from small fast growing teams in smaller agile organizations to complex enterprise projects advising on the journey with Gitlab to achieve specific business outcomes.
Mid-Market AE’s work closely in tandem with the business development team and sales management to manage a broad book of business spread over a large opportunity value range and focus on exceeding client expectations.
Zendesk: Managing incoming requests received through support@gitlab.com.
Account Management Queue: Managing incoming requests received through renewals@gitlab.com
License Key Management for On-Premise Trials & Subscriptions
GitLab.com Trials & Subscription Management
All upgrades are processed manually for both on-premise and GitLab.com customers. To provide an upgrade quote, follow the instructions below:
Opportunities located in the account details.New Add-On Opportunity.New Quote.If a customer requests to downgrade the product they are currently using, communicate that we are unable to process refunds within 45 days of purchase; however, we are able to downgrade their plan.
We currently charge 100% for users added during the year of their subscription. At renewal, it has become a common occurrence that our customers have miscalculated the number of true-up users required for their license.
The true-up must match the number of users over license data collected on their admin dashboard or else the license will fail to register.
Example:
Customer purchased 10 users at the start of their subscription; during the year of their subscription, they had 12 total users in license, adding 2 additional. Their admin dashboard would read 2 users over license. At the time of their renewal, they will be responsible for paying for those 2 users over license in addition to however many users they want to renew for, and once paid for, those 2 users will be added to their new subscription license key. If the true-up is not added or has the incorrect number of users over the license, the license key will not work.
The customer is always free to renew for as many users as they would like, even if this number is lower than the previous year; the true-up amount just needs to be paid for in full.
If a customer is having issues obtaining the number of licenses needed to purchase, you can request a screenshot from them or else access their usage ping data through https://version.gitlab.com/. If there is no data available through usage ping, we can conclude that the usage ping has not been enabled from the customer, and you will need to obtain this information manually.
For all refund requests, send an email to AR@gitlab.com to request a refund for the customer. Include all subscription information and link to SFDC account record.
More information about sales order processing can be found in the Business Ops handbook section.
