Jo Gaines moves to Asana as head of enterprise APAC

Jo Gaines has been named the new head of enterprise APAC for Asana to help grow and scale the enterprise side of the business.

Previously, Gaines was the area VP of retail and consumer goods APAC at Salesforce.

Speaking to Digital Nation exclusively, Gaines who has already been in the role for a month said she will be responsible for building out the company’s enterprise go-to-market strategy.

“It's [about] building out this go-to-market for across everything, marketing, customer success, sales, and what it all needs to look like for us to be able to deliver on the promise,” she explained.

“Our enterprise models are working well in places like Japan and Europe right across the world. So here it's a bit more nascent.”

Gaines explained how the current business model works.

“A lot of the business would come in, through that [free sign up] channel, go to the website, sign up, and that is the lead funnel. But now, it's also about going into enterprise and we're working with some amazing large enterprises in the region,” she explained.

“So how do you go to the next level, but also for enterprise, how do they use it at scale and how does it solve more of those sort of executive level challenges?”

Some of Asana's enterprise-level customers include Woolworths and Macquarie Bank.

In her hunt for a new role, Gaines said she was looking for the “trifecta” of "great people, great products that customers love and growth potential".

“Fortunately, I know the global CRO, the CMO and the head of customer success at Asana because they all came from Salesforce and they're incredible. The CRO called me and said ‘we need someone in APAC, would you do it?’,” she said.

Before signing on the dotted line, Gaines did her due diligence and spoke to Asana customers to understand their thoughts on the product.

“The customers I spoke to love the product and want to take it into different parts of their business. That's the first time I've ever worked in a tech or martech organisation where customers universally love the product,” she said.

Gaines said she wanted to go somewhere that was future-focused on innovation and where the business model was focused on customer utilisation.

“At Asana, we're not successful without customers using the product. We can't just continue to charge them an annual contract value. It's based on utilisation, which is the future of technology” she said.

For the next 12 months, Gaines said Asana is focusing on education and awareness.

“How do we make sure that people know who we are, what we do, how we can help and who we're working with,” she said.

“We're going to get customers telling our story because ultimately, that's who other customers want to listen to. They don't they don't necessarily want to listen to me. They want to hear from who else is using it and how they are using it.”