On this episode of Revenue Mavericks, I sat down with Hervé Timsit, Chief Revenue Officer at EDB. Hervé has spent three decades in enterprise software across three continents, from building and selling three companies in France to leading international sales at BMC and EMC, before returning to the high-growth PE-backed world. When you ask Hervé what he does for a living, he doesn't say he runs sales. He says his job is to find people. Everything else follows from that.

1. A Classroom in Casablanca

Hervé wasn't born in France, even though he's French. He grew up in Casablanca, Morocco, attending a French public school where every culture, religion, and economic background sat side by side in the same classroom. Kids from every walk of life were his classmates, and they were all different and all friends at the same time.

That experience gave him something he's relied on for his entire career: the ability to see through cultural formality and understand who someone really is. In international sales, that skill is everything. Hervé describes meetings in Spain where nothing starts before 10am and lunch takes two hours, followed the next day by meetings in Israel with completely different norms. The rituals look different, but the intent is the same. People want to know if they can trust you. They want to know if you're genuine. Growing up in Casablanca taught him to see that common thread no matter where he is in the world.

2. The Interview That Has Nothing to Do With Your Resume

When Hervé evaluates a candidate, he doesn't ask about quota attainment or what deals they closed at their last company. He asks where they were born, what their goals are in life, what they value. The conversation catches people off guard, which is part of the point. He's not interested in a rehearsed pitch. He's reading the person.

He still personally interviews sales reps three and four levels below him, even as CRO. He calls it paranoia, and he means it as a discipline. As companies scale, the hiring bar quietly drops. One or two average hires turn into a pattern, and then you're running an average organization. Hervé refuses to let that happen.

The framework he uses comes from his time at BMC, working alongside John McMahon after the BladeLogic acquisition. McMahon evaluated people on four criteria: drive and purpose, intelligence and situational awareness, coachability, and impeccable integrity. Hervé adopted all four, but integrity is the one he won't bend on. Without it, nothing else holds together.

3. Creating the Conditions, Not the Commands

Hervé believes you cannot motivate people. They're either motivated or they're not. What you can do as a leader is create the conditions where that intrinsic motivation thrives. Understand what each person's individual goals are, build a system of accountability and transparency around them, and get out of their way.

He references a concept from the book "Freedom, Inc." about a factory that kept its gloves locked in a cabinet, counting every pair that went out. When they opened the cabinet and let workers take what they needed, consumption actually went down. The lesson is simple: treat people like adults and they act like it. Micromanage them and you get the opposite.

This is the connective tissue behind Hervé's leadership philosophy. You find the right people. You set the standard. You create the operating rhythm and the cadence. And then the quality of your leadership is measured by what happens when you're not in the room. If your team can execute the way you'd want them to without you standing there, you've done the job. If they can't, the problem isn't them. It's upstream.

Why This Matters

What stood out to me about Hervé is how intentional every piece of his approach is. He's not running plays out of a textbook. He's built a system where the right people, hired for the right reasons, are given the autonomy and accountability to perform on their own terms. And it all traces back to a classroom in Casablanca where a kid learned that everyone is different and everyone deserves the same respect.

That's a through line you can't manufacture. And it's the kind of leadership instinct that AI can help amplify but never replace. The best systems in the world won't fix a team built on the wrong foundation.

Listen to the full conversation on the Revenue Mavericks podcast.