long-form-interview· Carles Reina

What Tools & Tactics Must CROs Adopt Today

In an AI-native B2B market, the CRO's job has shifted from running deal motions to engineering distribution: humanized AI agents replace transactional outbound, CVC investments become a revenue channel, vertical sales teams are deferred until scale, and pipeline is constructed like a VC portfolio (whales + liquidity) per market.

elevenlabs20vccarles-reinasalescroai-agentsquotadistributioncvc92% confidence

Why this is in the corpus

Operator playbook from the VP of Sales at ElevenLabs (one of the fastest-growing AI companies). Concrete numbers (5% base + 1.1x→1.5x accelerators, 24-month strategic-account commission, 130→250 person sales team plan, $3-5K curated dinners as #1 paid-marketing ROI), live failure stories (India vertical-too-early restart), and a re-thinking of CS as a revenue function. Dense with mechanism-rich plays.

Summary for skimmers

Carles Reina, VP of Sales at ElevenLabs, on the new CRO playbook for AI-native companies. Outbound email response rates have fallen below 0.01% — old AI SDR tools that treat every contact as a transaction don't work; only humanized outreach (real humans, or agents that act as draft-and-review co-pilots for humans) does. ElevenLabs has built internal AI agents — an ISDR for inbound, an AI proposals manager scanning the web for RFPs, an AI Customer Success manager that proposes draft emails for each customer that the human edits before send — and pays full commission on deals these agents close. Quota structure: 5% base commission, accelerators at 1.1x/1.2x/1.3x/1.5x past quota, no commission on pilots (because pilots don't add to enterprise valuation), 12-month commission on standard accounts and 24-month on the top 20-30 strategic accounts in a market. Two reps hit full-year quota in February. CS is a revenue function (expansion, not satisfaction); customer support is the fastest-growing product. Pipeline construction per market: every AE needs liquidity (small deals to keep confidence) AND whale capacity. Vertical-sales-team-too-early in India crashed quota; restart was horizontal-with-named-accounts. CVC investments with revenue commitments are an underused distribution play (Toyota Woven Capital, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Liberty Global on ElevenLabs cap table). Curated executive dinners (15 people, $3-5K) outperform conferences for ROI. Brand compresses enterprise sales cycles — IBM-style "no one gets fired for buying X" status is the goal. Old-school senior sales reps with 20+ years in a vertical are undervalued; their network compresses cycles. Goal: 50% productivity improvement → smaller team, higher comp, AI does the leverage.

Briefing

What survives the editorial filter

This page should feel like a smart colleague already listened for you and left only the operating logic worth keeping. Not everything said in the episode makes it through.

Trust signal

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Guest type: practitioner.

Best used for

Carles Reina (VP Sales, ElevenLabs) on the AI-era CRO playbook — humanized AI agents replace dead outbound, CVC-with-revenue-commitments as a channel, pipeline construction per market, vertical-sales-too-early failure, accelerator-stacked quota with no commission on pilots, curated dinners over conferences.

Hold lightly

No explicit downgrade reason stored yet for this episode.

Principles

Durable claims that survive beyond the speaker's biography — each with explicit limits, transferability judgment, and evidence.

Principle

Transactional outbound is dead — only humanized outreach (human or human-feeling AI) converts

Treat each prospect as an individual with knowable preferences, not a row in a list — generic AI SDR tools that broadcast the same message at scale produce the lowest response rates ever observed in B2B email.

Carles names the failure mode of "AI SDR" tools that view every contact as a transaction. The fix: humanized AI — e.g., the ElevenLabs AI CSM proposes drafts personalized per customer using full account context (pricing tier, contract terms, language); the human edits before send.

Use when: B2B sales orgs running outbound motions in 2026.
Skip when: Categories where outbound was already replaced (PLG-led, marketplace).

Stop deploying generic AI SDR tools. Deploy AI as a draft-and-review co-pilot that respects per-contact preferences; human still hits send.

“Outbound is dead unless you do it with humans or unless you do it humanly.”Carles Reina
“The response rates on outgoing emails has dropped to the lowest at any point in time. It is like less than 0.01%.”Carles Reina

Durability: Time-sensitive at the threshold; the underlying personalisation>scale principle is durable.

Principle

In the AI era, Customer Success is a revenue function, not a satisfaction function

The Snowflake-era model fails when competitive replication time is days; CS must be incentivised on revenue contribution.

Carles disagrees with the "CS is bullshit" school. In a market where competitors can spin up in days, CS retains and expands or you lose.

Use when: AI-native B2B companies designing CS.
Skip when: Categories with high switching cost where CS-as-satisfaction suffices.

Compensate and structure CS around expansion + retention $, not satisfaction scores.

“I do not believe Customer Success as a satisfaction or happiness moment for customers. No it is like Customer Success needs to be a money generation function.”Carles Reina

Durability: Time-sensitive in the argument; durable in the principle.

Principle

In an AI-native market, the CRO's job is distribution architecture — not deal flow

Single-deal thinking loses to portfolio thinking when competitors can replicate your product in days; the CRO's leverage is in choosing channels, partnerships, and agentic operations that compound.

Carles names this as the gap behind a generation of CROs being left behind. Specifically: BD, affiliates, partner ecosystems, CVC channels, productised AI agents.

Use when: CRO/VPS hires at AI-first companies above $10M ARR.
Skip when: Single-product, single-channel businesses where complexity is not the binding constraint.

Hire a CRO for distribution architecture. Reject candidates whose pitch is "I close deals."

“How do you think beyond a single deal and think about distribution entirely... How do you embed AI in your entire distribution component so that you are able to actually do more with less?”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable for the AI cycle; the specific tools change, the principle persists.

Principle

Brand compresses enterprise sales cycles — it's a primary KPI, not vanity

Brand strength is operationally identical to procurement risk reduction; in enterprise sales, the buyer's career-risk minimisation is the dominant decision factor.

Carles names today's blue-chip AI brands for enterprise procurement: OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor. The mechanism: in regulated enterprises, the buyer needs internal cover. A trusted brand provides that cover.

Use when: B2B startups planning enterprise expansion who under-invest in brand.
Skip when: PLG-only motions where brand is irrelevant to the buying loop.

Treat brand spend as a sales-cycle-compression budget, not marketing-fluff. Invest accordingly.

“Yes 1000000% and whoever tells you no it is just lying.”Carles Reina
“The ideal scenario for any brand is like literally you become the safest asset in the block.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable; the IBM analogue holds in every enterprise generation.

Frameworks

Reusable systems and operating models — including when they help and when they break.

Framework

Pipeline construction: design every market's pipeline like a VC portfolio (whales + liquidity)

A pipeline composed only of whales kills team confidence; only-liquidity starves strategic value. Construct each AE's pipeline like a VC fund — concentration + cadence — per market.

Carles has a weekly meeting placeholder called "pipeline construction." Borrows VC portfolio framing. Without small-deal liquidity, AEs lose confidence working multi-month enterprise cycles.

  1. Step 1: For each market, count addressable whale-class enterprises (top 20-30)
  2. Step 2: Map small/medium-deal liquidity sources
  3. Step 3: Assign each AE both whale capacity and liquidity targets
  4. Step 4: Track weekly close cadence as a confidence-floor metric
  5. Step 5: Rebalance per AE every quarter as the market matures
Use when: CROs running multi-segment territories with 5+ AEs per market.
Skip when: Single-deal-size businesses where the dual-axis does not apply.

Run a weekly pipeline-construction review per market. Flag any AE with whales-only or liquidity-only pipeline.

“How do I take a VC term and put it in my mindset, how do I design the perfect pipeline for any given market and segment... you need the liquidity but you also need the big whales.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable; the underlying psychology is timeless.

Framework

CVC investment with revenue commitments — turn corporate VCs into a distribution channel

Strategic CVCs are a distribution channel disguised as capital — but only if you contractualise revenue commitment alongside the investment.

ElevenLabs has Toyota Woven Capital, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Liberty Global, Docomo Ventures on the cap table — each with revenue commitments. CVC wins twice; ElevenLabs gets distribution + industry expertise.

  1. Step 1: Identify CVCs whose parent corp is your ICP
  2. Step 2: Negotiate revenue commitment per $ invested
  3. Step 3: Define penalty/clawback (buyout, equity reduction)
  4. Step 4: Use parent corp as flagship reference
  5. Step 5: Extract industry expertise into vertical product expansion
Use when: AI/B2B companies raising rounds where strategic distribution > lowest dilution.
Skip when: Pure consumer products; vertical-industry-irrelevant categories.

Don't take CVC money as plain capital — bind it to revenue commitment.

“For every million dollars that you wanna invest, you need to actually bring X amount of revenues in the next 12 months or 24 months. There has to be some penalties.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable model.

Framework

ElevenLabs quota structure: 5% base, stacked accelerators, 24-month strategic-account commission, no commission on pilots

Tying commission to enterprise-valuation impact (only signed multi-year contracts) and rewarding over-performance with stacked accelerators retains top reps without misaligning incentives.

Every $1M in revenue ≈ $33M extra valuation. NO commission on pilots. Standard contracts: 12 months. Strategic accounts (top 20-30 in market): 24 months. Two reps already hit full-year quota in February.

  1. Base: 5% commission on signed contract revenue (NOT pilots)
  2. Standard accounts: 12 months commission
  3. Strategic accounts (top 20-30 in market): 24 months commission
  4. Above quota: 1.1x → 1.2x → 1.3x → 1.5x stacked accelerators
  5. Quarterly product spiffs — capped to avoid misaligned behaviour
Use when: AI-first B2B companies designing comp from scratch.
Skip when: Cash-strapped startups; pure SMB/transactional sales.

Don't pay commission on pilots. 24-month commission on the top 20-30 strategic accounts.

“We start like 5% commission on anything that you sell. Then we have like a 1.1x, 1.2x, 1.3x, 1.5x.”Carles Reina
“We do not pay commissions on pilots because it is not adding to our valuation.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable structure; specific percentages should be benchmarked against your category.

Signals

What appears to be shifting, for whom it matters, and what happens if you ignore it.

Signal

B2B outbound email response rates have collapsed below 0.01%

The cold-email outbound channel that built modern B2B SaaS distribution is functionally dead at the AI-saturation level of 2026.

Carles names the threshold directly. Recipients can detect AI-generated transactional outreach. Saturation phenomenon — only outreach signaling high prior (human, context) clears.

Use when: B2B founders/sales leaders forecasting outbound channel performance.
Skip when: Markets where outbound is already dead.

Forecast outbound at <0.01% reply rate. Reallocate to humanized motion, partnerships, brand, dinners.

“You see the response rates on outgoing emails has dropped to the lowest at any point in time. It is like less than 0.01%.”Carles Reina

Durability: Time-sensitive at the threshold; durable signal.

Lessons still worth keeping

Useful takeaways that did not fully clear the bar for durable principle status.

Lesson

Curated executive dinners outperform conferences for paid-marketing ROI by orders of magnitude

The buyer-FOMO created by sitting at a table with the CTO of a competitor is a closure accelerator no conference booth can match.

Carles's ROI ranking: dinners (best), proprietary summits (great if non-salesy and partner-centric), conferences (worst). Dinner mechanism: invite competitors AND prospects together; ICP overlap means everyone is a peer.

Use when: B2B teams allocating field-marketing budget.
Skip when: Pure self-serve products where peer presence is irrelevant.

Reallocate at least 50% of conference budget to curated dinners.

“When we do a dinner with execs in a given city that has the best ROI that you could have. If I go to a trade show, the majority of them do not have good ROI.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable.

Lesson

Don't segment vertical sales teams until you have scale — India crashed quota when Carles segmented too early

Verticalization is a scale move, not an early-market move; segmenting before per-vertical deal volume sustains cadence kills team confidence and quota.

India case: Carles segmented too early. Result: depressed quota for an entire quarter. Three causes: people not passionate enough, deals took too long, team too small. Fix: restart from horizontal with named-account lists. People closing in the first month after restart.

Use when: CROs considering vertical-team segmentation in newer markets.
Skip when: Mature markets at scale where deal flow per vertical sustains specialisation.

Stay horizontal until per-vertical deal flow can sustain weekly closes per AE.

“In India, I tried to implement vertical sales team too early and I essentially kind of depressed the revenues for a single quarter and it was an absolute disaster.”Carles Reina

Durability: Durable; timing question recurs every market expansion.

The Plays

Try these this week

Verb-first executable actions — each one tied to a stated outcome in the episode.

HQ-led new-market entry: prove revenue centrally before deploying a local rep

“We always try to build a market centrally from HQ trying to close some deals so that for me it is safe to actually deploy a single person on the ground.”
— Carles Reina
3-9 months HQ-led prospecting before local hire; 12-18 months to full local team per
  1. 1

    Define the market thesis BEFORE entry

    Why this market? What is the ICP? What does the portfolio construction look like (whales + liquidity)?

  2. 2

    HQ team prospects and closes from base

    Carles personally went to Japan and India repeatedly to close founding deals. Founder/CRO-level entry, not a delegated cold-call motion.

  3. 3

    Wait until central revenue threshold is hit

    Looking for proof that enterprise deals close in this market with the current playbook. Not hard-coded as a dollar threshold; it is enough to know it works.

  4. 4

    Deploy the first local rep — and the GM

    Once revenue is proven, hire the first local rep. In some markets (Japan), local language is mandatory. Japan-specific: hired rep, then GM, then team.

  5. 5

    Translate and localize

    Local language contracts (e.g., French law for France). Less than 5% of LatAm population speaks English. Plan for translation and localization.

  6. 6

    Iterate the local team using HQ-proven playbook

    Local rep inherits a working playbook, not a cold start. Time-to-first-close drops dramatically.

Before you start

  • · HQ team capacity (CRO/founder time) for prospecting trips
  • · Local language plan (translation, contracts, hire profile)
  • · A portfolio-construction map of the target market (whales + liquidity)
international-expansionmarket-entrysales-org-designgrowth-stagescale

Negotiate CVC investment with revenue commitments (Toyota / DT / Telefonica model)

“For every million dollars that you wanna invest, you need to bring X amount of revenues in the next 12 months or 24 months. There has to be some penalties.”
— Carles Reina
Each CVC deal: 3-6 months from intro to signed; revenue commitment runs 12-24 months per (proposed)
  1. 1

    Identify 5-10 CVCs whose parent corp is in your ICP

    Examples from ElevenLabs: Toyota Woven (automotive), Deutsche Telekom (telco), Telefonica (telco), Liberty Global (telco), Docomo Ventures (telco).

  2. 2

    Pitch the cheque + commitment package, not just the cheque

    Frame: We are building this category. We want strategic capital, but we want it bound to your commitment to drive parent-org adoption.

  3. 3

    Negotiate the revenue commitment per dollar invested

    Concrete shape: $1M invested → $X revenue committed across 12 or 24 months. ElevenLabs negotiated different multiples per CVC depending on parent-corp size and vertical strategic value.

  4. 4

    Negotiate the clawback

    If the revenue commitment is missed: buyback of part of the equity, equity adjustment, or other penalty. The penalty is what makes the commitment credible.

  5. 5

    Activate the parent corp as a flagship reference customer

    Use the parent as a public reference. Run joint events. Build vertical product expansion using the parent domain expertise.

  6. 6

    Iterate the model across more CVCs once one closes

    The first deal is the hardest. Once one telco / automotive / FS parent is in, the next CVC negotiation has a precedent + a reference.

Scripts

pitch-frame

We are open to your investment, but we want it structured as a strategic-distribution partnership. The cheque comes with a revenue commitment from your parent corp over 12-24 months, and a buyback or equity-adjustment clawback if missed.

Before you start

  • · Existing investor stack willing to share allocation with strategic CVCs
  • · Legal capability to draft revenue-commitment + clawback terms
  • · A vertical product roadmap that can absorb the parent corp domain expertise
  • · Brand strong enough that strategic CVCs view the deal as an opportunity
fundraisingchannel-designstrategic-partnershipsgrowth-stagescale

Build internal draft-and-review AI revenue agents (ISDR, AI Proposals, AI CSM)

“I have an AI proposals manager that scans the web for RFPs and RFIs. I have an AI Customer Success manager that proactively proposes things... that person can change those drafts to put it out there. We store what we sent and what was originally created and what the responses are to actually fine tune.”
— Carles Reina
Build cycle 6-12 months from green-light to in-production with measurable revenue contribution per
  1. 1

    Pick the highest-volume revenue email surface (inbounds, RFPs, CS expansion)

    Start with one. ElevenLabs picked CS expansion drafts as the highest-leverage entry.

  2. 2

    Hire engineers (or reuse internal model team) to build the agent

    External SDR tools all failed because they treat contacts as transactions; internal build is the only way to integrate full account context.

  3. 3

    Pipe full account context into the agent

    Pricing tiers, contract terms, prior emails, customer language. Without this, drafts hit the saturated <0.01% floor.

  4. 4

    Have the human review, edit, and send

    Each morning the human sees N drafts, edits tone/specifics, hits send. Do not auto-send.

  5. 5

    Store original draft + edited version + customer reply

    Each interaction is a fine-tuning row. Over time the agent needs less human editing.

  6. 6

    Pay full commission on AI-closed deals

    Same commission as if a human closed it. Aligns the team with the agent.

Scripts

prompt-frame

Given account context (pricing tier, contract terms, customer preferred language, recent activity, prior email tone), propose the next outreach email. Output: subject + body, with reasoning for any specific dollar amount or feature reference.

Before you start

  • · Engineering capacity for an internal-only revenue tool
  • · Account-data pipeline (CRM + contracts + product usage) the agent can read
  • · Storage for the (original / sent / reply) triple, plus a fine-tuning loop
  • · Comp policy that pays AI-closed deals at full commission
sales-opsrevenue-automationcustomer-successrfp-rfigrowth-stagescalehyper-scale

The 15-person curated executive dinner ($3-5K) — highest-ROI paid marketing channel

“You could have a dinner with like 15 people and cost you 3,000, 4,000, $5,000... imagine you are inviting competitors so you are inviting different customers you are trying to close. So there is a FOMO that ends up being created.”
— Carles Reina
3-week lead time per dinner; 24-48h follow-up window per
  1. 1

    Pick the city — match to the ICP density

    London, NY, SF, Mexico City, Barcelona, Singapore. Cost varies by market — Mexico City vs London are different.

  2. 2

    Build the invite list: 15 people, mix prospects + competitors + reference customers

    ICP overlap is the point. The competitor in the room creates FOMO. The reference customer creates social proof. Limit to 15 — bigger destroys depth, smaller destroys FOMO.

  3. 3

    Book a single venue / private room

    Closed-room is the requirement — open-restaurant tables defeat the purpose.

  4. 4

    Set agenda: minimal salesy content

    5 min welcome + thesis. The rest is conversation. No deck. No sales pitch. The product is the room.

  5. 5

    Run the dinner. Budget $3-5K all-in

    Bigger budgets for shut-the-place-down events; the simple version is intentional.

  6. 6

    Follow up next morning — every attendee, individual email

    Reference what they said at dinner. Pipeline forms in the 48-hour follow-up window.

Scripts

invite

We are hosting a small dinner in [city] on [date] for AI buying decision makers in [vertical]. Closed room, no deck, just conversation. [reference customer] is joining.

Before you start

  • · A curator (CRO, founder, BDR lead) who can hold a 15-person room
  • · Access to ICP buyer contacts in target cities
  • · A reference customer or two willing to attend
  • · Budget envelope of $3-5K per dinner
field-marketingeventscustomer-acquisitiongrowth-stagescale

Decision Moments

Actual decisions, real outcomes

Specific decisions narrated in the episode with their outcomes and transferable lessons.

ElevenLabs was scaling fast in India. Carles followed the standard CRO playbook and segmented into vertical-by-industry sales teams to maximise per-vertical depth.

Did: Verticalized the India sales team into industry-specific groups before per-vertical deal flow could sustain weekly closes per AE.Outcome: Quota crashed for an entire quarter. Carles called it an absolute disaster. Reasons: people not passionate enough about specific verticals, deals took too long, team too small for the segmentation. Restart: back to horizontal with named-account lists. People closing deals in the first month after the restart.

Verticalize at scale, not at entry. Below a per-vertical deal-flow threshold, segmentation depresses confidence and closes — keep the team horizontal until weekly close cadence per AE is sustainable in the segment.

Part of an emerging decision pattern across multiple episodes

ElevenLabs was launching an enterprise sales motion across telco, automotive, and financial services. Strategic CVCs (corporate VCs) wanted in on the cap table — Toyota Woven, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Liberty Global, Docomo Ventures.

Did: Pitched the unconventional: cheque + revenue commitment per dollar invested, with clawback if missed. Carles told Mati: "really, people are gonna give us money as a contract?" They tried it.Outcome: Multiple strategic CVCs signed with revenue commitments. ElevenLabs gained vertical expertise (telco, automotive, FS) AND a distribution arm via the parent corps. Cap table aligned with commercial outcome.

Don't take CVC money as plain capital. Bind it to revenue commitment and a clawback. The structure activates the parent corp's commercial org and gives the CVC partner internal cover to drive adoption.

Part of an emerging decision pattern across multiple episodes

ElevenLabs needed to convert AI sales tooling from external products (which all failed because they treat contacts as transactions) to internal capability — but engineering capacity was scarce.

Did: Spent two years convincing the team to assign engineers to building internal AI revenue agents. Once green-lit, built ISDR (inbound), AI Proposals Manager (RFPs), AI CSM (expansion drafts). All operate as draft-and-review co-pilots; humans edit before send. Pays full commission on AI-closed deals.Outcome: Productivity goal: 50% improvement → smaller team, higher comp. AI-closed deals are already generating revenue. Stored draft + sent + reply triples power continuous fine-tuning.

External AI SDR tools fail because they lack per-account context. Internal builds succeed because they integrate full account data (pricing, contracts, language, prior emails) and the human reviews before send. Pay full commission on AI-closed deals to align team incentives.

Part of an emerging decision pattern across multiple episodes

ElevenLabs was deciding whether to launch a competing agents product against partners that were building on top of the ElevenLabs voice platform (Sierra, Decagon, etc.).

Did: Called the founders of all major partners directly before launch: "FYI, in the next couple of months we're launching our agents product. We're going to be competing with you. Wanted to make sure you're okay with this."Outcome: Founders responded "yeah, welcome on board." ElevenLabs preserved partnership economics (still powering competitor agents at the API layer) while launching its own competitive product. Co-existence model now stable.

When entering a market against your own partners, transparency upfront — direct founder-to-founder conversations — preserves the ecosystem. Hiding the move and surprising partners poisons the relationship and your distribution.

Part of an emerging decision pattern across multiple episodes

Corpus connection

Where this episode fits for retrieval

What kinds of decisions this briefing is best pulled into.

Primary decisions

  • • hiring-when-to-hire
  • • go-to-market-channel
  • • pricing-packaging

Temporal flag

time sensitive