The most successful AEs that I've worked with have a long list of key attributes that set them apart from the rest. These attributes include * responsiveness * curiosity * resilience * authenticity * collaboration * rapport building * not being afraid to fail * thriving on challenges Important tactical skills which I see in top reps are around strong sales execution behaviors. Skills such as thorough preparation, stakeholder management, ability to multi-thread, drive urgency, and create contingency plans are how Account Executives consistently win deals. They also make sure to never take their foot off of the gas when it comes to prospecting. They know its the only way to ensure they have the pipeline needed to execute. It’s this combination of sales execution skills and the attributes associated with a relentless drive to exceed goal and build strong relationships which enable reps to consistently be at the top of the leaderboard.

Another topic that is always top of mind for sales leaders, and their recruiting teams, is their employee retention scores. It is a massive expense to organizations when they see talent leave, whether regrettable or not, and have to spend resources recruiting, enabling and eventually filling that seat. Programs, behaviours and approaches that may help keep your teams intact and excited about their role, can include: - providing new challenges and opportunities. This can come in many forms of internal career growth avenues, including progression through the sales segments, offering leadership opportunities, and/or programs and resources made available for personal development. - Engaging with your employees on a regular basis. Demonstrate to your teams that their feedback is welcomed, valued and encouraged. You've seen this done with internal 'employee engagement' surveys, 'ask me anything' panels with leadership, and of course it all started back in my early days with the physical 'suggestion box' (dating myself slightly). - Expand your 1:1's to be more than just about deals and quota. There is more to a seller than their ability to sell. Think of what 'behaviors' you want your team to excel at..are they good collaborators with cross functional teams? Are they a good team member and help mentor new members and don't shy away from sharing learnings? Do they show up prepared, educated, and lead with the customer first? Also, think of what sales 'competencies' you want to ensure the team excels at, such as being strong at doing 'discovery', they have the ability to tell compelling customer stories, and are they doing account plans for their tier 1 accounts?. If you build a team with strong sales 'behaviors' and 'competencies', the quota retirement will come. - Celebrate and acknowledge. Celebrate both big and small things within the sales org, and set up a recognition program outside of your 'Presidents Club' (or equivalent). Everyone responds well to their positive acknowledgment and reinforcement.

To effectively define the metrics for which you should hold sales accountable, I look at a few things: 1. Understand the "Sales Math" of the business across some core universally applicable SaaS Sales metrics 2. Compare the performance of the top 1/3 AE's against the bottom 1/3 AE's and look for which metrics contribute the most to high performance. 3. Go deep in those categories and correlate the activities top performers do differently to achieve these results. Quantify these activities to define supporting metrics which will lead to success. To break this down, let's understand the foundational "Sales Math." This is the equation to hit quota. The equation is fairly simple, but everyone's vernacular is different. It is actually extremely important to have very well defined steps in the equation to get consistency across your entire team. For example, we use opportunity stages with clear exit criteria for the buyer & seller to provide consistent insight into our Sales Math. So I would actually use a Stage 1 Opp Created - instead of Discovery Call, and Stage 3 Opp instead of Demo. For the purposes of this article, I'll use general sales terms that each business should be able to use as a starting point and customize from there. Here are the metrics that go into the Sales Math equation: * Activities to create a Discovery Call * # Discovery Calls per quarter * # Demos per quarter * Discovery Call to Demo conversion ratio * # Closed Won Deals per quarter * Demo to Closed Won conversion ratio * Average Deal Size * Average Deal Cycle These metrics will allow you to create the math to hit quota. If the current team's metrics do not consistently lead to the results you're looking for, then the Sales Math may be aspirational. If your team is executing against plan, then this may be your actual current metrics. Regardless, this is what you should feel confident telling AE's is the realistic, attainable and surpassable way to hit quota. For example, it could look like: $250k Quarterly Quota Average Deal Size of $84k 3 Deals to hit quota Close ratio of 33% 9 Demos needed per quarter 60% conversion ratio of Disco to Demo 15 Discovery Calls needed per quarter 50 Activities to create a Disco 750 Activities needed per quarter* *one note on activity. It's a metric I'll always track to understand a baseline level of effort, but I will often leave this out of the Sales Math when dealing with higher complexity sales and more senior AE's. Up to you if this should be in your Sales Math equation. Now take your Sales Math, and map your high performers against your low performers to look for which metrics have a high correlation with success. This exercise can be extremely surprising, so be open to what the data shows you, and hold your strong opinions loosely. Let's extrapolate this exercise across two different scenarios: Scenario 1 - Enterprise Here's how the exercise played out when running it against a more enterprise business (numbers are directional): 1. Activity, Discovery Calls and Demos were almost identical across high & low performers. This told me that pushing "more activity" was only going to have so much impact on performance. 2. The Closed Won conversion of top performers was 46% vs. 25% for the low performers. This was a huge gap, and had major implications on the Sales Math. 3. The Average Deal Size of top performers was $160k vs. $70k for low performers. This is also a huge gap compounded the success or struggles of each group when combined with the stat above. So the key metrics to optimize were Average Deal Size and Demo to Close Ratio. We wanted to maintain our activity levels, but really lean into increasing ADS and strategies to help with Deal Execution. Based on this knowledge of what would have the biggest impact in high performance vs. low performance, we added in some metrics & activities that would contribute to these results: * Updated our account prioritization to ensure a focus on the top deals & tracked activity against Priority 1 accounts * We blocked off time each week to prospect into our top accounts & scheduled strategy sessions to help get more meetings with these accounts * We tracked # of Discos with P1 accounts * # of Demo's with $100k+ Opportunities For Deal Execution * We tracked multi-threading in each account * Have we made an executive connection? * We created a cross-functional meeting to lean into competitive differentiation strategy * We set a threshold for accounts that needed a key deal review & updated our process to improve efficiency and make room for more accounts reviewed each week. Scenario 2 - Transactional Here's how the exercise played out when running it against a more transactional business (numbers are directional): 1. There were two camps of high performers. Those with extremely high activity, and those with higher disco to demo efficiency. Our most consistent top performer was a combination of both. Low performers fell into a similar pattern of either low activity or low conversion of discos to demos. 2. Deal size and win rate didn't have dramatic differences outside of 1 AE who closed the largest deal in segment history. This wasn't repeatable so we eliminated that result instead of putting too much time in hunting whales. 3. Average Deal Cycle for top performers was 39 days vs. 52 days for lower performers. Top AE's were closing deals faster, which allowed for more time to close more deals. From this data we defined additional metrics and activities to drive better results: * Upped the baseline activity volume expectations - there is a diminishing point of returns, but higher volume was almost always a component of success. We raised the bar, but also coached our highest volume AE's to lean more into their efficiency metrics instead of pushing to just do more. * Managers went deep on quality of discovery calls coming into the funnel * Title & Seniority level of Prospects - lower conversion was correlated with lower titles. * Was the company in our Ideal Customer Profile? Quality of company greatly impacted conversion * Why now? Did we offer someone a gift card or just bug them until their defense was worn down? Or was this call predicated on funding, a new hire, an inflection point in the business, intent or some other business catalyst? * Managers inspected quality of prospecting messages * Managers inspected quality of discovery calls * We rallied around creative promos to help the team close deals faster * We replicated decks top AE's were using to build value and establish trust faster In both Scenario 1 and 2 - we started with the baseline Sales Math, and through comparison of top performers vs. low performers we were able to lean into the 2 key metrics that had an outsized impact on performance. We then defined key activities and additional metrics which we could hold the team accountable to, that we knew would correlate towards greater success across the team. How easy was that? :)

I am a firm believer of meritocracy. So when it comes to pay raise especially in sales roles it should be very black and white for a sales rep to determine when would they qualify for a pay raise. It should be very easy for sales people to chart out their salary hikes based on their performance. The more consistent you are in delivering and over achieving your targets, the faster you should get to your pay raise. Needless to say, that there is no compromise when it comes to ethics and integrity when you are achieveing your targets.

I really like this question because it's so true! Leadership can break a lot of trust by implementing incorrect KPIs for a segment. Experienced sellers will get angry they are treated like SDRs, etc. The best thing leaders can do is watch, listen, observe, and then replicate. What have the most successful reps done in this position? Are they having 10 calls a week, 2 on-sites a month, and 1 "high value activity" a quarter (like exec intro, hackathon, etc)? Standardize from the top and make excellence the norm.

Staying up to date on industry trends and sales enablement best practices is something that needs time to absorb the information to analyze if your organization needs to adjust any of the current or future programs. Below I have outlined a few ways to stay up to date on both industry trends and best practices. Industry Trends Sales Enablement is accountable for providing the GTM customer-facing teams with the current information and training to assist them in their customer engagements. Below are some of the Industry Trends to review based on your business needs. * Vertical Markets - Sign up to industry papers, forums and magazines to stay ahead * Personas - Sign up to any CSuite forums, magazines and blogs to stay informed of the thinking * Technology - Sign up to the technology forums that align with your solutions, preferably your own company's customer early adoption, or customer forums or developer communities * Purchase Industry Benchmarking Reports : Forrester or Gartner to assist in your efforts There are alot of vendors that offer enablement and insights for the enablement practioner. Below are the top three enablement professional networks that would help you. SalesEnablement Pro ATD (Association for Talent Development) Sales Enablement Society (Chapters are local in your area)

As the first GTM hire and sales leader at Vanta, hitting our weekly revenue target was the absolute most important thing that I could do for myself, for the company, and for my CEO. Yes, you read that correctly, I had a weekly revenue target that I had to hit (and that we exceeded on a weekly basis for the first few years). Why weekly? I think it came from some YC guidance. :) If you're taking on a first sales leader role where there are literally no sellers, it's critical that you first roll up your sleeves and prove (on a repeated basis) that you can close deals and hit the revenue targets. Once you've established that you can get the job done, it'll become obvious to you when it's time to start scaling. And if it's not obvious to you, it might be obvious to someone else, like your CEO. To put yourself in a position where you're ready to start adding bodies, be sure to not overlook investing in key systems (i.e. buying your CRM) and processes (i.e. creating an AE hiring loop). If you're taking on a first sales leader role where there are already butts in seats, your primary responsibility is still to hit the number, whatever it takes. Rather than immediately rolling up your sleeves and learning how to close a deal (though this is something you should prioritize), you might instead start by doing an audit of the sales org that you're joining. Doing an audit should help give you a better sense of how strong (or weak) of a position you and the team are in to hit the revenue targets. My advice, communicate up (to your CEO) your findings as they come, and with full honesty. As the CRO of Snowflake once told me, "Sales leadership is a single elimination tournament, if you miss your number, you should expect to be replaced." It's a bit extreme, but it's also not wrong.

Sponsors are critical for career progression. When you think about the best persons to lean on for sponsorship, you should be thinking about someone who is already bought into you and would endorse you to others within the business. You want to also ensure that this person is well connected and has a "voice at the table" that you don't have a "seat" at yet. Then, you need to ask that person for their support. Most importantly, you then need to create value and as mentioned in another response, ensure the things you are working on and focused on to create value align with what is important to the business and will create impact at scale. 

From my experience, most candidates coming into an interview put their best foot forward and perform well, however, here are some of the most common pitfalls before, during, and after a sales interview... 1) Lack of Preparation - candidates who have not done even surface level research on the following is a massive red flag: * The company - reviewing the website, blog, etc. to understand what we do * Myself and the other interviewers - looking at the LinkedIn/social presences of those who they are meeting with * The job itself - reading & understanding the job description, and * The product - signing up for a free trial if there is one and at the very least understanding the basic value proposition 2) Lack of Narrative - being able to effectively tell your personal story & professional story is critical and usually one of the first questions asked during an interview ("So tell me about yourself"). Not only does this give the interviewer a deeper understanding about your career & the decisions you've made along the way, but it also gauges your ability to effectively craft a narrative. Make sure you practice it over & over, until you have it just right! And also make sure you can articulate what you are looking for in your next role/company, and do not be afraid to be explicit about it. If the role/company isn't a fit, it's best to identify & address it early. 3) Not Following Instructions - usually this comes up during a role-play, demo, or craft demonstration, but I can't tell you how many candidates have ended up falling out of the hiring funnel for not following instructions in a prompt given during later stages of the interview. Hint: if there is something you don't fully understand or is vague around the expectations that have been asked of you, then make sure you contact the recruiter or hiring manager to get clarity. 4) Asking Non-Relevant or No Questions - typically at the end of an interview, there will be an opportunity for you to ask your questions. Make sure those questions are relevant to the person you are speaking with and avoid asking questions you could easily research on your own ("so what does the company do", or "who are some of your competitors", etc.). Non-relevant questions signal a lack of research, preparation, and engagement. And worst of all is asking no questions at all! 5) Not "Closing" at the End - especially for a sales role, I expect candidates to be willing to ask hard questions and "close" at the end of a call. If you are not able to ask questions like the following, then how could I expect you to ask hard questions & close with a prospect or customer: * "So after meeting with me, are there any questions or concerns you may have outstanding?" * "Is there any reason you would not feel comfortable recommending me to move into the next round of the interview process?" And at the very least make sure you are clear on the expectations, next steps, and timing of the remainder of the interview process. 6) Not Following Up - at the end of every sales conversation, there is an expected follow up recapping the discussion & making explicit the next steps. The same is true for an interview. Call me old school, but if a candidate does not follow up with me after an interview, it's a signal they are not engaged, or worse, not capable of crafting an effective follow up message. The hand-written note is a thing of the past. If you have my email address, send me a message and if not (or you're just looking for another touchpoint), then connect with & message me on LinkedIn.

OKRs can vary depending on how your specific business and team are measured. It is crucial to first understand what the business OKRs are before you can be prescriptive in delineating key objectives to your respective team. Team metrics: * Data trends - SCL, ACV, WR + pipeline (3x) * Days within stage * ACV (average contract value) * ASC (average sales cycle) * Delineated by stage * WR (win rate) * Delineated by stage * New logos * New logo vs. expansion revenue * SQO to SAO production (sales qualified to sales accepted opportunity) * Your team should have ~3-4x pipeline coverage in order to feel confident in attaining the number * Activity to SQO production (how many activities until a meeting is booked) * % to quota attainment * There is a fine balance. ~125%+ attainment across the team to me means the number is too attainable. I like to see performance average ~90-95% attainment across a team by region. Business Metrics Great metrics to ask in an interview * Run rate vs. growth rate * Path to profitability * At scale, do these unit economics work? * Revenue now vs. targets for the year vs. projections * Revenue streams * Market share * CAC (Customer acquisition costs) * NDR (Net dollar retention) * What is the current valuation vs. projection for next year