Motive Career Growth & Development

Tell us about your sales journey thus far.

I joined our sales team as a sales development representative, or SDR, over five and a half years ago. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to lead a team of SDRs, be an account executive and now get to lead a team of account executives. I’ve been given several opportunities to grow professionally and personally — in those five years I’ve also gotten married and had two kids.

What is the sales culture like at Motive?

We are all very competitive, but we are all about winning together. Someone posts a Slack message asking a question about a competitor or for a referral, and folks are champing at the bit to be the first to answer. It’s one of the most collaborative environments I’ve had the opportunity to work in. 

Our revenue kickoff the last two years has been the highlight of the year, clearly showing how we all play a part to win together from sales to product and customer success with customers there telling their stories. It’s a place where it’s fun to be a team.

Also, our executive team and leadership are some of the smartest and also humble folks I’ve met. They are always trying to learn and grow from the bottom up. Last year, they came to our Nashville office and hosted roundtables to talk about how we’re winning and also when and why we’re losing to help fill in the gaps. That advice has held true to helping close those gaps for us.
 

What advice do you have for sales professionals that want to join your team?

Be ready to roll your sleeves up and be ready for a lot of change. You have to be adaptable because we are constantly growing and evolving our sales org along with our product to continue to be the best in the game. If you’re looking for somewhere you want to be challenged and you’re ready to put on your hunter hat, this is the place for you. Motive is by far the number one place that I’ve grown professionally. You get to work alongside some of the best and brightest that bring out your full potential. Come join us!

This is the first time I’ve gotten to see how a large company operates in terms of managing people, sharing knowledge and cultivating an inclusive engineering culture. They do a great job of ensuring we have many training sessions and processes to follow so that we thrive during our time here.

How does Motive support career progression for sales professionals beyond performance metrics?

We believe career development should be multi-directional and transparent. Our Career Path Maps give every sales professional a clear, documented view of what it takes to advance — the competencies, behaviors and milestones that define progression from one level to the next. We share these transparently and proactively and encourage every rep to have open, development-focused conversations with their leader.

We’ve invested heavily in structured internal mobility through the Motive Bridge Program, a set of formal pathways that prepares high-performers for next-level roles through live training, scored certifications, mentorship and real-world application. The Bridge Program serves paths like SDR to AE and mid-market AE to enterprise AE, among many others. Eligibility is criteria-based — tenure, performance and good standing — making the promotion path feel clear, achievable and fair, not arbitrary. 

Throughout the program, we track engagement, competency signals and readiness in addition to quota attainment, giving enablement and sales leaders a fuller picture of who’s ready to grow and what they need to get there.

What training, mentorship or coaching programs have been most effective in developing talent internally?

The Spark Onboarding (90 NPS) and Ignite Leader Programs set the tone, ensuring new team members hit the ground running quickly. 

From there, growth is ongoing. Every GTM team has an enablement business partner that embeds in their organization to understand specific needs so ongoing training is relevant, moves the needle and never wastes time. Like the sellers they support, business partners hold themselves to a quarterly target to measure their impact and ensure they drive success for their reps.

When it’s time to move up, the Bridge Program is the most impactful, offering live workshops, certifications and one-on-one mentorship built by sales leaders, experts across the ecosystem and enablement. In the first quarter of 2026, 138 reps graduated across all bridges with a 90 percent-plus promotion rate and an 80 NPS.

Underpinning it all is the Motive Value Architecture, our proprietary sales methodology, enabled org-wide. Since rollout, we have seen win rates climb (in double digits) and time-to-close shorten globally, with strongest improvements in our enterprise segments.

Can you share an example of someone who advanced through the ranks because of your development programs or culture?

Cal Stephenson is a great example of what Motive’s development culture can produce. He joined Motive as an SDR — his first sales role out of college — and through the Bridge Program, moved into a mid-market account executive role, his first AE role. The training content mattered, but so did mentorship from experienced AEs and the confidence gained from proving himself through certifications and assessments. Bridge gave Cal a roadmap, accountability and peers navigating the same transition.

Cal’s story isn’t unique. Bridget Dixon, another Bridge alum and now a Mid-Market AE, said, “Doing role-play discovery calls really got my gears turning and made me more comfortable with questions that I otherwise wasn’t getting on the phones or wouldn’t expect to receive as an SDR.”

These outcomes come from deliberate investment in programs that treat career progression as a system, built into how Motive operates. Across the employee journey, Motive strives for talent development that shows up in the numbers, where it matters most to the team members we serve.