Sprout Social Company Culture & Values

A strong culture is essential to achieving our mission, and we have built resilient teams full of brilliant minds and top talent that foster a sense of purpose that fuels our collective efforts.

At Sprout, culture is more than just a buzzword. We heavily invest in it to maintain a healthy and cohesive team culture, regardless of location.

What sets Sprout Social’s product apart in terms of accessibility?

We’re lucky at Sprout to have support for product accessibility at every level, from our individual contributors to executive leadership. Employees have a deeply empathetic desire to build the best possible experience for all of our customers, our leaders want to support and advocate for the constant improvement of the product, and, universally, everyone demonstrates openness and a willingness to learn.

We are uniquely positioned to move the needle on accessibility in digital marketing overall. As a software company, it’s our responsibility to offer a foundational accessible user experience in our product. And as a leader in social media management, we’re uniquely positioned to encourage our customers to think about inclusive content — making it easier for them to manage their image alt tags or video SRT caption files. 

How does Sprout Social seek feedback from users about accessibility?

Sprout’s Product Inclusion team actively seeks feedback from our users regarding accessibility through close collaboration with our success team. They serve as a valuable bridge between our customers and our product teams, gathering insights, relaying them to us and connecting us for real-time conversations with customers.

We recently partnered with customers to better understand their alt text management across media platforms, including Sprout Social. This research helped us recognize some quick wins to improve the usability of our alt text management experience in our calendar. 

We’re also lucky to partner with customers like the Royal National Institute of the Blind, who has offered their own recommendations on potential accessibility improvements for screen reader users.

What advice do you have for companies hoping to improve product accessibility beyond baseline standards? 

It's crucial to get buy-in from all levels of the organization. Executive-level advocates can amplify inclusive messaging and allocate resources for accessibility efforts. It's also important to empower and elevate individuals who are passionate about accessibility, highlighting their work and encouraging them to share ideas.

It's helpful to expand our understanding of disability beyond technology. Engaging with resources like books such as Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig, podcasts like Included by the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center and following social media influencers like Sinéad Burke or Alex Locust can provide insights and perspectives that reflect a rich myriad of disability experiences and build empathy for the diverse group of users we build for every day.

Describe your sales team culture in one word. Why did you choose that word?
Sprout Social has done phenomenal work in building a sales culture that is not only high performing but also extremely collaborative. If I had to boil our sales culture down to one word, “supportive” is what I’d choose. Not a day goes by where our team isn’t sharing best practices to help each other level-up or hopping on internal syncs to chat through tough scenarios.

At Sprout, we strive to embody our values every single day. Both internally and externally, our team aims to be a joy to work with, change the game and approach everything through an ‘all in, all together’ mentality. Weaving these values into our day-to-day sales roles allows all of us to put our best foot forward, both with each other and with our customers.

The best part? It’s not just the AEs, SDRs and BDRs that share this level of support and collaboration, but it’s something we experience heavily from all of our leaders, as well. Bringing leaders into our deals isn’t something we feel like we need to do; it’s something we truly want to do.

What are your team’s traditions or growth opportunities, and how do these traditions help team members connect, evolve and stay motivated?
One of my favorite traditions that has withstood the test of time here at Sprout is every new sales hire being paired with a peer mentor for their first two to three months of joining the team. Not only does this program help ensure new hires find success early in their Sprout career, it also allows for stronger individual and team collaboration to drive deeper connections with our colleagues.

Additionally, in the post-Covid world we’re all living in where many folks choose to work remotely, Sprout makes it a point for our teams to spend as much in-person time together as possible. From department meetups in both the first and second half of the year, combined with individual team events in between, our team gets so excited to spend time together at our Chicago headquarters.

As I mentioned above, everything at Sprout comes back to collaboration and support. From one-on-one partnerships to full team events, this level of teamwork allows all of us to bring our best selves to work day in and day out.

How does a strong team culture make you feel more connected to your day-to-day work?
There’s something to be said about organizations that foster a culture where folks feel accepted, heard and supported — and I’m so grateful to be a part of Sprout Social, where this rings true daily.

Having been at Sprout for six years, I’ve had the privilege of growing my career from the SMB team to the Large Enterprise team, where I’m currently a senior AE and team lead for our healthcare and life sciences vertical. Each team and leader that I’ve worked with at Sprout has made me more passionate about my day-to-day work, as we all want one another to be successful.

Whether you like to describe this iconic adage as ‘work-life balance’ or ‘work-life harmony,’ there’s a level of connectivity that exists at Sprout (thanks to our team) that drives motivation and happiness not often found in sales cultures. And the embodiment of being ‘all in, all together’ helps see this through.