[Un]Churned · 19 Aug 2026 · From the week of 17 August
2 Months of Revenue in 8 Days: How Brex's CRO Fixes What Breaks at Scale ft. Garrett Marker (Brex)
These are notes on the conversation, checked against its transcript. The episode itself has the full discussion.
In brief
Garrett Marker, Chief Revenue Officer at Brex, discusses on Unchurned, hosted by Josh Schachter, how Brex is scaling its sales organisation. He oversees about 700 people across sales, customer success, RevOps and related functions, roughly 60% of the company. He grades the year's scaling effort a B, describes a struggling segment that recovered after a course correction, and explains the AI-assisted enablement, promotion and build-versus-buy choices behind the work. The episode also covers how he thinks about post-sale AI product adoption and what it will take to raise NRR further. His central argument is that teams need to change how they operate faster than competitors and buyers change, and that sales and customer success should be judged on the full customer lifecycle rather than their own silo.
For founders
- Small business and startup buyers at Brex behave more like consumers than corporations, so perks and benefits that matter to them may differ from what enterprise buyers value.
- Ending demos by asking prospects what their reasons are for not moving forward surfaces objections that a seller would otherwise never hear.
- Success plans are most useful when they describe how the customer will get value after the sale, not only the mutual close plan.
- For Brex's AI products, Garrett says the constraints are customer adoption and whether support can be delivered cost-effectively, not closing the deal.
- Garrett's stated goal for AI products is to be best rather than first, arguing that customers will eventually find the best tool.
For revenue leaders
- Battle cards that used to stay useful for a quarter or six months are now probably stale within about a week, according to Garrett.
- When a segment slips, Brex's remedy included changes to top-of-funnel brand and PMM work, sales execution tactics, and executive networking and multi-threading.
- Brex's SDRs who exceed their number by a set percentage for a set period get an open AE book of business, and are promoted on the spot if they close enough deals while still hitting their SDR numbers. Brex prefers this to squeezing more out of them through higher quotas.
- AI role plays and automated call scoring let new reps practise on demand, which Garrett says cut ramp time from weeks or months to hours or days.
- A customer success orientation change, not a product change, is what Garrett credits for a roughly 20 percent rise in customers closing their books on Brex over twelve months.
What was said 23, most useful first
Brex rebuilt enablement around AI role plays and call scoring, which Garrett says cut rep ramp from weeks or months to hours or days. Listen
Garrett said reps can practise as many role plays as they want with an AI tool built on Brex's sales methodology and scoring system. They no longer need to wait for a manager to score a recording or run a mock scenario. He said this has helped Brex keep or raise efficiency while hiring at greater scale.
“people can do what used to take them weeks or months to do because they're waiting for other people in hours or days”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Garrett's demo-closing question is to restate the prospect's own reasons to buy and then ask what the reasons are for not moving forward. Listen
He said he would recap the reasons the prospect gave for why the tool was better, to have them revalidate those. He would then ask what might stop them from moving forward, and said the aim was to resolve concerns either way. He said most sellers avoid this question because it is scary.
“so what are the reasons why you're not going to move forward?”
Garrett's view is that the main reason to employ SDRs is the future roles they can move into, not the pipeline they create, which he sees as a minimum requirement. Listen
He said Brex went a different direction from AI SDRs, which many companies were investing in at the time. He argued that the best SDRs are valuable because they can later close deals, and that the company should optimise for that longer-term value. He said SDRs and the company share this incentive.
“the primary reason that you employ SDRs is actually not for the pipeline they generate”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Brex's TAP programme lets SDRs who beat their numbers take on an AE's book of business, with promotion on the spot if they close enough deals while still hitting SDR numbers. Listen
Rather than squeezing more out of SDRs through higher quotas, Garrett said, Brex gives SDRs who exceed a set performance percentage for a set period the chance to work an open AE book. If they close enough deals while still hitting SDR numbers, Brex promotes them whether or not headcount is available. He said that is not a hard argument to make to finance, because most CFOs would agree to more AEs who can generate revenue.
“But if they could close those deals, we just would promote them on the spot.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
For Brex's AI products, Garrett says the bottleneck is customer adoption and whether support can be delivered cost-effectively, not selling them. Listen
He said Brex has not seen many issues with getting customers to buy its AI products or with customers seeing its products as better. He said the early adopters are the AI labs. He identified cost-effective support at scale as the main constraint on growing that part of the business faster, and said the product needs to become profitable long-term.
“can we kind of support it in a way that's cost effective, right?”
Brex increased the share of customers closing their books on the platform by about 20 percent in twelve months by changing how its customer success team talks to customers. Listen
Garrett said the gain came not from product changes but from reorienting the customer success team toward the business process of closing the books and how it fits with ERP and other tools. He said the reason someone does or doesn't adopt is often not whether the tool works, but unease about changing a process they cannot afford to get wrong. He said the team needs to get better at doing the same for other cross-functional workflows.
“we actually basically changed the way that our customer success team was oriented and talking to people about it”
Listen to the episode Retention & customer success Link to this
Battle cards that once stayed useful for a quarter or six months are now probably stale within about a week. Listen
Garrett compared the current half-life of competitive battle cards with what it was about ten years ago. He said that at Brex, competitor shifts moved faster than the team's response, which contributed to a segment slipping. He hedged the estimate with 'probably' and added that the team now changes tactics and strategies constantly.
“now it's probably good for a week or six days”
Most battle cards are awful and not very useful, in Garrett's view. Listen
When the host challenged his one-week estimate, Garrett said that battle cards are mostly poor and rarely helpful. He framed this as a separate debate and did not elaborate on what he uses instead. The view is a contrarian one about a common sales enablement asset.
“Most of the time, I think the battle cards are awful and actually not that useful”
A struggling Brex segment booked as much revenue in July's first eight days as it had in the previous two months combined, after a course correction. Listen
Garrett said the segment had been underperforming, and the team course-corrected to get it back on track. He credited the result to a collective leadership effort rather than to any one person. He graded the scaling effort overall a B.
“there's one segment that has already done as much revenue in July in eight days as they did all the last two months combined”
AI made it much easier for Brex to understand what competitors were doing and what was happening on sales calls, which helped diagnose a segment slump. Listen
Garrett said the team did deep market analysis to understand why a segment that had performed well was now doing worse. He said AI makes it easier to understand competitor activity and what happens on sales calls. The diagnosis surfaced competitor shifts that the team had not responded to well.
“one of the great things about AI is it's a lot easier to go understand what your competitors are doing, what's happening on sales calls of different things”
Garrett's build-versus-buy rule at Brex is to build only where the team expects the highest leverage, and to buy off-the-shelf tools elsewhere. Listen
He said most of Brex's enablement tooling is bought, including mock call and call-analysis tools, which are tuned to Brex's business. The areas where Brex builds its own tools are workflow tools that ramped sellers use day to day, because Garrett thinks Brex can gain benefits there that are unique to it.
“I think we build where we think there's going to be the highest alpha or highest leverage.”
When a sales team hires heavily, the share of new reps rises and average performance falls, which Garrett says Brex has counteracted. Listen
Garrett said that as the proportion of new hires goes up, average rep performance tends to decline. He credited Brex's AI-based enablement with allowing it to maintain or increase efficiency during its hiring push. He did not give a figure for the effect.
“the proportion of people that are new is higher, the proportion of people that are tenured is lower. And so like the average rep performance actually goes down”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
Most Brex sellers were above plan month over month and quarter over quarter in prior years, which gave the company the foundation to scale. Listen
He said Brex's CAC paybacks and economics were good in previous years, and that rep attainment was strong, with about 60 to 70 percent of sellers above plan. He cited this as the reason Brex felt able to scale the sales team aggressively this year. He also mentioned a LinkedIn post from someone at RepVue ranking Brex the third-fastest growing sales force over the last 12 months on a percentage basis, and said he knew only that Brex was third.
“like 60, 70 % of sellers at above the plan”
Brex built an internal narrative platform that maps the full buyer journey across sales, customer success and support, rather than a single team's workflow. Listen
Garrett described the platform as a shared story of the key moments a customer goes through, from first conversation to initial value and advocacy. He said it pulls data from support and customer success so the team can see what happens two years into a customer relationship. He presented it as a workflow tool that Brex decided to build in-house.
“I care more about that that customer is really successful two years down the line”
Most sales productivity tools are siloed around one team's task, while the problems that matter are full-lifecycle problems. Listen
He said most tools focus on making an individual seller more effective, eliminating note-taking, or pushing data into the CRM. He argues that customer outcomes depend on the whole lifecycle, so the data needed to judge a buyer journey has to come from sales, CS and support together. This is his stated reason for building the narrative platform.
“I don't find that most tools are thinking about it. That way, I think they're thinking about it more for like an individual team”
Bad success plans are mutual close plans, while better ones are action plans that describe how the customer gets value after the sale. Listen
He said that many success plans are built to get the deal closed, but the better ones focus on the post-sale work of helping the customer start using the product and eventually buy more. He framed success plans as part of the buyer's narrative, because buyers often purchase software only once and need to understand how to make it work.
“the better ones are action plans of like, how do we help the customer after that?”
Listen to the episode Retention & customer success Link to this
Buyers of software they rarely purchase look for independent social proof, such as references and review sites, because they assume sellers are biased. Listen
He explained that people who have reached a late stage of evaluation often want to talk to unbiased references, even though those references may be paid or may be investors. He said the underlying purpose is to reduce anxiety about whether what they have been told is accurate. He presented this as a buyer pattern he experiences himself.
“they know that you do that because you're paid to do that”
A London seller who began asking the reasons-not-to-buy question moved from the bottom quartile to the top performer in their segment within three months. Listen
Garrett said he taught the question to this seller at a previous company, and the seller later told him it was the only change they had made. He described the seller as having been worried about being fired before the change. He presented this as a single example of the question's impact.
“Three months later, they went from being one of the bottom quartile performers in the team to the top performer in the segment.”
Listen to the episode Sales team, hiring & comp Link to this
The TAP programme now covers all individual contributor roles at Brex and has resulted in more internal mobility, though it has reset new hires' expectations of how fast promotion happens. Listen
He said the programme has been extended to individual contributor roles and that work is underway for managers. He said it has worked better than expected, and that reps who move through the full cycle of roles have done well. He noted that new hires now sometimes expect promotion faster than is normal at other companies.
“it does reset expectations for your team”
Brex's small business customers buy more like consumers than corporations, so perks and benefits can matter to them. Listen
He said that for founders and small business owners, purchasing priorities differ from enterprise priorities. He gave the example that lounge access may appeal to a consumer but would not interest a billionaire who flies private. He described this as the reason Brex's startup-focused perks can be creative and consumer-like.
“I joke sometimes that their purchasing process is more similar to what a consumer might be versus a corporation”
Garrett expects Brex to need changes in post-sale work, such as broader ecosystem conversations, to raise NRR by a further 10 to 30 points over the next couple of years. Listen
He said Brex has increased NRR a lot in the last couple of years, but that what it did before probably will not get it to a further increase. He presented the changes he described as examples of what would be needed. The figure is his stated ambition, not a forecast of results.
“if we want to go increase NRR by another 10, 20, 30 points in the next couple of years”
Listen to the episode Retention & customer success Link to this
Brex's course correction changed brand and top-of-funnel work, sales execution tactics, and how reps activated executive connections and multi-threaded deals. Listen
Garrett listed the areas that changed in response to a competitor shift. He described the changes as a combination of factors that let the team pivot as market dynamics changed. He said that early results had been good, without giving figures.
“There are some things on kind of like sales execution tactics, different things we had to go do from that perspective.”
Garrett's stated goal for AI products is to be best rather than first, arguing that the best tool will eventually be found and used. Listen
He said he reminds his team of this often. He criticised companies that rushed to talk about AI and then sold products that did not work well for customers, some of whom were promised more than the product delivered. He said Brex's AI products are an earlier product that needs all hands on deck.
“my goal is not necessarily to be first, my goal is to be best”