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.

I like a consistent review of competitive win rates by stage. I think these can serve as early signals to so much: from how your narrative is landing, whether price is where you fall down or perhaps even foresight into late losses building up as a result of a missing piece of functionality or two. We have the benefit of someone who dedicates the majority of their time on content creation, visiting with customers and regular analysis of our results. Whether or not you can make this a full-time job, I think carving it out intentionally for a relevant function to own is worth it - the insight is invaluable.

Very interesting question — and one that brings up a few more! * Quota attainment is a KPI that is directly meaningful to a seller—if she can hit her KPI of quota attainment year after year, that will be meaningful to her personally! * However, quota attainment isn’t a helpful KPI to the company by itself — we could find out that the above seller is selling bad deals — selling deals that have low margins, high churn rates, and more… This is why it’s important to have a several KPIs that are developed to the needs of the business—and to the needs of the seller. Otherwise, it’s like judging someone’s safe driving ability solely by whether or not they drive the speed limit. Many people drive the speed limit, but are looking at their phone, or are ignoring their turn signals, etc. It’s one KPI that will help inform whether a driver is safe, but it’s not the only way of determining whether a driver is safe.

To foster collaboration and support sales enablement efforts effectively, it's crucial for enablement leaders to grasp the goals of other departments and their alignment with the company's overall vision. By creating enablement strategies that not only empower the sales team but also benefit other departments, we can foster alignment and cross-functional collaboration. For instance: - Marketing: Marketing focuses on lead generation and the quality of leads that convert into opportunities. By collaborating closely with Marketing, enablement can provide sales teams with insights on how to effectively engage with marketing-generated leads and convert them into opportunities. This alignment helps achieve both Marketing's goal of lead conversion and Sales' goal of generating and closing pipeline. - Product Teams: Product teams possess deep expertise in the solutions we sell. Leveraging them as subject matter experts allows enablement to equip sales teams with comprehensive product knowledge. In turn, sales teams can provide valuable customer feedback and competitive intelligence to product teams, enabling continuous improvement and innovation. By aligning enablement efforts with departmental goals and fostering collaboration across functions, we can optimize our support for sales while contributing to the broader success of the organization.

Re-evaluating KPIs on a regular basis is a healthy practice for your company. Just because it worked this year, doesn't mean those same motions will work next. For instance, in year's past, you may have been okay working with a Business Head to justify budget. Nowadays, CFO's are scrutinizing expenses more than ever, expecting to see the R in ROI. If you are not involving them early, your success rate is likely suffering. You'll want to evaluate the attributes making up your wins vs the deals you lose, before determining what to use moving forward. It could be access to power, Executive alignment, departments involved, breadth of solution to differentiate from competition, on-sites delivered, problems you're solving, or length of sales cycle. Identify your trends and set those as your targets. Then make sure you have a simply process to track the data and hold your sellers accountable.

Great question - I find incorporating customer feedback and the insights you learn from discovery discussions into your sales process is key to driving future engagement and increasing your deal win rates. Here’s how I approach it: 1. Structured Documentation – Ensure your sellers are capturing customer/prospect insights in a standardized way (e.g., using Gong, Salesforce, or methodology templates) to track customer/prospect pain points, priorities, and desired outcomes. 2. Tailor Your Value Propositions – Then you can use these discovery insights to refine messaging, aligning your solutions directly with the customer’s needs and challenges. This makes sales conversations more relevant and compelling to hte people you are connecting with. 3. Leverage Competitive & Industry Insights – I find it key to review feedback across accounts and opportunities to identify trends, customer objections, and gaps in your positioning. It is vital that these insights get fed back to your product, product marketing and sales teams for future adjustments. 4. Training & Enablement – Enablement is key to the success of any sales process - from new hires to continuous learning. To help engrain this into your organization, equip sellers with playbooks and frameworks that incorporate real customer insights, enabling your sales team to adapt selling strategies based on real life experiences rather than relying on generic pitches. 5. Feedback to Product & Marketing – As mentioned above, work to ensure these customer insights flow back into the organization, influencing roadmap decisions, content strategy, and your competitive positioning.

Those that are not reflective of your business or the products your reps are expected to sell. AOVs vary across businesses as do sales cycles. One size doesn't fit all! If a rep can't clearly see the return on the time investment they are unlikely to be consistent with their weekly activity. Consistently showing reps what good looks like in terms of activity and how that converts in to sales attainment is the best way to move them in the right direction.

I'll start with the 2nd question first... Personally, I coach my team that leading with a well positioned "suggestive discovery" question is the most effective at opening a conversation focused to get to pain and uncover value. At AlphaSense, that may sound something like... "Typically when I speak with other EVPs of M&A, they'll usually come to us because they are are either struggling with ensuring they do not 1) miss potential targets that fit within their investment thesis, 2) overlook critical information as part of the due diligence process, or 3) lose on the right opportunities because they are too slow to act compared to the competition. I'm curious to understand to what extent each of those challenges resonate with you?" Let's break that apart into it's important parts... * Social Proof: by starting with something like "typically when I speak with other [insert title]" it creates the perception that this is a regular type of conversation in my line of work, and I'm creditable in working through these situations * Focus on pain: by starting with typical problems that other similar individuals are "struggling with", I'm immediately bringing the focus of the conversation into pain * Relevant pain: then I proceed to mention 3 relevant pain points that I know is 1) common to my prospect and 2) that my solution can solve, and I do so in a way that invokes "negative language". Words like "miss", "overlook", and "lose" are all negative words that an individual wants to avoid * Open ended question: Finally, I close with an open ended question the turns the conversation over to the prospect the share which of their struggles relate, and even opens them up to introduce a new struggle that I may not have already listed Once you then understand their pain through the "suggestive discovery" framework, you can use whatever product focused data or industry trends to effectively craft a way to continue the conversation. Supplemented by product value propositions, use-cases, success stories, etc.

It all starts with the business and strategic objectives of the company: Growth Rate, Geographical Expansion, Product Mix etc. etc. are the determining factors of the KPIs. Once established it comes down to Revenue, Pipeline and Activities within those objectives. There will be a number of subsets within those categories but ultimately they will all lead to those fundamental KPIs

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.