LIke most professions, you can not lead a team well if you haven't done the job yourself. Must Haves : * You should have been a quota carrying sales rep for at least 3 to 5 years before you can transition into sales leadership. * Have a good understanding of the product. You don't want to be in a meeting with your sales rep where you are not able to answer the use cases and functionalities of your profuct to the customer without any hesitation * Good understanding of the market you operate in * Ability to motivate the team and shield any unnecessary pressure from top management * Good analytical skiils would always help you to identify trends in the market place as well as your own internal metrics * Listening skills : They are both important as a sales rep as well as a sales leader. * Focus on Culture :Though some people might put this under "Nice to Haves", I strongly feel that being focussed on culture and building a strong team culture helps a sales leader a lot. Nice to Haves * Some experience around areas of business development and customer success is always helpful * Project management skills can come in handy as you go up the hierarchy and need to work across cross-functional teams

When determining whether someone should receive a pay increase, it's important to ask three key questions. 1.) Is the rep displaying the golden side of our values and behaviors? 2.) Did the rep achieve or exceed 100% of their target? 3.) Is the rep actively learning and applying lessons from their manager and sales enablement in their sales activities? The piece around values and behaviors is critical. Reps should not be eligible for a raise, no matter how much they’ve exceeded their goal, if they are not consistently showing up in a way that aligns with the values.

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.

Navigating tactical opportunities within our enterprise accounts is a challenging but vital aspect of my role. My team focuses on deals that align with our clients' strategic objectives. On average, each AE handles 3 to 5 opportunities per month. While many of the key stakeholders remain consistent (sponsor, procurement, key decision maker), the diverse nature of our products means managing these deals can be intricate and time-intensive. Understanding each product and its customer-centric benefits is crucial. This insight allows us to align and prioritize opportunities effectively. Once consensus is reached, establishing a mutual close plan with specific steps and responsible parties becomes much smoother. When execution is spot-on, and the product's benefits are acknowledged, quantified, and a timeline is set, the rest of the sales cycle shifts towards project management and ensuring accountability, rather than traditional selling. This approach ensures that our efforts are laser-focused on delivering value and driving outcomes for our clients in line with their strategic vision.

I always recommend that candidates study the job description carefully. Take a look at the qualifications and skills/experience that the hiring manager wants. Do your best to come up with examples/stories to showcase those desirable skills/experiences in the interview. If you have time, it never hurts to connect with someone who is doing the role today and pick their brain on what they like, don't like, and do to succeed in the role. You should be able to find them on LinkedIn. This type of insight is invaluable as you will be learning from someone who is doing the job you want. If you're talking to a cross-functional partner that you're not as familiar with, get curious. For example, I really appreciate it when candidates take the time to ask me, "how can I make your life easier in this role? how can this role help contribute to your team?" This type of question is a launchpad and invitation to discuss future collaboration opportunities. Remember it's just as important for you to evaluate if this role or company is a right fit for you as it is for the hiring manager and company to evaluate if you are a right fit for them. So be sure to throw in one or two questions to help you evaluate your decision as well. 

So much of the sales KPI tracking has been automated (# meetings, Pipeline generated, funnel progression) so I find the manual ones more difficult to track, but move the needle the most. ie: how many on-sites did a rep conduct this quarter? It's a manual process for reps to log into a CRM and update a meeting field as "in person" and often gets over looked in an organization. There is no substitute for in person meetings. Another example that's difficult to track things like how many new business units or contacts from other business units you broke into in a month, quarter, or year.

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!

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

Be transparent and share the “why”: Each SDR should be able to articulate the purpose of their role, the rationale behind their goals, and the methodology used to calculate key performance indicators (KPIs). While many teams have robust processes to determine these factors, they often fail to provide transparency to their teams. When metrics are perceived as being dictated without explanation or “handed down”, they become less motivating. Encourage individuality- Find areas where SDRs can flex their creativity, contribute to experiments, and express their opinions. When you go overboard with processes on an SDR team, it takes away the joy from the work and lowers the possibility of discovering impactful ideas. Create a team that defaults to collaboration and praises readily- While a slack channel, shout-out specific application, or kudos google form can be well intentioned, they often go underutilized. We know that if our team has downtime, they are probably using it to update Salesforce. Make giving praise part of an essential process that is already done!

It's essential to first understand the expectations of your sales leadership, common denominators between successful reps who achieve those expectations, and availability of data to your enablement program. Here are a couple of questions to ask before you get started in creating a measurement plan: * What types of habits do they need to be able to do their everyday work by Day 30-60-90 days? * What are the expectations of your leads? Compare this to enablement insights on what can reasonably be achieved based on historical benchmarks. * Which reps have the most successful ramp numbers? What's the common denominator between all of them? * How long is your onboarding program, including reinforcement training after boot camp? * Do YOU have the data and reports that can show comparative data between reps? A lot of these questions really focus on setting benchmarks on four factors which I've seen are generally performable by many teams: 1. Confidence levels (Subjective): What are your reps' confidence levels around knowing and selling your products increasing over your ramp period? Is there improvement over time? Are you asking this based on various categories such as product, sales skills, and tool usage? 2. Lead Assessment (Subjective): Have their leads fill out a scorecard with guided skill categories based on your sales methodology following your reporting cadence. Make sure that there is guidance on what each category means to minimize the need for calibration. 3. Tool usage (Subjective and Objective): Do your reps know how to use their tools? Do they know where they can access the supporting documentation and guidance after their onboarding program? Are they accessing these tools and using them in the first place? How do they measure up to usage benchmarks - focus on effectiveness later after ramp as I recommend that these should be measured after reinforcement training past onboarding/ramp. 4. Activity, Deal Velocity and Attainment Benchmarks (Objective): How many calls are they making? How many prospects are they sourcing and reaching out to? How many deals are at various stages by 30-60-90 days - are they building and moving deals through their pipeline? Are they achieving the benchmarks/objectives your team has set for win rate and ramp attainment numbers? Hopefully, these categories help to start somewhere. Curious to hear what other enablement leaders have used as well.