212: Tamara Adams | CRO, Octave

Tamara(Tamie) Adams, Chief Revenue Officer of Octave, joins host Dan Sixsmith in the New York studio during one of the most pivotal weeks of her career ,the day before Octave rings the bell on the NASDAQ. Tamie shares how she was recruited into a $1.6B carve-out from Swedish parent company Hexagon, and walks through the transformation she's driven across sales, customer success, enablement, and channel in her first nine months. The conversation covers her philosophy on CS as a driving force in revenue output, the evolving role of AI in enterprise selling, why negotiation has fundamentally changed, and what it really takes to be a successful CRO today. Tamie also reflects on her career journey from finance to Oracle to a PE-backed exit to Siemens and leaves listeners with her personal definition of success.Timestamps​0:00 — Introduction​0:27 — Octave rings the bell on the NASDAQ: a $1.6B carve-out from Hexagon​1:07 — How Tamie was recruited as CRO​3:16 — First moves: assessing systems, personnel, and data​5:06 — State of Customer Success coming in​5:43 — Rebuilding channel sales and alliance partnerships​8:11 — CS as a true profit center: 200% pipeline growth​14:39 — AI for selling: research, prompting, and the risks​17:29 — The art of storytelling in sales​19:17 — How negotiation has changed​25:36 — CRO tenure: why it's 18–22 months and how to break through​27:42 — Top skills required for a successful CRO today​29:17 — Tamie's origin story: race cars, finance, and Oracle​35:10 — The first CRO role: PE-backed, move with speed, exit to Siemens​37:22 — Definition of success: "A little bit of grit and a little bit of grace"