During his 17 years at Intuit, Barry has been in a variety of sales leadership roles. He has spent his last four years as general manager of the pro tax ProConnect group where he oversaw revenue and increased year-over-year growth rates.
As Intuit’s new CSO, he’s tasked with leading the company’s sales team to enable Intuit’s mission of powering prosperity around the world and deliver outsized results for our customers, employees, communities, and shareholders. With data and AI core to fueling innovation across our platform, and with the newly-formed sales account management team accelerating Intuit’s disruption of the small business mid-market, Barry is poised to lead sales in Intuit’s most exciting era yet.
Tell us a little bit about where you are from:
My father worked for the US government. He was in the Army and then military intelligence. By the time I was 10, we’d lived in four states and two different countries. Changing homes so much as a young kid made it tough to meet people and make friends. My father really encouraged me to play sports as a way to meet people and be part of a community. So growing up I played anything that had a ball. My formative years in high school were spent in Maryland, and that is really where I grew up. My older brother went into the Air Force Academy so I decided in high school that I wanted to be a jet fighter pilot and go to the Air Force Academy. Unfortunately, it’s a very, very tough acceptance process and I didn't make it. My dreams of being a jet fighter pilot went up in smoke. I had no backup plan and was a little lost. So one of my early learnings in life is always to have a backup plan. I ended up going to the University of Maryland as an electrical engineering major, but that wasn't quite for me. So I moved to Texas and finished college with a business degree and a minor in systems analysis. I’ve been in Texas ever since, I got married here 25 years ago to my beautiful wife Holly, and love it.
What was your path that led you to Intuit?
Right out of college, I joined a small software company—and it was great because I was able to experience a lot of different roles there. I was in product development, product management, marketing, sales, support, general management… pretty much everything in the business. I learned I loved leadership and helping to solve people’s problems, which was a natural fit for sales. That company got bought by Thomson Reuters and I experienced working for a much bigger company, but then I had an opportunity to work for a startup where I ran sales and marketing. Like a lot of startups, it didn’t end well and I joined a company called CCH, which is a competitor to Intuit in our professional tax space, and was a national sales leader for them. That’s when Intuit came knocking. Intuit had an office in Plano where I already lived so it worked out. Sasan Goodarzi (Intuit CEO) was the GM of ProTax at the time and I joined as a sales leader and have been here now for 17 years in a variety of roles. For the last four years, I was a general manager of the pro tax group, and then I became the Chief Sales Officer this year.
Tell us about the role of the sales team:
There's a portion of our customers that take their own initiative to visit our website and subscribe to an Intuit product like QuickBooks, whether they're entering our ecosystem for the first time or adding on another product to a QuickBooks solution they're already using. But there's a good percentage of our customers that aren't comfortable with doing that. They have questions about what's the right offering and services they should use so they'll call us. We strive to find out exactly what these small businesses and accountants need, and make sure we're putting together the right solution. Then we also have an outbound part of our team that proactively engages customers. Part of it is campaign based where we believe there's an opportunity for a business to get more value from the offerings we have. For example, a customer may use QuickBooks Online to manage their books, but may not have QuickBooks Payroll. So we do campaign call-outs because we know many small businesses have employees and we have great workforce solutions offerings. Most of our work is done over the phone and this fiscal year we’ve already had 3.3 million calls with customers, both incoming and outgoing. And I love it, because all those calls are a way to connect with our customers that others in the organization don't always get to feel. We connect directly with small business customers and accountants to help them serve their clients through our SBSEG and PTG offerings. We get to go out every day and showcase the incredible value that the company can offer customers.
What opportunity are you most excited about?
I’m very excited about the important role sales is playing in Big Bet 5—disrupting the small business mid-market. Mid-market account management is a sales program we launched this fiscal year to accelerate our disruption of the mid-market. Account managers are assigned to existing or prospective mid-market customers and engage with them on a regular basis. Doing so enables our account managers to develop deeper relationships with customers to understand their needs, ensure that they're getting the full utilization out of our offering set, be a direct line between customers and our product teams, and be a direct line between mid-market customers and our Customer Success teams when issues arise. This account management team will play a critical role in the launch of our newest offering to mid-market customers later this fiscal year.
Tell us about your leadership philosophy:
For me, I feel like our role as leaders is really to make those around us successful by coaching, mentoring, getting rid of obstacles, and helping all of our employees and leaders get to where they want to in their careers. And then at the same time, being that person who helps push people to do things that they never thought they could do and helping them see that they can achieve these things and what they can do when they get there. When I first started at Intuit, I flew out to Mountain View to be interviewed and the HR person at the time said that, at Intuit, "We are here to make you successful." I’ve always remembered that and it’s been core to my work as a leader.
What do you enjoy doing when not at work?
My wife Holly and I have been married for 25 years. We do not have kids but have lots of nieces and nephews. I'm Italian-American, so family is core to who we are, and we love spending time as a family together. Holly and I both love wine so we spend a lot of time in California wine country. And if we're not in wine country, we're on a beach, so we love Hawaii. We also have a little Cavapoo, Riley, who's 6 ½ years old, and we spend a lot of time doting on our dog. You'll also find me around the grill 365 days out of the year grilling steaks or baby back ribs.