{"id":746,"date":"2019-07-05T13:52:20","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/?p=746"},"modified":"2019-07-05T13:52:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:52:28","slug":"the-sales-acceleration-formula-book-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sellingsherpa.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/05\/the-sales-acceleration-formula-book-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sales Acceleration Formula (Book Summary)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million By Mark Roberge<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part I: The Sales Hiring Formula<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  • The ideal sales hiring formula is different for\nevery company. The characteristics that are traditionally associated with\nsalespeople, such as aggression and strong objection handling ability, had the\nworst correlation with success. There were five traits that correlated most\nsignificantly with sales success:
    • Coachability<\/li><\/ul>
      • Curiosity<\/li><\/ul>
        • Prior success<\/li><\/ul>
          • Intelligence<\/li><\/ul>
            • Work ethic<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
            • Role play:
              • We will role-play your opening call with me.\nYour goal is to do some light discovery and set an appointment to discuss my\nneeds further.<\/li><\/ul>
                • Once the role-play was complete, I would ask the\ncandidate to self-assess. A candidate with a high degree of coachability is\nable to reflect, self-diagnose, and propose improvements to her weak areas.<\/li><\/ul>
                  • After a few minutes, I would ask if the process\nmade sense. I would request that she redo the role-play, this time attempting\nto apply some of the coaching I had just provided her.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
                  • Does the candidate lead with great questions? Or\ndoes the candidate \u201cshow up and throw up,\u201d as we say in the industry?<\/li>
                  • I tested intelligence by effectively commencing\nHubSpot sales training during the interview process. I exposed candidates to\nnew information early in the interview process and observed their ability to\nabsorb the information and communicate it back to me at a later stage in the\nprocess.<\/li>
                  • I am trying to understand two things here:\nfirst, how well did she understand the concepts to which I had I exposed her?\nSecond, how well did she communicate those concepts back to me in a simple\nmanner? I would always ask follow-up questions until I eventually stumped the\ncandidate. The deeper I was able get on a topic before her responses suffered,\nthe better it meant she was performing.<\/li>
                  • Great salespeople never have to apply for a\njob. Great salespeople never need to pull together a resume. Truly great\nsalespeople have multiple job offers at all times, even if they are not in the\njob market. Their old bosses are calling them, probably quarterly.<\/em><\/li>
                  • Don’t hire a recruiting agency. Don’t build a\ncorporate recruiting team. Build a recruiting agency within your corporation.<\/li>
                  • When I spotted folks that had made it three,\nfour, five, or more years in a high-performing environment, I knew they were\nlikely to be high-value candidates.<\/li>
                  • How much does the company pay their salespeople?\nHow are the compensation plans structured? What is the buyer context like? Is\nit transactional or complex? Is it enterprise or SMB? Do they mostly have\noutbound leads or inbound leads? How many reps are at the company? What are the\ndifferent sales roles? How is the sales team structured? What is the company’s\nsales training like? Do they use a formal sales methodology? Do they invest in\noutside training or have a full-time staff?<\/li>
                  • After running these calls, she needs the\ninnovative ability to see the patterns, iterate on the target customer, iterate\non the value proposition, and accelerate the company toward product\/ market\nfit.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

                    Part II: The Sales Training Formula<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
                    • My best salespeople are individually great for\nvery different reasons. They each have what I refer to as \u201csuperpowers\u201d in a\nparticular aspect of the selling process. These superpowers often differ across\ntop performers.<\/li>
                    • I needed a way to expose new hires to the blueprint\nof best practices for our entire sales cycle. This \u201cbest practices blueprint\u201d\nis often referred to as a \u201csales methodology.\u201d There are three aspects of a\nwell-designed sales methodology: the buyer journey, the sales process, and the\nqualifying matrix.<\/li>
                    • It is also advantageous if the sales process\nstages are inspect-able.<\/li>
                    • \u201cDiscovery verified\u201d is a much better option.\nReaching this stage would mean that the salesperson has emailed the prospective\ncustomer a summary of the discovery call and the customer has responded\naffirmatively.<\/li>
                    • The qualifying matrix defines the information\nneeded from a potential buyer in order to understand whether we can help the\nprospective buyer and whether the buyer wants help. The information is gathered\nat various stages of the sales process. It is rarely gathered in the same order\nacross different deals.<\/li>
                    • Have one session on prospecting, another on the\nconnect call, another on the discovery call, and so forth.<\/li>
                    • I added an exam and several certifications to\nthe training process. The exam was focused on factual information, such as\nproduct knowledge.<\/li>
                    • In order to graduate from training, new hires\nwould need to be certified on the \u201cdiscovery\u201d stage. They would be provided\nwith a scenario in which a prospective customer had made it to the discovery\nstage of the sales process, and the trainee would be asked to conduct the\ndiscovery call.<\/li>
                    • The sales trainer wouldn’t just say, \u201cGood job\nhere, bad job here.\u201d There was a quantifiable result that came from the\ncertification process.<\/li>
                    • It was critical that the evaluator of the\nrole-play, in this case the sales trainer, was not the trainee’s hiring\nmanager.<\/li>
                    • As expected, we found sales training scores to\nbe an even better predictor of success than the sales hiring scores were.<\/li>
                    • The salesperson should understand the buyers’\ngoals and how his own solution can help achieve those goals.\u201d<\/li>
                    • Providing our salespeople with an in-depth\nunderstanding of our buyers’ day-to-day existence became a key goal of my sales\ntraining formula.<\/li>
                    • We targeted marketing professionals. Therefore,\nmy sales training goal was to teach our new sales hires what it was like to be\na marketer. New sales hires did not spend their first few weeks in sales\ntraining, memorizing scripts and discussing objections. Instead, our new sales\nhires spent their first few weeks at HubSpot developing their own website,\nwriting their own blog, and creating their own social media presence.<\/li>
                    • Find the blogs that your prospects read. Read\nthe blogs for 15 minutes every day. Retweet one or two and promote them in your\nLinkedIn status. Comment on the blog.<\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

                      Part III: The Sales Management Formula<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
                      • \u201cA common sales management mistake is to\noverwhelm the salesperson with coaching too many skills simultaneously. Pick\none skill and focus.\u201d<\/li>
                      • The sales compensation plan depends highly on\nthe type of business you’re in, and the stage of business you’re at.<\/li>
                      • One factor in the success of our evolving\ncompensation plan was my decision to involve the sales team in the design\nprocess. I was very explicit that the commission plan design was not a\ndemocratic process. For example, the plan would not be put to a vote. It was critical\nfor the sales team to not confuse transparency and involvement with an\ninvitation to selfishly design the plan around their individual needs.<\/li>
                      • Sales is such a measurable, meritocratic\nfunction that I simply left tenure out.<\/li>
                      • Sales contests:
                        • \u201cSales contests are an effective tool to drive\nshort-term behaviors and build team culture within the sales organization.\u201d<\/li><\/ul>
                          • I ran a sales contest almost every month,\nespecially in the early years of team development.<\/li><\/ul>
                            • Make the prize team-based. In addition to making\nthe contest team-based, choose a reward that the team experiences together.<\/li><\/ul>
                              • Send out updated contest standings every night.\nAt least once per day, the contest standings should be published to the entire\nsales team, if not to the entire company!<\/li><\/ul>
                                • Run one contest at a time for a given group of\nsalespeople.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
                                • In order to develop my frontline salespeople\ninto managers, I set out to establish a sales management course.<\/li>
                                • I took a moment to reflect on the key management\nskills I wanted these managers to possess as they embarked on the role at\nHubSpot. Coaching. Negative feedback delivery. Team motivation. Conflict\nmanagement.<\/li>
                                • \u201cBefore formal promotion, let qualified\nleadership candidates hire, train, and manage one new salesperson while still\ncarrying their individual quota responsibilities.\u201d<\/em><\/li>
                                • New managers have an unrealistic perception of\nhow much coaching they can actually do with each of their team members.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

                                  Part IV: The Demand Generation Formula<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
                                  • Here are the two simple actions you need to take\nin order to drive inbound links and social media following:
                                    • Create quality content (e.g., blogs, ebooks,\nwebinars) on a frequent basis. <\/li><\/ul>
                                      • Participate in the social media discussions in\nwhich your target prospects are already conversing.<\/li><\/ul><\/li>
                                      • As an executive, don’t think about taking on [demand\ngeneration] tasks yourself. Think instead about creating a content production\nprocess. Delegate the process to specialists.<\/li>
                                      • Once you have found the journalist, the next\nstep is to form a thought leadership committee. The thought leadership\ncommittee provides the journalist with a continual source of domain knowledge.<\/li>
                                      • [Create content that explains] a trend in the\nindustry [or] a question buyers have early in their buying journey,<\/li>
                                      • At the end of the blog article is a call to\naction to the reader that states, \u201cDid you like this blog article on XYZ?\nPerhaps you will like the ebook we published on the same subject.\u201d Many readers\nclick the call to action and are brought to a landing page, where they find out\nthat the ebook is free. They simply need to provide their name, email, phone\nnumber, and company URL, and they will have access to the ebook immediately.<\/li>
                                      • The Most Common Mistake: Don’t Pass All the\nLeads to Sales<\/li>
                                      • Issues arise when the lead scoring algorithm\nbecomes too complicated.<\/li>
                                      • The buyer context sales approach is in perfect\nalignment with the experience the prospective buyer has had with the company\nthus far. It is educational. It is insightful. It is personalized to his\ncontext. It makes engaging with the salesperson feel like the right next step\nfor the prospect to take.<\/li>
                                      • The final message should always be the \u201cgoing\nnegative\u201d voicemail. For example: \u201cI am going to assume that Facebook marketing\nis no longer a priority for you this year. Give me a call if it ever becomes a\npriority again.\u201d<\/li>
                                      • The strategy I prefer is to call the contact\nfrom the lead first and then call the decision maker as a follow-up. I call\nthis strategy \u201ccall low, then call high.\u201d<\/em><\/li>
                                      • \u201cHi, John. This is Mark from HubSpot. I noticed\nyou downloaded our ebook on Facebook marketing lead generation. What specific\nquestions did you have?\u201d<\/li>
                                      • One of our customers in your industry has had\ngreat success with generating leads through social media and actually far\nexceeded the 20 percent lift you are targeting. Would you have a few minutes to\nwalk through the details of their successful strategy?\u201d<\/em><\/li>
                                      • The engagement of the lead is the best criteria\naround which to prioritize prospecting calls.<\/li>
                                      • We had one team that called the inbound leads\nexclusively. We had another team that had to get to goal by cold calling. These\nfolks were given business development reps, or BDRs, who made the cold calls\nand set appointments for the outbound closing specialists.<\/li>
                                      • The best thing to do is take your top-performing\nsalespeople and rotate the inbound leads between them.<\/li>
                                      • The first step in establishing the Marketing SLA\nwas to define when a lead would be qualified to be passed to the Sales team.<\/li>
                                      • In our case, active free trials closed at many\ntimes the rate of product collateral downloads.<\/li>
                                      • To account for the different qualification\nlevels of leads, we focused less on the raw number of leads generated and more\non the implied dollar value of leads generated.<\/li>
                                      • Sales must hold up their end of the bargain. \u201cEvery\nlead from the website should be called within one hour of converting.\u201d<\/li>
                                      • We created a daily report distributed every\nevening to both the Sales and Marketing teams, holding both organizations\naccountable for the SLAs<\/li>
                                      • Conversely, if the Marketing team crushed the\nfirst week’s lead goal and then generated a slow trickle of leads for the rest\nof the month, the Sales team would be in a lot of trouble, even if Marketing\nsuccessfully limped to their SLA goal.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

                                        Part V: Technology and Experimentation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
                                        • Most sales technology does not work for frontline\nsalespeople. It creates work for salespeople.<\/li>
                                        • Our salespeople can engage immediately,\nreferencing the specific interests of the buyer as demonstrated by their actions.\nOur salespeople should offer to help. This approach is useful to the buyer.<\/li>
                                        • Did the buyer confirm that the summary of the\ndiscovery call was accurate? Did the buyer open up the proposal? Did a VP- or\nC-level executive attend a product overview? Has someone in Finance reviewed\nthe ROI study assembled by the salesperson? These actions are much better\nindicators of the status of an opportunity.<\/li>
                                        • By truly understanding both the buyer persona\n(e.g., Small Business, Mid-Market, Enterprise) and the buyer’s stage in their\njourney (e.g., Problem Definition, Solution Education, Solution Selection),\ntechnology can recommend the appropriate collateral to share with the buyer to\nhelp accelerate the process.<\/li>
                                        • A key ingredient to the sales acceleration\nformula is fostering a culture of experimentation. At HubSpot, we had what I\nwould call a \u201cbottom-up\u201d innovation funnel.<\/li>
                                        • I also recommend you choose top performers,\nrather than average performers, to be part of the experiment. What I am looking\nfor in the first experiment phase is a \u201ctrue negative.\u201d If I put two top sales\nperformers on the experiment and the experiment fails, there is a high\nprobability that the idea wasn’t feasible.<\/li>
                                        • We measured LTV\/ CAC, payback period,\nsalesperson productivity, customer retention, and a few other metrics.<\/li>
                                        • The \u201cN\u201d in BANT (\u201c Need\u201d) [is] the most\nimportant component of the discovery process.<\/li>
                                        • We called this qualifying matrix GPCT (Goal,\nPlan, Challenges, Timeline).<\/li>
                                        • Salespeople should be thought of as helpful\nadvisors and respected thought leaders.<\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                          The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million By Mark Roberge Part I: The Sales Hiring Formula The ideal sales hiring formula is different for every company. The characteristics that are traditionally associated with salespeople, such as aggression and strong objection handling ability, had the worst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t