The Leaner Sales Org: How AI Changes Hiring, Ramp, and Revenue: Office Hours w/ Bardia Shahali
What should a sales organization look like when the product does much of the selling? Bardia Shahali, VP of Sales at Granola, joins Theory’s Founder & GP Tomasz Tunguz on Office Hours to discuss how AI changes hiring, ramp, and revenue. Drawing on his experience at Teleport, Fireworks, and now Granola, Bardia explains why smaller teams can carry larger quotas, how infrastructure and application sales differ, and what leaders need to rethink about compensation and onboarding.
In our conversation, we discuss:
- Why AI infrastructure deal sizes and application sales velocity change rep productivity
- How to set initial quotas and revisit compensation plans each quarter
- When a lean team needs more capacity to pursue outbound opportunities
- Where forward-deployed engineers and sales engineers each fit in technical deals
- How internal go-to-market engineers improve the sales team’s productivity
- Why self-directed reps can ramp with searchable conversations and internal agents
- How lower commission rates can coexist with higher earnings and meaningful upside
Three takeaways from this conversation:
1. Set quotas around observed productivity and keep compensation adaptable. Bardia recommends paying new teams full compensation for the first three to six months while gathering enough data to set realistic targets. He now revisits plans quarterly because growth, account books, and expansion opportunities change quickly. Depending on the company, annual enterprise quotas can reach $3–4 million, compared with the $1.2–1.5 million he recalls from traditional SaaS. Commission rates fall as quotas rise, but strong reps still need meaningful upside. In intensely competitive markets, a few important wins can justify exceptional payouts.
2. Build the team around the work that moves deals forward. Infrastructure evaluations often depend on engineers meeting a customer’s performance requirements. Forward-deployed engineers provide deeper implementation support and may work alongside sales engineers who handle discovery and proofs of concept. At Granola, the organization still includes familiar roles such as SDRs and customer success, but supports more revenue with fewer people. Low-friction adoption accelerates sales, although enterprise legal and security reviews can still take months. Leaders also need enough capacity to pursue outbound opportunities instead of letting inbound demand consume the entire team.
3. Hire reps who can direct their own learning. Searchable customer conversations and internal agents give new hires access to objections, product knowledge, and account context as questions arise. Bardia expects reps to use those resources, stay current with the industry, and take responsibility for getting up to speed. Internal go-to-market engineers help by connecting tools and improving team productivity. As products and competitive positioning change, the ability to ask good questions and apply new information becomes central to ramping successfully.
