On a remote Wyoming cattle ranch, young Jason Godley faced a dire situation: The baler attached to his tractor had suddenly caught fire. Alone, with no immediate help and devoid of modern conveniences like a cell phones 12-year-old Godley had to think quickly and act decisively. His decision to drive to a neighbor’s house to use their hose led not only to extinguishing the fire but also to preserving the surrounding fields. This incident on the ranch, Godley tells us, instilled in him a lifelong “bias for action” and an aptitude for “independent thinking”—themes that would profoundly shape his professional ethos and success.
Read MoreGodley’s journey from the wide open spaces of Wyoming to the corporate board rooms of global finance began at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he dealt with complex international finance and technical accounting in Denver and Paris. The skills cultivated during his youth—swift decision-making and self-reliance—proved invaluable as he navigated diverse business environments and cultures.
These traits have become even more crucial as he has ascended to the role of CFO at Xactly. Here, his bias for action and independent thinking have enabled him to drive strategic initiatives, particularly in improving sales and marketing efficiency. In dissecting and refining Xactly’s operational procedures, Godley has been able to apply his ranch-learned pragmatism toward enhancing corporate performance and alignment—thus demonstrating how foundational experiences can echo throughout a career, influencing leadership style as well as business outcomes.
Jason Godley’s story exemplifies how lessons learned from childhood challenges can shape later approaches to complex problems and lay the groundwork for successful business leadership.
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CFOTL: Tell us about Xactly … what does this company do, and what are its offerings today?
Godley: We were founded in 2005, went public, and then were taken private by Vista Equity Partners. We’re in what’s called the “intelligent revenue’ platform—let me unpack what that actually is. We are at the epicenter of three interdependent things in finance: revenue, operations, and sales. But let’s zoom out a little.
A lot of people talk about how to balance growth with profitability. Much of this is going to be tied to the go-to-market momentum of the entire company. How do you make sure that you’re selling as much “stuff” as possible for the right amount of dollars? Xactly’s solution is right at the heart of this. For example, let’s assume that as a software company, you use bookings. You’re going to try to get X number of bookings next year. Well, how many? How many sales reps do you need? What should be the territories for the sales reps? What should the comp plans look like?
read MoreThis is Step #1 that our tools can be used for. We have something like 17 years and tons and tons of data to analyze and draw from to help us to best position ourselves to best help our clients. The next part is, Okay, now that I know the actual number of sales reps that I need, what about the comp plan? How do I know what comp plan to design for them—how do I make sure that we are paying them correctly? Well, we have a compensation engine that makes sure that what you plan to pay sale reps is actually what you do pay them. There’s visibility on all sides.
There’s another piece, too, in what we do. You’ve planned your go-to-market effort. You’ve set up how to pay your sales reps. Now you want to make sure that are you are actually executing against your bookings plan, right?. So, we have a forecasting tool that can be used weekly with any sales team. How are their sales calls going, right down to the rep level? What are the bookings so far for the quarter? Are things ahead or behind?
In the “end,” we have a highly successful and easy end-to-end solution. We like to think of ourselves as being able to provide a beautiful orchestration of the things that empower people to be better sellers and to make sure that they are paid well. From a CFO perspective, I need to make sure that I am balancing this equation between growth and the profitability that we can achieve through promoting our great tools, plus leveraging all of the data that we have, plus taking advantage of all of the AI stuff that’s happening. It’s all quite magical, and we are leaning forward.
jb
Xactly | www.xactlycorp.com | San Jose, CA