(FKA: The Sales Ops Demystified Podcast)
The Attributes of Top Performing Reps According to 7 Revenue Experts
- Consistent, AE self-sourced pipeline generation
- Slowing down to craft larger solutions
- The best salespeople are great storytellers.
- Be diligent in following your sales process and methodology.
The State of B2B in 2024 with Carlos Nouche, VP at Visualize Inc. and Lisa Schnare, Managing Partner of Value Selling Associates, Inc.
- It is so important to be authentic and genuine and passionate about what you are selling and it comes across. If you are not interested in what you are selling, if you don’t believe in it, then your prospects can tell immediately. – Lisa Schnare [8:41-9:05]
- Statements cause conflict whereas questions uncover solutions. – Lisa Schnare
Selling in 2023 and Beyond: What the Top 1% Have Figured Out
(This was a recap of episodes from 2023)
Leveraging Trustworthy Data Insights for RevOps with Lisa Trumbley, Director of Data and RevOps with 10+ Years Experience
- Carefully track the first-touch source of every lead
How to Prevent Deal Slippage in 2023 with Brad McGinity at Hone
- Sales operations and enablement should be held accountable to revenue
- Sales and marketing should share most objectives (OKRs).
- Rather than focusing on differentiators versus other companies, focus on category differentiators.
- Frame three outcomes at the start of your demo calls: (1) you’ll tell me if you we are not a fit, (2) you’ll say, ‘this is amazing, send me an order form, or (3) most likely, you’ll think, ‘this is interesting, I’m not quite sure and need to debrief with my team’ in which case we will schedule a follow up call. Remember to leave time at the end of your call to close well.
- While any given meeting may address elements of different stages of your sales process, you still need clear entry and exit criteria to move opportunities forward in your CRM.
- The frontline sales manager needs to be the one inspecting deals in weekly 1:1s to ensure reps are following the process consistently.
- As a CRO, if you miss goal [ex: your quarterly target], you darn-well better have accurately forecasting the miss.
- A rep might be 85% sure a deal will close but only 50% sure it will close by the close date this quarter. In that case, mark the probability down to 50%.
- MEDDPICC gives you clarity into reality.
- Critical deal closing questions:
- Is anyone going on vacation?
- Does we have both legal and infosec?
- What is the process to get budget re-authorized by the CFO?
- Deals often stagnate because buyers don’t actually agree on the problem they are trying to solve and especially on the desired solution.
- Book recommendation: The Challenger Customer
Mastering the art of relationship building with Jaime Konzelman, VP Sales at Unisys
- People want to be seen, heard, and accepted
- Part of authentic selling is learning how to have hard conversations with clients & prospects
- Instead of applying to 5,000 jobs, invest that same amount of time to apply to just 5
- Senior sellers don’t need AI to tell them when someone tunes out on Zoom.
- We have an infinite number of metrics for capability but zero metrics for trust.
- CIOs used to want relationships with reps; now, they prefer self-service.
- The cost to bid an RFP is 1% to 3% of the contract value.
- Help your clients achieve their professional aspirations. You can do this directly or leverage others on your team.
- Develop a super-power in matching customer business drivers to your solution by drafting 3-5 page business cases. Even when you get parts wrong, true champions will work with you to fix it.
- Book recommendation: Start with Why by Simon Sinek
The Four Levers to Accelerate Deal Velocity with Loren Brockhouse, CRO at BigHand
- Good salespeople by nature are urgent so don’t direct them at accounts too early
- Optimize our tech stack – Salesforce need to be an aid to reps, not a deterrant
- Good attribution data – which activities increase win rates and lower sales cycle
- LegalTech is bought, not sold so an outbound motion has limited ROI. Instead, we focused on driving inbound.
- You have to identify the entire buying team; if you do not, then you are putting your deal at risk.
- Do less better.
- Book recommendations:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear – you don’t rise to the level of your goals but fall to the level of your systems
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Selling in a Crisis by Jeb Blount
Always Be Planning: A Look at Zero-Based Budgeting and Change Management with Kimberly Haley, VP of Revenue Operations at Talend
- Zero-based budgeting means you start from scratch making no assumptions that you get what you got last year and instead need to make business cases for each function
- Tie business case value to one of three goals: increase revenue, lower cost, reduce risk
- Don’t wait until Q4 to start planning – always be planning
- “Maybe we lower quotas to increase attainment and lower attrition”
- Most digital inbound will be SMB; to drive more into ENT, shift dollars to ABx
- Adoption in the first 90 days is critical to reducing churn risk
- Keep comp plans simple and tied to the #1 job to be done by the given role
- Start with TAM by segment as early as April/May.
- Book recommendation: Sink, Float, or Swim
Episode 5: Kirsty Charlton, Head of Sales Operations @ Signal AI
- Forecast accuracy is the best indicator of rep & manager quality since it casts a spotlight on deal control
Episode 4: Alex Williams, Head of Corporate Strategy & Development @ Roxhill Media
(audio quality poor)
Episode 3: Rory Brown, Co Founder & CCO @ Kluster Intelligence
- Rather than focusing on the lowest average conversion rate in your funnel, focus on the stage with the highest variation among salespeople.
- While reps are ramping, especially in segments with long sales cycles, start with activity-based compensation metrics.
Episode 2: Justin Kersey, Director of Operations & Enablement, EMEA & APAC @ Datasite
- You are better off surrounding a multi-territory deal than enforcing a single owner policy
- Reps must honestly grade the relationship they have with each stakeholder in the deal and then work to bring each person up to a higher grade
Episode 1: Tom Hunt and Henry Peacock @ Ebsta
- Sales operations exists to make sales professionals happier and more productive
- Hire a full time sales operations person once you have 10 to 20 salespeople
- It is very helpful for sales operations people to have prior selling experience
- Limit CRM fields to only those that are critical; remove the rest
- Prioritize accounts for your reps
- Sales ops should be held responsible for adoption of and engagement with tools