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B2B Sales Best Practices

Bowery Capital Sales Summit 2018 (trip report)

The Best Demand Gen Strategies from 2018

Speaker: Wendi Strugis, Chief Client Officer – Yext

  • “Party of 5” Demand Gen strategies
    • AE outbound
    • Upsells
    • Partnerships & strategic alliances
    • Marketing
    • SDR/BDR
  • Set goals each quarter by pipeline by source & territory (ex: Upsells + Enterprise + North America). Measuring “influenced pipeline” and “influenced ACV”
  • Yext Scan has been a huge inbound driver – allows prospects to see how their business appears online
  •  Large company AEs with established brands (ex: Google) struggle with Challenger selling
  • SDR playbooks are very different in Europe and Asia
  • Working with Barry Rhein (Selling Through Curiosity) on sales training and enablement
  • When establishing yourself in a new market, place your bets on (niche) conferences that all you to get close to early innovators
  • 5 Demand Gen Lessons Learned
    1. Demand gen is most scalable and predictable down-market (i.e. SMB)
      • SMB: Paid search
      • Enterprise: Webinars; Events; LinkedIn; Direct Mail
    2. Focus thought leadership on #1 top of mind issue. Ex: For B2C marketers, Yext focused on “voice search” and sent Alexa devices in a highly successful direct mail campaign. Also, hold a customer conference earlier than you would think (perhaps when you can get at least 50 people)
    3. Hand raises (ex: Request a demo) are the best leads
    4. Website optimization pays off
      • Yext reduced form fields from 9 to 6 and saw a 200% increase in leads without any change in traffic
      • CTA front and center above the fold
      • no carousels
      • “Get Started” was the best CTA rather than “Schedule a Demo”
    5. Nurture prospects with valuable content if they are not ready to speak to sales

3 Lessons Learned from Scaling Enterprise SaaS Teams: Build Talent, Focus on your Plan, Understand the Math

Speaker: Mark Josephson, CEO – Bitly

  1. Right Talent
    • Hire people that have done / can do the job (ex: Enterprise AE != Freemium AE)
    • Hire people who bring solutions, not problems
  2. Focus on Your Plan
    • Pick a customer & a pitch
    • Pick a product, price, and GO! (do not do 5 ideas at once)
    • Empower sales ops to measure everything
      • Know what your assumptions are
      • Be dispassionate about the numbers but passionate about your strategy
      • Sales ops should be responsible for (a) systems (b) compensation (c) strategy
  3. Understand the Math
    • (# AEs) x (Deals/AE) x (ACV/deal) = capacity x productivity x pricing
    • Raising quota does not necessarily raise performance; in fact, the oppositive my be true (editor’s note: Set quota such that 70% of AEs are at or above plan each period)

Strategies for Expanding Into New Geographies

Speaker: James Allgove, Head of Growth, US East Coast – Stripe

  • It takes 5 years to achieve positive ROA from international investment (Source: HBR)
  • Ringfence resources for each international location (otherwise, they will get deprioritized)
  • Empower your local team. Solid line reporting to the local leader and dotted line back to HQ.
  • OK to outsource PR & marketing in the early days; not OK to outsource sales or product or hiring
  • Build a playbook for how you launch in new markets
  1. Decide where to go
    • Don’t just assume UK; look for the signals aligned specifically with your domestic product/market fit
  2. Patiently work toward product/market fit in your new market
    • Year 1 should be about learning not blind pursuit of a #
  3. Build the right team
    • Start with end-to-end generalists and specialize gradually
    • Do not lower your bar on ability or culture relative to whom you would hire domestically

Evolving from Founder-Driven Sales to Hiring Your First Sales Team

Speakers: Jordan Wan, CEO – CloserIQ; Jennifer Etherton, Head of Sales – Klara; Rachel Kaplowitz, CEO – Honey; Alex Adamson, Director of Talent – Bowery Capital

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