Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Sarah Kennedy Ellis, Google Cloud's VP of Global Demand & Growth, shared how her team rebuilt their entire marketing workflow around AI agents. The result: 70% faster asset production and higher conversion rates, not lower. The catch: most teams fail because of workflow friction, not agent quality.
Coinbase slashed AI costs in half while usage grew, shifting to open-source models. The move exposes what sales leaders are quietly facing: token spend quintupled in H1 2026, but nobody can show the revenue lift. Even top B2B companies are now questioning whether their AI investment justifies the cost.
From July 1, Australian employers must pay superannuation within 7 business days of payday, down from 91 days. National minimum wage rises 4.75% to $26.44/hour. Parental leave extends to 26 weeks. Here's what changes for your comp budget and payroll admin.
Sydney health firm faces Federal Court action over sales team posing as medical professionals to sell programs worth up to $7,500. ACCC alleges scripted fear tactics, refund denials, and unfair contract terms affected 6,000+ Australians between 2022 and 2025.
Erica Berchtold, David Jones CCO since May 2025, takes the top job at Australia's oldest department store. She replaces Scott Fyfe at a legacy retailer facing pressure from online competitors and specialist fashion brands. Worth noting: David Jones trades from 30+ stores but was sold for ~US$100M in 2023, down from A$2.1B in 2014.
Denise Persson runs a 700-person marketing org at Snowflake and stopped logging into dashboards. She asks her data questions directly, gets answers in real time, and cut cost per opportunity by 30% in six months. The shift killed the sales-marketing data war and changed who she hires.
Siva Rajamani has seen 300+ enterprise sales comp plans. Most are too complex, reward the wrong behavior, or both. He breaks down the hidden math that makes reps avoid your best deals, quota-to-OTE ratios that work, and why your top performers should out-earn almost everyone.
Jason Lemkin breaks down a pattern he sees across SaaS startups: the number one rep, already earning top 1% money, quits when the environment shifts. Not because of pay, but because change itself makes staying less attractive. New VP, harder quota, or leadership turnover are the top triggers.
The AI company behind Claude just raised $65B at a near-trillion-dollar valuation without a traditional sales org. No CRO, no SDR team, no account executives cold-calling enterprise. Here is how they scaled to enterprise deals without carrying a bag.
Vercel's CPO Tom Occhino detailed how the company runs on hundreds of internal AI agents, posting numbers that should make every B2B sales leader rethink 2026 headcount. The dev platform reabsorbed its SDR team after an AI agent took over lead qualification. Support runs at 93% automation, marketing content starts at 96% AI-drafted.
The budget math is changing. Companies are starting to choose between hiring another engineer at $300k or spending that money on AI tokens. Early data: Uber caps engineers at $1,500/month token spend, some startups now spend more on tokens than salaries. That shift will hit sales and CS teams next.
Drew Houston is moving to Executive Chairman after building Dropbox to $1B ARR faster than any B2B company before it. The company he is handing off generated $2.52B last year, down 1%. Growth decelerated from 40% in 2016 to negative territory in 2025. The enterprise AI play never materialized.