Get answers from sales leaders
Alicia Lewis
Culture Amp Senior Sales Director • January 12
Being in sales, we experience challenges on a daily basis. One of the bigger frustrations is having a great quarter or year and then seeing the dial goes back to zero, knowing you need to start all over again. It’s what we all sign up for, but that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow. As a sales leader, one of the biggest challenges can be motivating reps to maintain consistency. Keeping reps motivated to successfully climb the mountain each quarter is not a one size fits all approach. For some reps, it’s providing growth and development opportunities that keep them driving, for others it’s SPIFs and recognition that helps them get where they need to be. Finding a way to effectively manage your time can be another big frustration. At times, the sheer number of responsibilities on our plate can feel overwhelming. It’s hard when everyone seems to need something from you and there aren't enough hours in the day. I’ve found that it’s important to be as highly organized as possible, prioritize tasks, learn your productivity patterns, block out calendars to complete important activities and schedule breaks to refresh.
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Andrew Zinger
Fastly Senior Director, Global Sales Enablement • January 10
Another great question and one that will certainly differ from executive to executive. However, in my experience some of the top intangibles for the top performers I have seen include: - Confidence and a winning personality. Now, I don't want to confuse 'confidence' with 'ego'...to have 'confidence' is to believe in yourself and your own abilities. 'Ego' on the other hand operates out of self interest, and 'lone wolves' do NOT work in today's high performing sales teams. - Being a 'consultant' and expert in your industry. Now, I don't expect every seller on the team to be able to lead a 'Ted Talk', but do your homework with your top accounts - understand the top challenges and opportunities in the industry they are facing. Read up on the company and understand what they are trying to achieve in their current environment, and get to know the motivation for your contact - what are they trying to achieve and how can they be your champion? - Customer focus and appreciation. The sales teams I want to be most associated with are ones that realize the customer relationship truly begins once the deal has closed. Too often sellers are off to the next chance to retire quota, and they lose sight of the long term benefits of being customer centric. Think 'seed and grow', not 'sell and go'. Also, being responsive and available to your accounts, whether 'prospects' or 'customers' is also key. People will remember those who respond in a timely fashion to any outreach from their accounts - goes back to the earlier point of differentiating yourself in small, but significant ways, and helps grow customer confidence and retention.
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In my experience, the best sales candidates are not necessarily people with the most years of sales experience. I've noticed the best sales candidates all have these qualities in common: * Insanely Driven and Hard-Working (folks who are intrinsically motivated to double down on KPIs to exceed their goals if that's what it takes) * Adaptable (people who can think on their feet, and adjust their sales motion/process to best hit their sales targets) * Inquisitive (excellent salespeople know that the key to selling is listening, not talking. So people who are naturally curious about their clients' pain points are generally much better at prescribing solutions and highlighting impact for the client) * Self-Sufficient with Outbound (the top 1% sales talent I've seen will always find ways to exceed their number beyond what's given to them. They know how to go creatively source for leads and go outbound to feed themselves, and not just rely on an inbound pipeline)
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Sarah Mercedes (Osborne)
HubSpot Head of Corporate Sales, West Coast • September 3
* Not doing enough research on the company they're interviewing with * Not anticipating the questions the interviewers will have * Not coming prepared with their own questions for the interviewer * Not coming with multiple examples prepared or not having results and metrics at the ready to speak to in the interview * Not leveraging their recruiter as a resource to adequately prep for the interviews * Not asking for feedback from their interviewer to apply to the next interview * Not closing their interviewer * Not sending a follow up email post-interview * Not practicing concise answers ahead of the interview
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Maria White
Cornerstone OnDemand Vice President Sales Enablement and Education • April 6
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)
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Charles Gryor Derupe
accessiBe Director of Enablement • February 7
Big question, but I'm happy to share some small factors that can really help to align and at least surface areas that enablement professionals can miss: 1. Know when and by whom business reviews are created. Even if it's async, understanding the target numbers, target audiences, and key strategies can help you understand where there are areas of opportunity. If you don't have this (common for early business organizations), gather feedback, create a base document of your strategic focus areas, and then gather feedback from top leads. 2. Align yourself as an enablement individual to understand where in the sales selling journey these numbers/initiatives align. For example, maybe your organization wants to increase top-of-funnel conversion. You'll probably want to focus on outreach efforts like effective outbound emails, cold calling best practices, and effective value-selling content to use for outbound campaigns. 3. Be aware of any sales leads' initiatives that they may start without enablement knowledge. This is very common when in hyper-growth mode or when an enablement team is so strapped that they have to say "no" to projects. At least being aware will help you to consult and map out what they are doing. 4. Report on your findings and annual/quarterly strategies and key initiatives for feedback. You'll get comments on whether you're on the right track and can provide call-to-actions with your team on areas that they can support.
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Shahid Nizami
Braze APAC Vice President of Sales • January 10
I stronly believe that sales people are one of the most likely people to get to the highest position in any business right upto the role of a CEO. In fact, many CEOs in global companies either come from either sales or product background. * A sales person would start their sales career somewhere as a SDR/BDR. * And then move into an account executive quota carrying role. * From there, they would either branch into management or continue to be a senior Individual Contributor (think about a Key Account Director) * I have seen successful sales people eventually getting into GM, CRO or even CEO roles
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Nick Feeney
Loom VP, Revenue • March 9
As mentioned earlier, KPIs vary depending on the business and teams specifically. Below are a few metrics that I find businesses neglect to prioritize: * Employee satisfaction * Retention * Burnout and mental health are critical topics managers should be maniacally focused on * Manager call reviews (Gong, Chorus) * Managers should be constantly providing constructive feedback and hearing more from the customers' voice in order to improve performance and sales motions * Delineating engagement by location and persona * Far too often I see leaders report total metrics without the proper insights into trends by geo, title, etc. * Discounts * How often are you bringing in revenue at your list price? * Are we losing deals due to costs? Budget? * Why, how, and when are we discounting and how does that impact the business? * Proposals sent * I’ve seen frontline managers assume that their reps have sent a quote or order when a buyer has reached a certain stage. Never assume. * SLA * How long does it take for your inbound team to follow up with a lead? * What percentage of leads are followed up with? * How quickly do your AEs follow up via email with a summary from a discovery call? * Meeting acceptance rate * % no shows * % conversion by title and location * Conversion rate * Lagging and leading indicators/trends * Opportunity lifecycle * % of opps by stage * Length of stage progression * NPS * Promoters vs. passives vs. detractors * Customer lifetime value
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Eric Martin
Vanta Head Of Sales • November 28
This is a great question, and how we have done this at Vanta has evolved over the years. Being thoughtful about how sales communicates updates to the rest of the company (and vice versa) is so critical. Today, we have a number of public slack channels where sales or GTM-related updates are regularly shared. We also host a public GTM All-Hands once a month that the entire company is (optionally) invited to attend. We also have monthly business reviews where GTM and EPD (engineering, product, design) representatives are asked to report on progress on key cross-functional company initiatives. All this to say, there are any number of ways that you can (and should) communicate sales updates to the rest of the company. Sometimes even a weekly email is enough to do the trick. H/t to my CRO for sharing that idea!
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Beau Noonan
Matterport Enterprise Sales Director • June 7
Here are a few good OKRs that I focus on within my region: * Objective: Increase Revenue Growth * Result: Increase sales stage conversation rate by x % * Result: Increase average deal size by x % * Objective: Enhance Customer Retention & Satisfaction * Result: Increase net dollar retention rate for existing enterprise clients * Result: Generate a certain percentage of revenue from upselling and expanding customers. * Objective: Optimize Sales Process & Efficiency * Result: Decrease sales cycle duration by x % * Result: Improve win rate of inbound qualified leads * Result: Implement a new tool such as CI to improve productivity
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