30 Minutes to President Club Podcast – “30MPC” (Key Takeaways)

235 (Lead): Habits of Highly Effective Sales Leaders (Jordan Chavez, Navan)

• Jordan’s week:
  • Mon:
    • 1:1s: Avoid talking deals. Focus on activity & skill development.
    • Team meeting
    • Leadership forecast rollup
  • Tue:
    • Outbound prospecting: Esp. to peer CxOs
    • Recruiting:
      • 45 touches per week
      • Message format: 2 observations and a question.
  • Wed-Thurs
    • Deal Reviews
  • Fri:
    • Forecasting – High level with team, not deep deal reviews
      • M:
      • E: Do we know who the economic buyer is? Are they aware of this evaluation?
      • D(ecision Process): Do we have a joint execution plan in place with a timeframe?
      • D(ecision Criteria)
      • I:
      • C(hampion): Do we have a champion? Have we verified they are a champion?
      • C(ompetition)
• Color code your calendar so you can audit how you are spending your time:
  • Income (important and urgent)
  • Equity (important but not urgent)

203 (Sell): Blueprint to Establish Business-Level Impact in a POC (Amelia Burke, Databricks)

• Schedule an executive alignment call prior to kicking off the PoC.
• Connect with your champion on Slack
• Customers in your situation typically find that they need to do some kind of proof of concept or testing in the Databricks environment in order to validate we are the right technical fit. Is this something you’ve done with other vendors? And, do you have an idea in mind for what you are looking to solve for?”
• The level of engagement you get in response to a pre-POC questionnaire is a good sign of how serious the prosect is.
• Midway through the PoC, have your executive reach out to the prospect exec with whom they already been aligned to say, “Here is what we’ve learned so far… Sounds like things are going well. Let me know if anything is needed from your end.
• During a PoC, don’t only do group calls; also, connect periodically with individual users to ensure their success.

186 (Lead): The Ultimate Guide to Interview and Train High-Performing SDRs (Kyle Coleman @ Copy.ai)

• “Tell me about a thing in your life that you are passionate about.”

185 (Sell): Ditch Open-Ended Discovery for Point of View (POV) Discovery (Tom Williams @ Clari)

• Multi-threading is a 2 way street. We all know that we are supposed to multithread. A lot of sellers think of this in terms of, ‘I need to speak to my 7 people on the buying committee.’ In fact, it is just as important for the buyers to multi-thread in the other direction. They don’t just want to be gate-kept by the seller. They want to be able to talk to their peers on the selling team. [3:44-4:33]
• If you have a [mutual action] plan to a place that I don’t want to go, then I’m not interested. They need to want an outcome, otherwise you are wasting your time. [12:53-14:26]
• Whether you build or buy, the biggest hidden cost is in implementation and adoption.

Club Playbook: Three Steps to Using LinkedIn to Find More Prospects (ft. Charlotte Johnson of Salesloft)

(good tactical how to of using advanced LI Sales Nav features)

184 (Lead): How to Run Team Deal Reviews to Find the Blindspots (D’Arcy Doyle @ Productboard)

• Three people talking about a deal are smarter than one of us alone. We all have experience. If we take that experience and pool it, we are going to come to a better conclusion on what we need to do to be successful. Insist on having the whole team there. [2:31-2:57]

175 (Lead): Lessons From a Renowned CRO: Evolving Your Sales Team Through Process And Accountability (Stevie Case @ Vanta)

• If you want to move up in an organization:
  • Don’t be the lynchpin
  • Solve your boss’s problems
• I expect first line managers to know the details of their team’s deals
• I’ll get on any call any time, but I want you to have a good handle on the deal and tell me how I can actually help you. Any ask is OK. It is the clarity where we are not stepping on each other. Also, let me know who is on the call and why are they there. (9:38)
• Doing well means doing well relative to target.
• We all know there are great reps who sometimes don’t have the outcome you expect. They might have an off-quarter, they might miss the number. What I want to know is that they are nailing the contributing actions that we know lead to success. (17:12)
• Most problems in sales trace back to discovery. Asking great questions is an art form.
• You need your own value-based selling framework that the organization is aligned on. (24:00)
• Tip: Build your recap email with the action items and the next meeting date at the top so they don’t get lost. Then, recap the top 4 problems your prospect wants to solve.

157: Riding rising stars on the way to enterprise deals (Chris Surdi, Strategic Account Manager @ Ascend)

• Use an analogy to position your product. For example, <Company> is like the power grid for data; plug it in and it works.
• You have to qualify based on pain, gain, and compelling event.
• Talk track for positioning yourself as a value-added expert: Here is what we are seeing… You mentioned the pain you are feeling is X. That is very common, I’ve heard that. Just last week I was talking to <customer> and they mentioned this…
• The sandwich tactic:
  • Get groundswell at the user level by showing them your solution will improve their day to day. You’ll know if you are successful if they ask for a PoC.
  • In parallel, tie that groundswell to top strategic initiatives when engaging senior execs.
• To find champions, ask the people you engage, ‘Besides you, who is the biggest rising star in your organization?’ If you get this name from a CxO, then the person they identify should be the one to run the PoC.
• In person selling is ‘150,000x’ better than Zoom selling.
• You must do a business value assessment (BVA) to map out the positive economic benefits before starting a PoC. Before doing any work, you must also meet with the economic buyer to confirm what a successful PoC looks like.
• A champion is someone who:
  • gets you a meeting with the economic buyer
  • shares sensitive information about how to get the deal done
  • sells on your behalf when you are not there
  • influences and/or defines the decision criteria
• Strive to land with a paid PoC that lasts 30 to 90 days. This ensures you are an approved vendor having gone through legal review to get the MSA approved, You’ve also put a stake in the ground on pricing.
• As part of the PoC, agree with your champion to jointly author a private/internal ‘case study’ that is metrics based so they share all of the ROI metrics.
• Give people permission to say ‘no’ at any point in the sales process.
• Meet with prospects outside of their office – ex: at lunch – to lower the formality of your interactions.

151: Mastering every moment at your next conference (+ never lose at musical chairs) (Christine Nolan, Global VP of Sales @ Starburst)

• To truly improve when listening to your call recordings, write down what you should have said then practice, practice, practice.
• When you sit down at a conference, start talking to the person next to you. If they are not a potential buyer or they don’t engage, get up and move to a new row and start over. No one will be offended.
• When traveling to a conference, also seek to meet with prospects based in that city even if they are not attending.
• I’m grateful you agreed to meet with me. What are you looking to accomplish during our time together?
• Create ways to have casual conversation with prospects at conferences – standing in line for a drink at a cocktail hour, in the hotel gym, even when washing your hands in the bathroom, etc.
• Find ways to work the conference outside of the conference itself.
• The time before and after sessions is the most valuable networking time at a conference.
• Don’t hang on to opportunities that become unqualified

148: Sealing the deal with executives (Lynn Powers, Enterprise Sales Director @ Clari)

• Before meeting with the economic buyer, make sure your champion pre-clears any anticipated, significant hurdles.
• Before meeting with the economic buyer, not only do offline research but also meet with ‘below-the-line’ people to gain deeper knowledge of what is going on in the account.
• Get on a texting basis with your prospects’ executive assistants
• In a competitive knockout, it is critical to identify who made the decision to purchase the incumbent solution. Engage them so they feel respected.
• To avoid feature dumping during demos, focus heavily on specific use cases that customers hyper-similar to your prospect are finding valuable.
• Shape opinions during demos by calling out, “If there is anything you are going to walk away with, this is the one things you will want…”
• When your sales manager joins your meeting, take the time to align on their role in advance.
• Don’t surprise executives with information, especially negative findings, in a large meeting. Brief them and seek their feedback in advance.
• In the same meeting where I ask the champion for an introduction to the economic buyer, I also ask for an introduction to procurement. Run the sale of how you deliver value in parallel with the sales of how you get the signature.
• Maintain a high degree of transparency and consistency between the economic buyer, procurement, and you.

145: Getting to power for executive-level discovery (Kyle Asay, Regional VP @ MongoDB)

• Take call prep notes in the form of questions, not information
• Kyle Asay’s multi-threading & executive summary email templates (download)
• When your prospect asks you a loaded question, try to get to the question behind the question. Ask, “It sounds like that is important to you. Can you help me understand where the question is coming from so I can keep my response relevant to what you are hoping to undersand?” [Selling Tip from Wingman by Clari]
• 3 keys to success in any killer recap email [Selling Tip from Lavendar]
  • List action items and deliverable up-front so that don’t get missed
  • Bullet the top three things you solve for the prospect using their words
  • Ask if there was anything you missed
• Acquisition trigger: When someone acquires another company, don’t just say, “You acquired someone… buy my tool!” Instead, attach yourself to a problem that comes from the acquisition. For example, dealing with legacy, non SOC 2 compliant tools that come with the new company. [Sales Tip from ZoomInfo]
• When you are stuck with a ‘below the line’ coach or contact, instead of you going behind the person’s back, have an executive on your team send an email to an executive on their team offering their support as they consider us as a vendor. [Sales Tip from Outreach]
• Don’t just be busy, be productive. Measure how many conversations you have, not how many calls you make. How many contacts you add to cadences, not how much time you spend prospecting.
• When asking a question to a prospect, add, “The reason that I ask…”
• Prep an executive summary before meeting the economic buyer with your champion (ToH Command of the Message); Don’t assume the exec has read the exec. summary. Ask, “Would you like me to take 5 minutes to review it?”
  • Current State (very brief)
  • Negative consequences tied to current state (should be urgent & painful & “C-level”)
  • What we are proposing for the after-state with outcomes
  • Milestones for the engagement
  • Resources we need from your team to be successful
  • Outstanding questions to answer during the meeting
• Focus on pipeline development, pipeline health, and personal development. Avoid everything else. Be ruthless with your time.

140: Optimizing your time-consuming sequences (Sam Nelson, Founder @ SDRLeader.com)

• Putting the wrong people into time-consuming sequences leads to low SDR performance.
• Put only ‘important’ people/titles who can be an immediate opportunities in sequences that include phone calls or email personalizing. Put ‘mere’ users into automated sequences.
• Put end users into automated referral request sequences.
• The most common setup is 200 accounts at any given time for an SDR. Prospect 2-3 people per account at any given time.
• Prospects completely forget about you after 30 days.
• Have a bias to simplicity with the number of sequences you have. For outbound, two is often sufficient – one for high priority and one for low-priority.
• Don’t let sales engagement tasks get to be more than 3 days overdue. It is better to have some overdue tasks than to have nothing to do.
• Don’t spend more than 5-minutes personalizing each cold email since most will never get read no matter how good they are
• Don’t personalize your value proposition. Spend your energy at the beginning to prove you are a human
• A single strong objection does not necessarily mean you have a bad strategy
• Agoge sequence

116: Setting the steps of your Mutual Action Plan (MAP) (Ross Rich, CEO @ Accord)

• No ask exec touch: Update execs on meetings/progress without asking them for any response/action
• MAPs should include just the 2-3 critical actions per stage that matter to your buyer
• Introduce MAPs after the 2nd call.
• Start with a template that has:
  • Milestones
  • Stakeholders
  • The “why” behind it
• Every time you meet with your champion, cover “last 3, next 3” – what are the last 3 things you completed and the next 3 you (both) need to do.

8 minute product roadmap jam (Q4 2022)

(no notes this episode)

115: Selling the 20% (John Barrows, Founder @ Sell Better by JB Sales)

• From Gong, you can ask an exec about 4 questions. Nonetheless, preview and say “I’ve got 4 questions that I’m going to ask you so that (reason you are asking).”
• To qualify/disqualify, be clear about what you do/are and what you do not do.
• Discovery should focus on the 20% of what you are selling that prospects actually care about. I great way to determine this is to ask about evaluation criteria. Once you uncover that, confirm that is what they care about so they don’t get distracted.
• When starting a demo ask, “What is the one thing you’d like to see to ensure this is right for you?”
• Don’t ask, “Does that make sense?” Instead ask, “How does that compare to what you do now?”

112: Uncovering the buying process with your customer (Marissa Sarabia Principal Account Executive @ Dialpad)

• Prioritize your pipeline based on deal size, timing, fit, and existence of a champion
• Review the buyer’s priorities each time you meet to capture any edits
• Build the buying process into a mutual action plan. This can be a single slide for less complex deals.
• Overcommunicate with partners, esp. before any customer interaction. This is critical when it comes to pricing.
• It never hurts to ask a prospect what they are paying for their current provider.
• Set an expiration date for any negotiation concession.
• Bring your manager on for pricing calls to play bad cop.
• Set up time with your sales engineer to align just before prospect calls:
  • Review prospect goals & challenges
  • Discuss the prospect’s personality/style
  • Tell the SE what you want the call outcome to be (ex: move to PoC)
• Stay engaged while your sales engineer is delivering the demo. Definitely do not go off camera or start multi-tasking.
• Respond quickly to prospects!

111: Creating Close Plans for Every Step of the Sales Process (Jeremey Donovan, EVP, Sales & Customer Success, Insight Partners)

Playbook 11: Everything Prospecting that Isn’t Email or Phone

• Trade shows
  • Success is based on what you do in advance of the event
  • Reach out to people the second you get your hands on the attendee list
  • Make your CTA super low friction – “Mind if I swing by your booth at 2:45pm?”
  • Get their cell to coordinate your meeting
  • Your goal during meetings is just to peak enough interest in 5 to 15 mins to secure a follow up meeting.
  • After the show, send a follow up email for people with whom you’ve scheduled meetings. Follow up with the folks you did not meet up with as well.
• Gifting
  • Reserve your gifting budget for your Tier 1 accounts. Send more significant personalized gifts to fewer prospects.
  • You can send gift at every phase of a sales cycle: after you’ve won a champion, to multi-thread, when the deal goes to redlines, etc.
• Referrals
  • Seek referrals from adjacent vendors & service providers (but you need to build relationships with these people before you ask)
  • Ghost write messages for execs in your company who are connected to people in your target accounts
  • Don’t ask, “Who can you refer me to?” Instead, make it easy for them by telling them the people you want to be referred to.
• LinkedIn
  • Don’t connect and pitch. Warm up first by liking or better commenting on their content a number of times before sending a direct message.
• Communities: Join, engage, and add value.
• In-person visits: Especially effective in major cities.
• Venmo: Don’t cold Venmo.
• Handwritten notes were not effective in their limited test of 15.

110: Leveling Your Buyer and Setting Clear Expectations Using PPO (Doug Landis, Growth Partner @ Emergence Capital)

• Use “Are you open to….?” instead of “Would you…?” or “Could you…?” For example, “Are you open to learning more about X?”
• ‘Why change’ from the current state is the business conversation that needs to happen before qualification & discovery
• Buyers need to show up with a point-of-view that the buyer might be struggling with
• Give a reason for WHY you will be asking a series of discovery questions. This reason should be in their mutual best interest.
• Why change? Why now? Why us?

109: Prospecting into Your Customer’s New Company (Todd Busler, Co-Founder & CEO Champify)

• Have good loss codes so that you can nurture most effectively
• Every 3-6 weeks, do a pipeline generation audit to understand your funnel metrics as well as the effectiveness of messaging
• The longer you are in a role, the more time it makes sense to dedicated to nurturing prior closed lost opps.
• “Find something interesting to share with closed lost opps each month.” – Armand
• When reaching out to someone who used your product at their prior employer, do your research to understand their level of engagement with your solution as well as the fit with them in their new role
• Champion turnover is a curse; blocker turnover is a blessing.
• Don’t expect developers to respond to cold emails.
• Salespeople need to be very selfish with their time and say no to internal things.