Opening Session: Rise Above the Noise with Sincerity & Science
- Wendy Sturgis: To earn relationships: (a) Be kind (b) Be honest (c) own mistakes in totality (d) Block 1hr per week for the sole purpose of helping others (e) walk the talk (f) express true intellectual curiosity
- Kevin Dorsey: Route leads to personalized cadences based on persona (role/level) + industry + size
- Aly Merritt: (1) To predict the future, think about what will not change. For example, people want to buy from people/companies they like/trust. (2) You can’t complete against people who love what they do.
The Science of Sales: An End-to-End Process Readiness Framework with Hilary Headlee
- The #1 goal for sales ops is to make the number. (The #2 goal is to forecast accurately.)
- Have a framework for telling the story of how sales ops helps the company make its number. As shown below, build that story by (1) Defining motions (2) tying internal processes to motions (3) linking internal playbooks to the processes (4) certifying on the playbooks via whiteboarding, roleplay, assessments, etc. (5) defining 3 to 5 KPIs per motion/process that tells you why you made or missed your goal (6) defining your tech stack for each motion/process
- Define entry & exit criteria for sales stages
- Define SLAs for SDR to AE handoffs, esp. regarding AE responsibilities
- “Deal snapshots” include information that you need to collect and share, for instance in AE to CS handoffs
How You’re Completely Missing the One Thing Your Buyer Cares About with Kevin Dorsey
- Check out: How to Really Sell to a VP of Sales = Get to ‘results’ on investment (ROI)
- People buy for just 1-2 true reasons and justify with 2-3 additional ‘justifications’
- To find true reasons, ask what your buyers are hoping to achieve, feel, or avoid? (a) achievement = money, title, status, revenue, … (b) feeling = security, happiness, pride, … (c) avoidance = of stress, pain, shame, wasted time, …
- To discover true reasons, ask (a) Why are you even looking into this? Why are you even taking the time for this demo? OR you can ask “Most of our customers buy because of x, y, or z. Which one speaks most to you?”
- Stop selling the entire product. Validate that every feature you discuss ties to one of the top 2-3 true reasons people buy; remove anything that does not pass that test.
- Benefit-laden check-ins: Get them to tell you the benefit/impact that product will have on them. Don’t ask, “Does that make sense?” “Any questions?” “How does that sound?” Instead, ask “How would that affect (the true reason you talked about before)?”
- ROI should be thought of as “results” on investment = tangible things that will happen that show a 5x to 10x return on their investment. You may need to do the work to show prospects how they will get the return. When you do that (ex: ROI calculator), be conservative using worst-case assumptions they shared with you during discovery
- If you cannot justify the price based on results/return, don’t sell them the product. They will churn and talk sh$t about you.
- Kevin does 1hr of team training every Thursday
- Each week, SDRs must self-score 5 calls and peer score 1 call prior to their 1:1
- An SDR’s job is to build curiosity, not interest. They should mainly qualify on Need (and possibly authority), but not Budget or Timing.
Not Just A Buzzword: Account-Based Is A Revenue Producer with Victor Sowers
- Ensure cross-functional alignment between C-Suite + Marketing + Sales + Customer success
- Build the plan: collateral, paid acquisition, events, etc.
- Operationalize your systems & data: Who are you targeting? How will they move through the system?
- Prep your customer-facing people
- Start small (1 account) but think about scale from the start. Pick the first account that (a) matches your ICP (b) has traction (c) has large potential (d) has a motivated sales & customer success team
How SalesLoft Sells with Derek Grant
- The best reps follow up on opportunities they lost to status quo (aka timing) and to competitors
- Surprise & delight prospects with profound personalization
- Get referrals every time
- After discovery calls, send video summaries (using Vidyard) leveraging AEs face, whiteboard, and/or screen share.
- SDRs and AEs should build their brand by creating or sharing/curating valuable content on social networks (esp. LinkedIn)
- Don’t double down on any single tactics; be diverse in touches.
- SalesLoft has 18 touches in many cadences.
Storytelling: The Secret To Shifting From A Good Rep Into A Great Rep with Doug Landis
- I did not attend this session but heard it was outstanding. One key takeaway was = when you tell stories, make people (not companies) the protagonists
Coaching Counts: Better Teams Get Coached with Alexandra Kane, Scott Leese, and Justin Hiatt
- Focus on coaching the middle 60%
- Reps need to want to learn and to be receptive to coaching
- Build a culture of coaching, esp. peer-to-peer coaching
- Sales enablement does training; managers must then coach to reinforce
- On anything “big,” train 2x and certify
- One panelist does 3 hrs/week/rep of coaching (JD: separate study cited by later speaker says you should not exceed 1hr/week/rep)
- One panelist offered optional training 3x/day from 8a-9a; 12p-1p; 5p-6p
- Coach on activities/behaviors reverse engineered to achieve end goals (quota attainment)
- People want/need coaching on how to ask better questions
- LAER objection handling framework = listen, acknowledge, explore, respond
- Identify what each individual is optimizing for professionally (next desired role) and personally
- Treat people like adults. Be transparent/vulnerable about yourself and (within reason) your company
Doug Camplejohn of LinkedIn – Day 2 Keynote
- Salespeople need to upgrade their people skills and their approaches
- The most effective sellers have strategic skills (alliance building; partnership; etc). Next-most have functional skills (solution selling; relationship selling; etc.). Least effective have only transactional skills (features & benefits)
- See LI course Selling to Executives
- 3 keys to sales success: (1) Sales & marketing have aligned incentives, esp. on ABM targeting (2) using sales automation to help B2B sales (3) personalization at scale
- At LI, warm intros from internal network are the best source of leads
- LI’s response rate: (1) cold calling 1% (2) email 3% (3) InMail 15%.
- The best InMailers treat InMail as if writing a handwritten note and reference, in ranked order best (1) same school at same time (2) common connections (3) same school (4) worked at same company (5) follow same group (6) have similar skills
Ashley Welch – Day 2 Keynote
- Evolve (your product) by looking through the lens of your customers
- When selling to someone, become their customer (where possible) so that you can provide value by sharing what your customer experience has been with them.
- Design thinking: discovery à insight à ideation à Pilot à (iterate) à launch
- Beware of motivational bias that blinds you to disconfirming information
- Go in with curiosity since people evaluate trust before competence.
- 3 curiosity prompts (1) what people care about either as a response to “tell more about the bane of your existence” or by asking “tell me more” when they use emotionally charged language (2) inconsistencies – ex. Huge priority but no budget (3) when someone has hacked a solution – ex. Forecast spreadsheet when they have a CRM
Jeff Sprecher – Day 2 Keynote
- C-level execs will answer their phone after 6 pm after their exec assistant leaves
- Hire people (a) deeply trusted by their peers (b) step forward to solve problems themselves (c) show deep compassion for others
- Find something someone else invented and make it better (in a way that makes customers happier)
Cross-Functional Awareness: How To Raise The Visibility of Sales Ops In Your Organization with Kyle Smith, Victoria Moss, and Akshay Birla
- Tie sales ops comp to the head of sales comp plan
- Help heads of sales & CFOs make decisions – ex. Eliminate unproductive salespeople, shorten ramp time, etc.
- Key success metrics: (a) ramp time (b) productivity per rep (c) quota attainment (d) attrition (e) specific process changes
Strengthening Sales: What’s Ops Got To Do With It with Ellen Kindley, Hilary Headlee, and Kirra Greye
- Sales effectiveness metrics (a) increase deal size (b) shorten sales cycle (c) increase win rate (d) increase pipeline
- Involve head of sales + managers + finance + IT
- Reserve bandwidth for proactive initiatives aligned where you need be 1 yr out
- Need governance for what is allowed to go into Salesforce; all data must be collected for a reason that will drive a decision
- Need a strategy for new tool adds and removals, esp. impact on other tools & processes
- Helpfulness <> “yes.” Ask “so what?” “why does that matter?” “What will this get us?”
- Pay attention to a well-defined set of KPIs (3 to 10) agreed across the organization
- For metrics, know apriori what constitutes normal & abnormal deviations
- Diagnose closed lost opportunities and feed information back to product, marketing, sales, etc.
- Train managers, salespeople, finance, etc. on how to accurately pull data. Better yet, produce a weekly report covering their needs. Don’t’ just send out the report, meet to discuss it.
Let’s Get Real: What the Heck Is GDPR with Erin Bush, Mike Meyer, David Thomas
- GDPR applies to any data about an EU resident
- People (data subjects) can request (a) visibility into all data you have on them (b) removal of all data you have on them
- The maximum fine for non-compliance is 4% of top-line revenue
- Contracts need to have GDPR compliance language
- It is impractical to go to market differently in different regions so consider adopting GDPR compliance globally
A Rising Tide: Bumping Up The Bell Curve with Steve Johnson, Sean Murray, Kiva Kolstein, Lisa Earle McLeod
- There are two kinds of successful enterprise sellers (a) those who close lots of small deal with big companies (b) those who close fewer larger deals with large companies. Managers must help AEs balance between closing the immediate small deal and taking the time to work a complex enterprise-wide deal. There is no right answer; the answer depends on careful account planning which considers account map, account TAM; etc.
- Deal reviews are not coaching. Coaching is 1:1s focused on competencies, behaviors, and skill sets. The optimal amount of coaching is 1hr/week.
- Motivate AEs by having them formulate a “noble purpose” = why you sell what you sell in terms of the benefit to the customer
- Training should be coordinated between sales & marketing so that training in reinforced during sales manager coaching.
- Be thoughtful about rep personal goals
- (GREAT IDEA) Hold a quarterly storytelling competition open at least to sales & customer success and possibly to the entire company
- The biggest missing info in a deal review = quantifiable impact the deal with have on the customer’s business (preferably as expressed by the prospect)
- Leader’s mindset = you work for them, not them working for you