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Chris Graham→ Account Executive, New Logo @ Temporal

More than a decade in enterprise software sales — selling developer infrastructure to engineers, architects, and engineering leaders at Fortune 500s. Docker, GitLab, Mattermost, GitKraken, Honeycomb. This site exists for one reason: to earn the interview.

● Watch first — 90-second intro
100%
Renewal rate at Honeycomb (highest on team)
180%
Account expansion attainment, current role
$3.6M
Largest deal — Top-3 U.S. bank, East Coast HQ
10+
Years in enterprise software sales — East Coast regulated industries
The pitch

Why I'm writing to you about this role specifically.

Temporal is solving a problem I've watched enterprise engineering teams bleed money on for a decade — durable, reliable execution of long-running, stateful workflows. I've sold to the teams that are currently duct-taping Saga patterns, custom retry frameworks, and Step Functions glue together to keep their payments, provisioning, and orchestration running.

I'm not pivoting into developer infrastructure — I've lived here since 2017. Docker. GitLab. Mattermost. GitKraken. Honeycomb. Every persona on the Temporal What You'll Do list is one I already sell to and earn trust with.

My territory has always been the East Coast — and specifically the regulated industries that buy Temporal: top-tier banks and financial services, healthcare and health-tech, federal and defense, and the Big Four. These are buyers who can't afford an unreliable workflow engine — and who move slowly until they trust the seller.

Banking & FinServ

Top-3 U.S. bank, regional super-regional, Big Four advisory to FinServ. Closed Mattermost's largest-ever deal across IT, CISO, Compliance, HR and Finance.

Healthcare

Sold GitLab into a Fortune 50 health-tech company mid-acquisition. Navigated a Microsoft-led acquirer and held the line on a $2.7M TCV expansion.

Public Sector & Defense

DoD, federal civilian, and a leading aerospace & defense prime — 4,500-user GitKraken rollout with SSO, FedRAMP-adjacent audit, and ATO realities baked in.

Highly-regulated enterprise

Pharma-services majors, Big Four consultancies, multi-national insurers. I know how procurement, legal, infosec, and architecture review actually move.

Sales philosophy

MEDDIC for the science. Challenger for the art.

Engineers are the hardest buyer in software to win, and the most loyal one once you do. The way you win them is by being more rigorous than they are — and bringing a point of view they respect.

MEDDIC

Rigorous qualification.

Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion. Every deal earns its place in the forecast.

Challenger

Teach. Tailor. Take control.

I bring an informed point of view. With developer tools, that means meeting engineers where they are — with credibility, not theater.

Consumption

Sell the adoption curve.

With consumption-based products, the contract is just the start. I build the land, then engineer the expansion around real workload growth.

Prospecting — the engine

Pipeline isn't given to me. I build it.

Highest self-generated pipeline on the enterprise team at Honeycomb. Here's how I do it — and how I'd run it for a Temporal New Logo territory.

01

Define the ICP precisely

For Temporal that means engineering orgs running mission-critical, stateful workflows — payments, provisioning, AI orchestration, microservice choreography. Personas: Staff/Principal Engineers, Platform Eng leaders, VP Engineering, Chief Architects.

02

Segment & prioritize

Tier accounts by signal density: OSS adoption footprint, hiring patterns (workflow/orchestration roles), public engineering blogs, conference talks, existing failure-mode pain (Saga, Step Functions, custom retry frameworks).

03

Pain-point-driven messaging

No generic 'circling back.' I open with a hypothesis tied to a system they actually run. Engineers respect specificity and reject fluff — that's the bar.

04

Multi-channel orchestration

Sequenced, role-aware touches: technical posts to ICs, business-impact framing to leaders, executive-to-executive intros for VPs. Email, LinkedIn, phone, in-person, and partner-sourced — coordinated, not stacked.

05

Partner & community leverage

Hyperscaler co-sell motions (I've run them at GitLab with AWS), CNCF community presence, OSS champion network, and the existing Temporal community itself — the warmest lane into a target account.

06

Field events that earn the meeting

I plan and run my own field activity — happy hours, dinners, workshops — built around problems engineers actually have. (I'm running a SE Metro field plan right now in my current territory — see below.)

Case study — a multi-city roadshow I built and ran

4-metro, peer-to-peer Thought Leadership series — designed, sourced, and executed end-to-end to put ~80 engineering decision-makers in a room with us.

I built this motion to manufacture pipeline in a territory of 291 named accounts where the buyer — Directors and frontline engineering managers — wouldn't show up to a standard vendor dinner. So I designed a different format and ran it across four cities.

291
Named accounts in territory
4
Metros, two tiers of urgency
~80
Targeted engineering decision-makers
20
P1/P2 accounts mapped to seats
01

Strategy — reach the buyer before the RFP

Directors and frontline managers own developer tooling decisions. They respond to peers, not pitches. Built the program around small, curated, conversation-first events to position us as part of the community, not another vendor demo.

02

Metro prioritization — tiered by density

Scored each metro on named-account count, P1/P2 density, and engineering-org concentration. Two Tier-1 markets sequenced first, two Tier-2 markets following the quarter. Each metro had its own thought-leadership angle tuned to the local industry mix (regulated FinServ in one, defense/aerospace in another).

03

Format — engineered to convert, not impress

Private room at a local craft brewery. 20–25 person cap. No stage, no slides, no demo. One practitioner speaker for 15 minutes, then a facilitator-led open question: 'What's the biggest tax on your engineering team right now?' 90 minutes, food, open bar.

04

Audience — curated, not blasted

Staff/Principal ICs, frontline eng managers, Directors of Eng / Platform / DevEx. Seed list built from P1–P2 accounts first, then expanded — every invite tied to an account in the territory. Personal invitations from me and SEs, not a marketing blast.

05

Conversion path — built before the first event

SDR follow-up sequence locked in 48-hour SLA per attendee. Per-attendee plan: who owns the relationship, the next conversation, and what qualifies it as pipeline. Event attendance became the natural, hyper-relevant reason for the next touch.

06

Cross-functional ownership — I drove it

I owned the strategy, account scoring, invite list, venue selection, speaker selection, agenda design, and SDR follow-up SLAs. Marketing supported logistics; SEs delivered the practitioner content; SDRs ran follow-up. The motion was mine end-to-end.

That's the kind of motion I bring to a territory. Drop me into a Temporal New Logo patch and I'll be running the same playbook — re-tiered for Temporal's ICP, formatted for engineering buyers, and converting on a 48-hour follow-up SLA — out of the gate.

Deal management

How I move a deal from first call to signed paper — without surprises.

Step 01

Discovery

Map current systems, on-call pain, and the cost of unreliability. Quantify it.

Step 02

Qualification

MEDDIC. If we can't name the Economic Buyer and the Pain in writing, it isn't qualified.

Step 03

PoV, not PoC

Proof of Value with measurable success criteria, agreed before the first line of code.

Step 04

Multi-thread

Champion network across LoBs and leadership layers. No single point of failure.

Step 05

Legal / Procurement / Security

Run in parallel with technical validation — never a surprise at the end.

Step 06

Close & expand

Land with a clear adoption plan and the first three expansion vectors already mapped.

Account management

The contract is the start of the relationship, not the end.

In a consumption model, expansion is the scoreboard. I run accounts with that math in mind from day one.

01

Establish goals

Tied to the customer's business outcomes — not our license count.

02

Tailored strategy

Per-account playbook: expansion vectors, exec sponsors, milestone calendar.

03

Trusted advisor

Regular cadence with engineering AND business. Site visits where it matters.

04

Proactive support

I own the orchestration across CS, SAs, and product so the customer never feels handed off.

05

Performance review

Usage, satisfaction, business impact — reviewed against the plan, adjusted in flight.

Teamwork in sales

Enterprise deals are won by teams. I'm the conductor, not the soloist.

SDRs

Co-build target lists and messaging. I'm a multiplier for them, not a critic.

Sales Engineers

True partnership. SE owns the technical truth; I own the business case and the room.

Customer Success

Aligned from kickoff. Their adoption metrics ARE my expansion pipeline.

Marketing

Field events, customer roundtables, persona-tight campaigns. I bring the accounts.

Channel

AWS, GCP, Azure co-sell. I've delivered Private Offers — they accelerate procurement and de-risk the deal.

Product

Structured customer feedback loop. Engineers selling to engineers expect to be heard.

Leadership

Forecast discipline, deal reviews, and exec-to-exec sponsorship on the deals that need it.

Deal book

Real enterprise deals. Walked through end-to-end.

Customer names withheld out of respect — referenced by industry. Happy to walk through any of these on a call.

Deal 01

Leading U.S. facility services company

Field Services / Multi-site EnterpriseGitLabWIN
Problem

Years of acquisitions had left dozens of business units with no unified DevOps process and heavy tool sprawl across silos.

Process
  • ▸Brought in by a champion who'd been a user at a previous account
  • ▸Built a coach network across multiple Lines of Business
  • ▸Ran a formal PoV with measurable metrics, milestones, and success criteria
  • ▸Worked procurement and legal in parallel with the technical track
  • ▸Drove exec-to-exec alignment between GitLab and customer leadership
Result

Initial land of $150K ARR → $500K+ ARR by first renewal with a clear expansion roadmap.

Deal 02

Top-3 U.S. global bank

Financial ServicesMattermostWIN
Problem

The customer needed to expand a secure collaboration platform beyond IT into cybersecurity, compliance, HR, and finance — under heavy regulatory scrutiny.

Process
  • ▸Engaged department heads across IT, cybersecurity, compliance, HR, and finance
  • ▸Partnered with Procurement and Legal on scalability and compliance terms
  • ▸Leveraged IT's existing success to bypass a formal PoC, validated by Enterprise Architecture
  • ▸Built a phased rollout with dedicated change-management support per department
Result

Closed a 3-year, $3.6M TCV contract — the largest deal in the company's history at the time.

Deal 03

Leading U.S. healthcare technology company

Healthcare IT (mid-acquisition)GitLab + AWSWIN
Problem

The customer was being acquired by a Microsoft-centric enterprise, putting both GitLab and AWS at risk of displacement by Azure DevOps and Azure.

Process
  • ▸Built a defensive use case with the internal champion around security (DAST/SAST)
  • ▸Secured executive alignment on the security narrative
  • ▸Co-sold a Private Offer with AWS to reinforce the combined value story
  • ▸Repositioned the upgrade as risk mitigation for the acquirer, not just a renewal
Result

$2.7M TCV, 3-year deal — expansion from $300K to $900K ARR, with GitLab + AWS embedded for the long term.

Deal 04

Leading aerospace & defense prime contractor

Aerospace & DefenseGitKrakenWIN
Problem

The customer's aviation division had fragmented Git workflows across engineering units — multiple tools, no visibility, inconsistent developer experience.

Process
  • ▸Identified an internal champion already running the product on a flagship program
  • ▸Mapped current tools and pain points with engineering leadership and DevOps leads
  • ▸Ran custom workshops and onboarding to accelerate peer-team adoption
  • ▸Built a consolidation business case showing reduced license sprawl and faster onboarding
  • ▸Aligned procurement and IT on SSO, compliance, and audit requirements
Result

Expanded to ~4,500 users across the division on a $500K ARR contract — now a lighthouse for other divisions.

Deal 05

Big Four professional services firm

Professional ServicesMattermostLOSS — INCLUDED ON PURPOSE
Problem

The customer wanted a highly customized internal collaboration deployment with limited long-term supportability.

Process
  • ▸Inbound interest — engaged multiple stakeholders but never secured true executive alignment
  • ▸Ran technical discovery; requirements pointed to a heavy bespoke build
  • ▸Surfaced the long-term support risk transparently to both sides
Result

Lost on long-term effort and supportability concerns. The honest read: I should have qualified out earlier and forced exec alignment sooner. Lesson built into how I run discovery today.

Track record

Where I've been, and what I delivered there.

Honeycomb.io

Enterprise Account Executive
Aug 2025 — Present
  • ▸100% renewal rate across portfolio — highest on team
  • ▸180% account expansion quota attainment
  • ▸Highest self-generated pipeline on enterprise team

GitKraken

Enterprise Account Manager
Sept 2023 — Aug 2025
  • ▸First sales hire at the company
  • ▸Managed Fortune 100 named accounts including top financials, defense primes, and Big Four
  • ▸Responsible for the largest deal in company history
  • ▸Built the playbook for moving from PLG to sales-led in enterprise accounts
  • ▸Grew named accounts by 100% over 18 months

Mattermost

Named Account Executive
Apr 2022 — May 2023
  • ▸73% attainment on $1.6M quota — #1 on team
  • ▸Owned enterprise accounts across the eastern US
  • ▸Led the post-COVID return-to-field initiative
  • ▸(Departure: company-wide layoff)

GitLab

Strategic Account Leader
Jun 2019 — Apr 2022
  • ▸89% / 108% / 130% quota attainment across three fiscal years on growing quota
  • ▸Player-coach to mid-market reps and SDRs

Docker (now Mirantis)

Account Executive
Jul 2017 — Jun 2019
  • ▸108% attainment on $800K quota — 250%+ YoY territory growth
  • ▸Built the PoV success-criteria program adopted by inside sales
  • ▸Partner sales motion became the FY2020 model

NetApp SolidFire

SolidFire Sales Specialist
Jul 2015 — Jun 2017
  • ▸150%+ quota attainment FY2016
  • ▸Rep of the Quarter Q4 FY16 (200%+)
  • ▸Trained 40+ post-acquisition reps on product positioning
Why Temporal, why now

The match against the job description.

Selling to engineers is my home turf.

Docker. GitLab. Mattermost. GitKraken. Honeycomb. Every job since 2017 has been selling developer infrastructure to engineers, architects, and engineering leaders — the exact buyer Temporal sells to.

Consumption-based is the model I want to run.

Open-source-led adoption with a consumption commercial motion is where developer infrastructure is going. I want to be the AE who's great at it — at the company defining the category.

I run the full motion, top to bottom.

Self-generated pipeline, technical discovery, multi-threaded enterprise navigation, exec alignment, procurement, close, expand. Not a closer waiting on inbound — a full-cycle enterprise seller.

Reliability is a story I already believe in.

I've sold observability at Honeycomb. I understand what 'the application broke at 3am and nobody knows why' costs an enterprise. Temporal eliminates an entire class of those failures. That's a story I can tell with conviction.

Job description, line-by-line
10+ years enterprise software sales
More than a decade, all enterprise. ✓
Selling to software engineers & technical leaders
Every role since 2017. ✓
Closing in large, matrixed enterprises
Fortune 100 financials, healthcare, defense, Big Four. ✓
High-growth sales motion
First sales hire at GitKraken — built the motion from zero. ✓
Hands-on, entrepreneurial mindset
I build my own pipeline, plan my own field events. ✓
Consumption-based sales models
Currently selling Honeycomb — consumption-native. ✓
Developer tools / infrastructure
Docker, GitLab, Mattermost, GitKraken, Honeycomb. ✓
Communicate to technical AND executive audiences
Closed a $3.6M deal by aligning IT, CISO, Compliance, HR, and Finance. ✓
For the Temporal team

Let's set up a conversation.

I'd love 30 minutes to walk you through how I'd attack a Temporal New Logo territory — and to hear how your team thinks about the next phase of growth.

grahamc2787@gmail.com919.454.0731
Role
Account Executive, New Logo
Company
Temporal
Location
Raleigh, NC · US Remote
Status
Open to talk this week