Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Cedric Pech #023
- Great leaders believe in their people even more than those people believe in themselves
- SaaS sellers are not in the software business – they are in the people business.
- There is a very thin line between inspiring people to use playbooks and forcing them to use playbooks. Tools exist to develop people not to inspect them.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Dev Ittycheria #022
- “Always be a student of the game, not the master of the game.”
- You’ll never find a great leader who can’t recruit.
- Everyone, at all levels, in a sales organization need to be able to deliver THE pitch
- The MEDDICC deal qualification framework layers on top of your sales process
- Accurate forecasting is critical since:
- Missing forecast has a major impact on cash
- Exceeding forecast means you may not have enough capacity to service the new business
- The best salespeople leverage their presales people really well; technical people connect better with technical people.
- Success is not the absence of problems, it is the ability to deal with them.
- A CEO’s job comes down to right strategy, right people (in right roles), and right culture.
- To avoid the triumph of activity over impact, know your top 3 priorities and how those connect to broader company objectives. Then, ensure your calendar reflects your priorities.
- QBRs should not only be about deal reviews. Also cover:
- How good are reps at each part of MEDDICC or stages of the sales cycle?
- How effective are reps at prospecting? What does the pipeline overall look like for this quarter & next quarter?
- The output of each QBR should be an action plan that is reviewed in the QBR next quarter. 80% of the action plan should relate to people, especially addressing skill gaps.
- Evaluate people on skill & will.
- Never bet against a product that users love.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Tom Schmit #021
- BladeLogic dedicated massive focus getting reps smart about the product, its 4 biggest competitive differentiators (against Opsware), and how those tied to value.
- BladeLogic had a 5 day bootcamp but on-the-jo enablement was constant. You had to be on your game every sales meeting. You did not want to look like an idiot.
- The easy part is knowing you need to generate pipeline and move deals. The hard part is disciplined commitment. The temptation to go fast and skip steps is strong.
- Hire for selfless high-performers who are eager to develop themselves and to be coached
- Spend as much if not more time training leaders as you do training reps
- “Are you going to manage up or lead down?”
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Richard Rivera #020
- BladeLogic actively recruited known top reps from other firms.
- Sell candidates on what matters to them.
- As a sales leader, strive to “win the week” in large part by eliminate any noise that stands in the way of accomplishing the mission
- A manager’s questions are a key part of helping reps formulate a deal plans
- “There is a difference between potential and performance.” – John McMahon
- I focused on two things:
- Building pipeline
- Developing champions
- To be a champions, a person with influence must be emotionally engaged.
- If you are not a master (and student) of the craft with a passion for teaching, then you should not be leading.
- Developing a champion is not [simply] about relationships; it is about getting another human being to put their reputation on the line to select you and your product in order to accomplish a major business objective.
- “You have to replicate before you innovate.”
- I stuck with 6 letters, MEDDIC, to understand deal health and deal gaps. It drives your strategy for each point in time. Each week, you address specific deal gaps.
- Vision-based messaging/positioning: Value and differentiation are intellectual. First, attach yourself to problems that buyers are really worried about and the desired outcomes they have.
- Objections happen when you challenge the buyer too soon – before you have established trust.
- Hiring profile:
- Intelligence: IQ & EQ
- Competitiveness – Drive/Hunger/Bias for Action: Due to circumstances or choice
- Character – Grit/Resilience
- Experience – Performance
- “Anything you expect as a leader must be training and coached.”
- If you don’t control the interview, (in sales) the interviewee will control you. It needs to be evidence-based. If we care about a certain level of experience in pipeline generation, I need to see evidence of it during the interview.
- You have to reverse engineer interview questions tied to the success criteria you are seeking. Every interviewer needs to be taught how to ask the questions and how to listen for strong evidence-based answers.
- Great unicorn stories are about great talent.
- Product, Marketing, and Partners must be as focused as sales in centering their work around building pipeline.
- Jeremy Duggan is the best at running a weekly pipeline generation (“PG”) operating rhythm.
- Marketing should focus on building awareness around Decision Criteria that will lead champions to take a meeting with us. The reps cannot be the only ones building this awareness.
- Customer Success must be certified in value-realization playbooks.
- BDRs are not in the business of discovery; their mission to secure discovery meetings for AEs by creating enough of an emotional connection though awareness of decision criteria.
- If you are more focused on winning deals and maximizing income versus serving others, then hold off on moving into sales leadership.
- Driving commitment as a leader is a much better approach than forcing compliance
- You don’t sell to companies, you sell to people.
- People don’t buy unless they have pain in executing an active key initiative.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Vance Loiselle #019
- People wanted to join BladeLogic to become part of the A-Team
- We spent a lot of time training people on 3-4 core differentiators. (Ex: At BladeLogic, configuration object dictionary, closed loop compliance, etc.). We did built a killer test plan with deep knowledge of our competitors’ products to ensure we would win.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Adam Aarons #018
- Build a process that an average seller will succeed with IF they follow it
- PTC had quarterly contracts for reps. If you missed 2 quarters, then you were gone.
- I would not do a PoC unless they committed to buy once we achieve the pre-defined success criteria. “If we prove that we can do this, what’s left?… A signed contract.”
- When BMC bought BladeLogic, the heads of each region competed with each other for 2 to 3 quarters to see who would win and be the lone survivor.
- “Do not end a meeting with an economic buyer without scheduling the follow up.”
- You need to be able to quantify the value proposition of what you sell. (A John McMahon rule)
- You build your sales process around your customers’ buying process
- We need to quickly qualify in or qualify out. We did that by quantifying our 3 main differentiating capabilities and getting those in as Decision Criteria early. If they don’t agree, walk away. If the criteria changes, your competitor is gaining ground and you need to fight back (and walk away if unsuccessful).
- Arm your champion with a quantified value proposition. This flows through every stage of your deal.
- The three biggest things to get right as a sales manager: hiring, productivity, & attrition
- A bad hire costs you two year (according to John McMahon)
- Set up comp plans to pay the top performers extraordinary well. For example, $1M.
- “Don’t apologize for being aggressive. If you call and they hang up, then call back. If they hang up again, then show up at their office.”
- Interview question: “What is the hardest thing you have ever been through?”
- You need great sales leaders to build great sales teams.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Andy Byron #017
- Leave a legacy as a leader as having been “fair” but not necessarily easy to have worked for
- Early in your career, gaining knowledge is more important than immediate earning potential
- Attributes to look for in an interview:
- Do you have EQ?
- Can you think on your feet? (IQ)
- Are your answers thoughtful?
- What is your true character?
- At BladeLogic, everybody pushed each other every day to be the best they could be.
- I was a student of the game… a sponge in 4 key areas:
- Recruiting and retention
- Training & enablement (with certification!!!)
- Pipeline generation & territory management
- Accurate forecasting
- Hiring attributes
- High integrity
- Intelligence: IQ & EQ
- High energy
- Right fit for the team
- Truly focus your sales team on your ICP
- Goals per quarter:
- 36 discovery meetings
- 24 1st face-to-face meetings
- 6 Business value workshops
- 4 PoCs
- KPIs, when bought into, give everyone in the company a treasure map
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Paul McGrath #016
- Paul was ex-military (attended West Point)
- PTC went after sellers who worked at companies known for great selling, esp. face-to-face selling (ex: Xerox, Kodak, etc.)
- The PTC interview process was designed to throw lots of objection at you. Ex: “I don’t know why they flew you down to interview, you seem pretty terrible” or “Are you nervous right now?” PTC would “punch you in the face and see how you react.” These are tactics you (probably) cannot use today.
- There were 15 people in my new hire class at PTC and 6 months later there were only 2 of us left. This was the very early days at PTC and this was improved via better training. BladeLogic was much more focused on enablement as well as leader development.
- The best leaders seek to hire people who are better than them
- Seek people who are extremely curious. To find out where the pain is, you need to how the business works – how they make money.
- In leadership, you have to know who you are – what your strengths and weaknesses are. You cannot take on someone else’s personality because people see through that. People also know whether you care about them.
- Jeremy Duggan is smart, funny, and also has a strong personality.
- John McMahon is a pro at building A-player teams
- 3Rs of sales leadership: recruiting, retention, and revenue. The first 2 are all about people.
- ICCE = intelligence + coachability + character + experience (in order)
- Retention: Yes it is about training but it also about putting people in the right position. This might mean dropping someone back a level.
- To be a great sales person, you need to work with great presales people. Great presales people are not only technically excellent but also possess outstanding communication skills.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Mark Musselman #015
- Sales engineers were essential to success at BladeLogic. They were hyper-technical as coding was critical during PoCs.
- Creating and developing champions is the most critical part of MEDDPICC
- Gratitude (recognition) of people who help win deals is critical.
- Mark includes an extra “P” for partners in MEDDPPICC
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Keith Butler #014
- All deals start with pain and someone who cares
- Slow down on discovery so you can go wide and high
- Once you zero-in on the Metrics, you are off to the races
- Obsess over problems/bottlenecks that impact rep productivity KPI(s)
- If you do things right, your Champion will get promoted
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Scott Sinatra #013
- A big part of a seller’s job to teaching prospects how to buy enterprise software
- Sales process and MEDDPICC are not cookie cutter. They must be modified to suit the nuances of your solution, the way buyers buy in the segment you sell into, and the organization you are in.
- To be a Champion, the person must have the power and influence to sell for you when you are not there
- The Walk Away: If you don’t have a Champion and/or the prospect will not work with you to define the decision criteria in a way that gives you the advantage, then respectfully, professionally walk away. It is a great test to see where you stand on the deal if you do not know.
- MEDDPICC is a compass that tells you where you are in an opportunity.
- New sales leaders must ‘get dirty’ by selling the product. You can only build a sales playbook off of firsthand knowledge. This also helps you set your hiring profile since you’ll understand what skills are needed.
- You don’t always need to or even want to do a PoC.
- You need firsthand knowledge of the product to inform other teams – Product, Marketing, Legal, etc.
- Messaging and positioning are critical but not the sole responsibility of the CRO. This must be done by locking arms with the CMO.
- Growth is not only getting promoted but also acquiring new skills.
- When you expand internationally, don’t just stick your toe in the water. Assuming you’ve done your research, go!
- Entering APAC requires a lot more changes than entering EMEA.
- When expanding internationally, take the time to deeply understand local competition.
- Even with many competitors, the cream rises to the top. But you need to be able to articulate your differentiation. Know the customer’s pain. Align your capabilities to that pain. Single out those capabilities that are unique.
- At Glint, the most important part of MEDDPICC was owning the Decision Criteria to help the customer create a scorecard. A close second is having a strong Champion.
- There is typically less competition in the Enterprise. fc
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Paul Cant #012
- Interview test: Keep you at reception until you proactively go find the person you are scheduled to interview with. It often lasted for hours and presumably many candidates simply left.
- CxO don’t want sales reps to come in an ask them lots of questions. Rather, they want sellers to come in with an executive presentation covering the value of what they are specifically doing now to what they could be doing with your solution. This requires significant up-front research into that executive’s challenges. This includes:
- (1) external market influences
- (2) business initiatives
- (3) critical capabilities the prospect needs to achieve those initiatives
- (4) map our solutions to those capabilities
- (5) reference case studies with ROI (esp. in the same geo & industry)
- (6) next steps
- Be a student of the game (your customers, your company, your sales process and methodologies)
- MEDDPICC is designed for disruptive enterprise selling, not transactional selling. It is time & resource intensive so you need to use it at the right level in the client.
- To become a first-line manager, you needed to spend time with enablement learning to hire and coach/develop people.
- Span of control for this type of selling is 1:6, max 1:7
- 7 wonders of sales management (each with tools and best practices)
- Business planning
- Pipeline
- Qualification: MEDDPICC as well as leading KPIs.
- Operating rhythm
- Leadership
- Recruitment
- Onboarding & ongoing rep development
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Carlos Delatorre #011
- PTC’s hiring strategy to pick the ‘best of’ involved poaching from companies where there was:
- a lot of sales talent
- a lot of sales enablement
- an intolerance for low performers
- You cannot succeed unless you have healthy pipeline generation
- “There is no better way to fix a problem than to focus on it.”
- MEDDPICC is a framework for:
- Evaluating an opportunity; evaluating the risks; building a strategy; and tying action items to that strategy
- Analyzing a rep’s innate capabilities and skills to determine skill gaps (or even whether they are in the right role & company)
- Changes at BMC when they acquired BladeLogic
- Sales execution was elevated
- Accountability was elevated
- Many people changes
- Instituted weekly pipe gen review sessions
- Added business value assessments
- New CRO playbook
- Assess the leaders and the ICs; make changes
- Implement MEDDPICC with a high emphasis on champions and economic buyers; assessing he politics in the client organization
- Run Tuesday pipeline generation meetings
- Institute rigorous QBRs
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – John Kaplan 010
- People who joined PTC often took a significantly lower base sales in exchange for the potential of much higher performance-based compensation.
- When recruiting, you need to be fired up about the opportunity. Show your excitement and conviction.
- Rule of 3: Always get 3 names of other great reps from every person you speak with.
- Command of the Message is about:
(It is critical to take an outside-in approach to this. Run an exercise to align the executive team on this then train everyone to be on the same page)- Which of your customers’ biggest problems do you solve?
(Attach yourself to your customers’ biggest business issue.) - How specifically do you solve them?
- How do you solve them differently and better (provide more value) then anybody else?
(This impacts which items show up as Decision Criteria and how each is ranked in importance by the value it provides. A difference is not a differentiator.) - Where have you done it before?
(Tell true stories all the way through to the ROI. A list of logos is not enough.)
- Which of your customers’ biggest problems do you solve?
- Command of the sale
- A sales process does not exist unless a buying process is in place
- Who is doing what when? By stage? By role?
- Put MEDDICC in at the stage level
- Great leaders have
- Command of their Plan
- Command of their Talent – Know the profile of your top rep(s) based on their performance to quota.
- You are not just training, you are transforming. Constantly look for ‘wasted heat’ in mindset, tools, and processes; these are under- or especially over-engineered things. For instance, CRM fields that are not used.
- It is not just the sales team, the entire company must have an operating rhythm. Craft each job so that if each person does their job on a day to day basis, then it will lead to victory.
- Great leaders shelter people from the noise and keep them focused on what matters.
- When people are underperforming, check if it is a skill and/or will problem – i.e. situational leadership.
- Traits:
- Intelligence: Book smarts x Street smarts
- Character: Esp. competitiveness = people who hate to fail.
- Coachability: Curiosity x Great listening
- Experience
- Time management vs. energy management: What gives you energy and what takes it away? Energy is renewable, time is not. Do what you are supposed to be doing. Hire people who recharge “at rest” – i.e recharge doing their daily work.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Andy Sadler 009
- At least back in the day, hiring managers would seek to throw candidate off balance to see how they reach. For instance, they might start the interview by tearing up your resume while saying “This is sh$t!” and then going silent.
- Traits – ICCE
- Intelligence
- How did you get your last job? (to understand if they applied a process)
- Character
- Coachability
- Experience (track record inside or outside work; especially in competitive situations)
- Intelligence
- Learn from other people’s mistakes
- Put people under pressure and see how they react. “Rapid intuitive experience.”
- Training: tell –> show –> observe them practicing atomic skills without intervening –> feedback
- Skills should be simple so they are repeatable
- Sellers should be embarrassed to lose to a competitor
- Narrow down where you are going to win (which segments? which products?)
- Recruitment is a process. We have recruitment forecast call every week.
- PTC was a high-pressure, fear-based culture
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Bill Strogis 008
- MEDDICC is as much a coaching framework as it is a qualification (forecast) methodology. It is not a sales process. MEDDICC is a list of things you need to have to close a deal.
- Back in the PTC days, it was only MEDIC and the “I” was initiative.
- “You can’t forecast feelings.” – Bill Strogis
- Traits
- Competitiveness
- Desire to build (or re-build)
- Mental toughness
- Fear is not a motivator; fear of failure is.
- I don’t hide when I’m not happy. Show people what good looks like.
- Never lose sight of what the buyer is going through. How will the buyer react to what you are going to say to them? They are in risk-mitigation mode.
- You also need to build and nurture internal champions since you sell as a team and your colleagues have a choice of how much to support you.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Mauro Trione 006
- Be maniacal in applying every aspect of MEDDICC; do not cut corners
- Traits:
- Competitiveness
- Intelligence
- Coachability
- High will/drive
- Integrity
- Personalities vary. More diplomatic people (with all the other traits) are better suited to working with partners vs. directly managing reps.
- Be courageous enough to ask questions whose answer you may not want to hear
- You cannot expect large systems integrators to adapt to your processes.
- You don’t need to be a specialist of something to sell; you need to know how to sell, to learn what the product can do for the customer, and then apply the playbook.
- The most successful reps are ‘always on.’ You must be willing to sacrifice.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Jeff Lortz 005
- Attributes
- Competitiveness/extreme desire to win
- ICCE: intelligence, coachability, character, and experience
- The formula: methodology x people x leadership approach
- A big part of the “system” is promoting from within
- Keep span of control between 5 and 8 to 1.
- Many top sales leaders have done an international tour or duty
- Ensure reps deeply understand differentiating capabilities that lead to clear customer ROI
- It is not simply having a qualification methodology like MEDDICC; it is about having the discipline to re-qualify and disqualify.
- “Finding a good ‘athlete’ is better than having a learned scholar.”
- CCOs must resist the natural inclination to have an adversarial relationship with the CRO. The root cause is that CCOs are held to profitability standards whereas most CROs are not.
- Metrics-driven – Constantly examine what is working & not working and make adjustments
- When you are running in place, don’t be afraid to ask for help
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Patrick Ball 004
- Hiring traits:
- Intelligence
- Competitiveness
- Drive – “What is the hardest thing you have ever had to deal with in your life?”
- Curiosity/learning – make yourself better every day.
- Discipline
- Past success – consistent quota achievement
- Scrappiness
- Be maniacal about training and about testing knowledge.
- Differentiation – How are you going to beat your primary competitor on every deal? Know your core differentiators and case studies. Know your product.
- Reps who try to negotiate their base pay are focused on the wrong things and are probably the wrong hires.
- Tie everyone’s bonuses across the org to sales performance
- Lead by accountability and by passion
- As a sales leader, recruitment is #1. Build a stable of reps who follow you.
- Be hyper driven on:
- Top of funnel pipeline generation.
- SDRs
- AE self-prospecting
- Channel Partners
- Marketing Inbound & Field Marketing Events
- Opportunity management
- Top of funnel pipeline generation.
- The SDR function is paramount not only to generate leads but also to feed the AE talent pipeline.
- Even with SDRs, field reps should be the accountable for prospecting. They should be the best prospectors in the company either directly or via the partner ecosystem.
- “I can generally tell within 2 weeks if someone is going to be success. Certainly within 90 days. It is the level of engagement, if they are asking for help, if they are already getting meetings.”
- You must align with your customers critical initiatives (part of the value framework).
- My target is 6 months to plan.
- Every Monday morning, I hold a 30 minute forecast call.
- As you gather wisdom, be the mercenary of your own career.
- Who you are around, who you work for, translates into performance.
- Don’t confuse the opportunity with the (immediate) role (you are hired into).
- “No grumpy salesperson every sold anything.”
- Hired into BladeLogic by Brian Blond
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – The John McMahon Interview 003
- “If you want to get what you want, you have to help enough other people get what they want.” – John McMahon
- Job descriptions should be precise about the knowledge, skills, and traits that align with your playbook.
- What is the minimum track record/experience they need to have?
- What is the minimum knowledge level about our industry they should have?
- Teach managers how to read resumes – how to spot green and red flag. Have then rate 10 resumes and reflect on ratings. Have them identify risks.
- John uses the Profiles XT assessment from Profiles Incorporated. Baseline using your top salespeople at each stage of your company.
- Hiring characteristics:
- Intelligence (able to learn)
- There is book smarts and street smarts?
- Ask, “How do you think you are doing during this interview?”
- Drive/courage/conviction (willing to learn)
- What is the toughest situation you have ever been in during your life?
- Competitive
- What is the most competitive thing you ever did in your life?
- What do you do today to compete?
- Coachable/Adaptable
- Integrity
- You cannot change someone’s character.
- Intelligence (able to learn)
- MEDDPICC is not a process, it is a qualification playbook that leaders use for coaching & training
- Metrics
- Quantify the pain as well as the tangible business outcomes
- Economic Buyer
- Before engaging the economic buyer, you have to have done your homework. Understand their before state and their to-be state.
- You need a champion before you go to the economic buyer. You are giving your champion a right to buy.
- To sell bigger deals, you need an EB who says, “Yes, this is a priority and if you test to these criteria (with the champion sitting there) then we will give you the deal.”
- Decision Process:
- Control the process and don’t them the buyer change it on you.
- The only way to answer an RFP – since if you did not help craft it then your competitor did – is to understand who the stakeholders are and then see if they will give you enough time to run your sales process. If they won’t change anything in the RFP, then walk away.
- Decision Criteria:
- The person who controls the criteria will win the deal.
- How will each criteria be scored/weighted?
- Write the decision criteria with your champion.
- Paper Process
- Identified Pain
- Find the person who owns the pain.
- Know the business problem they are solving that is the reason they have to buy. Get above the noise of small technical problems.
- Champion
- Champions have influence either through positional authority or deep expertise
- Have they ever made a similar sized purchase? What do other people say about them? Have they ever been on a critical project? Are they running any initiatives for the company?
- A champion must willing and able to introduce you to the economic buyer.
- Champions talk using big business problem terminology (not just technical features & functions).
- Competition
- You must understand how your competitors sell against you so you can figure out how to win against them.
- Metrics
- The game as sales leader: (people-attrition) x (productivity over time)
- The number 1 killer to sales performance is sales rep attrition
- Productivity over time comes from onboarding and ongoing enablement
- Most managers use their power of position. They manage by activity. This leads to a transactional relationship. A great leader understands each person’s desires and supports them in achieving their goals.
- Winning is the precursor to pride.
- You want competitors; if you don’t have competitors, then you are probably not in a big enough market.
- Key things to train on:
- Recruiting
- Selling
- Deal qualification
- Forecasting
- When a big company buys a small company, recruiters aggressively come after salespeople
- Don’t try to sell all of the products; maximize sales by selling the products that actually sell. (Seems obvious but takes courage)
- Best piece of advice = Be the best student of the game. Mentors have a big impact on this.
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Anthony Palladino 002
- Hiring traits:
- Intelligent
- Coachable: Commitment to learning/mastery; willing to unlearn and relearn
- Collaboration (team selling)
- Highly competitive (esp. sports background)
- Past track record of success
- Commitment to working hard
- Empathy for customers
- For leaders:
- pride & humility
- ownership mentality
- ability to create culture via earned credibly and respect as well as positive energy/fun
- foresight – ability to look 2-3 quarters forward
- communication
- ability to balance company goals and people goals
- You need to have a set of weekly operational metrics and a cadence driven through a culture of ownership via personal and professional goals
- Meetings completed
- New opportunities
- Opportunities progressed
- Meetings set up (for next week)
- Examples of unsuccessful activity:
- Doing PoCs that were not qualified
- Talking about pricing before having a champion
- Anthony puts hyper-focused on identifying, building, and coaching champions.
- Ramp is critical for every role. People need to unlearn and relearn. You have to carefully define the skills and habits of productive people.
- Exit criteria in playbooks should be binary.
- The whole focus of your sales playbook is helping your buyer eliminate risk.
- Three sets of processes to tune: (identify what is working and not working)
- Lead to MQL to opportunity
- Opportunity to close
- Adoption to renewal & expansion
- Always be recruiting to that you fill capacity and minimize time to backfill
- You have to recharge in your personal life outside of your work
Hunters + Unicorns: The 33 CxOs – Brian Blond 001
- Traits = intelligent x driven x competitive; aggressiveness and arrogance are OK
- Hire for past success. Look for people who have worked for great sales leaders.
- No PoC until:
- you have met the economic buyer
- you have validated the EB has budget
- the EB has agreed to the success criteria
- the EB has committed to buy if those criteria are met
- Brian Blond does not consider having a Rolodex to be a key hiring criteria. You might get a short-term win but little else.
- John McMahon set clear expectations at BladeLogic – you miss a quarter and you are gone.
- As soon as you don’t hire a rep or worse, hire the wrong rep, you are in trouble
- You need to watch all the KPIs every week
- How quickly can you add reps
- Effort: Number of 1st meetings reps have on a weekly basis
- Skill: Conversion percentage from 1st to 2nd meeting; from 2nd meeting to PoC; from PoC to win