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Get answers from sales leaders
Alicia Lewis
Alicia Lewis
Culture Amp Senior Sales DirectorJanuary 13
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.
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4015 Views
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Andrew Zinger
Andrew Zinger
Fastly Senior Director, Global Sales EnablementJanuary 11
Great question and something I love talking to (and sometimes 'debating') our leaders about - the idea behind 'what's the characteristic (or two) of your best seller you would want to clone?' For me, at the top of the list are 2 attributes I look for in potential sales team members: 1) 'Customer first' mindset: I don't want to lead or support a team of 'vendors' who are only interested in selling 'licenses'. I want to enable a team of 'consultants' or 'trusted advisors' that are not interested in selling 'licenses', but providing 'customer solutions' built on value. I want sales teams built on the belief that they can differentiate themselves by showing up to a prospect/customer meeting with curiosity and a perspective on what is happening in the particular industry and company...prospects will pick up on the fact that you seem genuinely interested in understanding their reality. 2) The ability to be a master customer storyteller...something I call 'storyselling'. To me this is an important attribute if you are hoping your sellers show up like 'consultants' and sell on value. Think of how you like to be sold to...most want to partner with someone who understands their current situation, and desired future state. You typically buy from someone you trust, and that trust is typically built out of 'experience' or 'subject matter expertise'. Finally, you want someone who can paint a picture of the future, to get you excited about the 'art of the possible' and nothing means more and comes off as 'authentic' than hearing stories of how other customers, of a similar size and industry, or facing the same challenge, have transformed their business in the way you are looking to do so.
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5584 Views
Roee Zelcer
Roee Zelcer
TikTok Head of Sales, Products & ServicesFebruary 10
Naturally, in most cases, sales teams are mainly measured against revenue. This could come in many forms such as potential revenue such as leads, MQLs, SQLs, etc., or actual revenue from active and existing clients. I think there is one main KPI that is commonly overlooked, and that is the quality of the relationship with the client. This is a critical aspect that more often than not, is not measured. And I completely understand as it is incredibly difficult to do so. While a great and trustful relationship with a client will not always correlate with revenue in the immediate term, this is the key metric that will ensure long-term partnership and mutual accountability going forward. A great sales representative will forgo short-term gains in order to build a long-term partnership.
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3649 Views
Maria White
Maria White
Cornerstone OnDemand Vice President Sales Enablement and EducationApril 7
Better Together - Collaboration with other departments and Sales Enablement If you have not already started to build out councils with your core heads of department this will allow for set times for you all to meet to collaborate on the enablement priorities and build out RACIs to outline who is responsible during each phase of each project. Below are three steps that can help you start one 1. Meet with all the key department heads that you need to collaborate with to effectively manage or funnel all the information that is required for sales enablement to build strategy and enablement for the field. Explain what your organization is responsible for and how you can partner together 2. Schedule regular cadence with one representative from each group and form your sales enablement governance council - this allows each head of the department to delegate someone to represent that group in any or all projects that require you all to work together. 3. Keep it documented, share the successes, take input and build together The above is the most efficient to build credibility, trust and collaboration with your department heads, remember they will be talking to the sales leaders in other meetings just like you so building your collaboration and trust will help you all partner better together for the benefit of the sales and the organization.
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1418 Views
Shahid Nizami
Shahid Nizami
Braze APAC Vice President of SalesJanuary 10
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.
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1742 Views
Eric Martin
Eric Martin
Vanta Head Of SalesNovember 29
First off, congrats on the big gains in ARR & ACV, and also for putting some key processes in place. Like many of my other responses, let me say here that "It depends." We should find some time to chat about your situation. At Vanta, we had a repeatable sales playbook from the early days, but we didn't implement a formal sales methodology when we were around 200 employees (and had a GTM org of around 100 employees). Why did we do it? Not because we were struggling (sales were humming), but because our newly hired CRO had seen firsthand how adopting a sales methodology early better enables a GTM org to scale for the long run. We ended up hiring Force Management to lead us through Command of the Message (CoM) training and it was worth every penny. For those unfamiliar, many of the fastest-growing sales teams today use CoM. Besides bringing a new structure to our GTM motion, our in-person training and onboarding with Force Management also served to realign the entire company around our core values and mission. Once again, to answer this question well for you and your company, I think I need a bit more context. I'd love to hear what sort of "hard data" have you presented, and what do you mean by "plateaued"?
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736 Views
George Cerny
George Cerny
Iterable VP, Growth Sales, B2B2C Sales & LATAMNovember 16
"You can't improve what you don't measure" - Peter Drucker. When starting out in a new market, there can be lots of uncertainty. This uncertainty is the starting point, however, for a fun and exciting journey to figuring this new market out. But uncertainty can be the enemy of action, so you want to remove as much uncertainty as possible, as quickly as possible, so you can get out there and start driving results. A few places to look for data in the planning and early implementation phase to eliminate uncertainty: 1. Your network - while you may not have a network of people in this new market already, you should be able to define a couple people who would be willing to speak with you who can help get the ball rolling. One or two quality conversations with your network can lead to a number of intros, and increase your network size overnight. If these people already know you, they'll also be kind if you fumble through your first conversations or have some misconceptions going in. 2. Interviews - when I was opening the Latam team, I learned so much from the interview process. I spoke with dozens of the top leaders in the industry and the vision became more and more clear each conversation I had. They helped me calibrate the resources needed for success, nuanced buying characteristics in each country that I was unaware of, partners and strategies that I wouldn't have learned about without their expertise, and more. I approached the process humble, and was honest about where I was at in my journey of learning the landscape, and so many people were happy to help fill in the blanks. 3. Online research - there's no shortage of information online. This is an obvious step and a great place to get a baseline before you test it out in the wild. This can get you past the initial uncertainty phase pretty quickly, and put you in a position to take action. That action COULD be to hire someone who IS certain and can go build out the appropriate KPI's based on their vast expertise in the the new market you're looking to enter. If this is an option and makes sense for your business - then this is a short answer. Go hire a superstar and let them do what they're great at. Get them what they need and get out of the way. If that's not the appropriate action, then you need to establish a baseline to measure against - so you can improve and re-calibrate along the way. A few things I would consider in going through this exercise: 1. Prioritize winning early, over winning BIG early. You want to prove concept, validate the mission and get people fired up for the cause early. You want positive visibility across the org, and an infectious enthusiasm in this new market. If you shoot too high, do a good job, but don't quite hit your big lofty goals, you'll move slower, dampen the enthusiasm of the team, and may even get skeptics on if it's the right bet. Set very attainable goals, crush them, and ramp the goals up quickly from there. 2. Think long-term revenue, short term activity. The short term revenue will come as a natural output from intense focus on activity. As stated there will be some uncertainty early on - especially around when/where/how that first deal will come in. So instead of overanalyzing it - go out and get data. Lots of data. Set intense activity goals and talk to as many prospective customers as possible. Don't overqualify when you still aren't positive what you're qualifying for. Every conversation is valuable early on. If you hit your lofty activity goals, and have a solid product market fit, you should naturally hit reasonable revenue goals in the first year. Year 2 is really where you want to ramp up expectations after validating assumptions in year 1. 3. Re-calibrate, re-calibrate, re-calibrate. Every week you should review what we learned week over week. Trends, competitors, partners, what's resonating, what's not, resource needs, etc. Your ICP will likely fluctuate during this time, which will inform the types of prospects you'll want to go after. You may adjust this as often as weekly early on. This is also where you review your achievement against your baseline metrics, and may adjust these KPI's if they're not the right ones. But you need a starting point. TL;DR When entering a new market you want to eliminate uncertainty as quickly as possible so you can take action. Hire or network with top talent in this new market to improve your ability to define starting KPI's that make sense. Prioritize high activity and achieveable revenue targets early to collect more data and build momentum. Re-calibrate often based on your initial KPI's and adjust as you continue to get real data about your product in this new market.
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986 Views
Jessica Holmes
Jessica Holmes
Adobe Director, Adobe Sales AcademyAugust 30
One of the biggest frustrations in sales is handling all the requests and tasks you have, which compete for your time and attention: * You need to do what your prospects/customers require so you can move the deal forward. * You need to do what your manager has asked of you (all those CRM updates, KPI measures you need to hit, etc.) * You need to do the things to progress your career or continue your personal development. When making decisions on how to prioritize my time, I have found that if I can take care of ONE item for each of these major buckets, each day, I can feel good about my productivity and ensuring I'm focused. Here's how I prioritize for each bucket: * You need to do what your prospects/customers require so you can move the deal forward. * Focus on the "closest to the close" activity - what is the next best action that will move the deal along to a closed-won status? * You need to do what your manager has asked of you (all those CRM updates, KPI measures you need to hit, etc.) * Focus on the action that will have the largest impact if you DON'T do it - for many, this is updating forecasts and pipeline details. Hunters may find it is getting through the call activity metric leadership requires to build pipeline. Find yours and tackle it first thing. * You need to do the things to progress your career or continue your personal development. * Focus on a skill/training that can impact your current role as well as "future you". This may look like reading a book on time management, or working with a mentor/buddy on developing better discovery questions, handling negotiations, etc. You'll be working towards personal growth with a skill that can impact your current role and set you up for success in your next job too.
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977 Views
Sarah Mercedes (Osborne)
Sarah Mercedes (Osborne)
HubSpot Head of Corporate Sales, West CoastJanuary 25
The simple answer is that I didn't. However, it didn't take long for me to realize that in order for me to accomplish what I was driving on personally (both internally, as I thought about promo paths at the companies I've worked for and externally, when selling into other companies), I needed to ensure that I understood what the respective C-Suite cared about and find a way to tie my goals to their goals. For example, when thinking about my career progression, I make sure to align the projects and initiatives I am focused on to build out my body of work aren't just things I'm passionate about, but also things that align to the strategic focuses of the business set by our C-Suite. This leads to real impact, natural exposure with executive leadership and great reason for promo, which solves for my goals of career progression and their goals of business impact. When selling externally, I work with my team to ensure, as early in our discovery phase as possible, that we understand who the DMs are (typically C-Suite) and what they care about, so that the use cases and story-telling we lean on throughout our sales process align to the problems their C-Suite wants to solve. This is what gets contracts signed. Also, if you are able to offer a solution to a business problem vs. an IC's problem, you are far more likely to get direct access to the C-Suite, which is critical given they are the ultimate DM.
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1239 Views
Beau Noonan
Beau Noonan
Matterport Enterprise Sales DirectorJune 8
Here is my approach to aligning quarterly/annual sales OKRs with broader business objections: * Define business objections: Identify the key regional business objectives for the quarter or year. They should be specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound. For example, increasing central enterprise region revenue by 20% in the next 180 days. * Determine sales objectives: Based on business objectives, establish sales-specific objectives that support broader goals and are tied to revenue targets. For example, increasing Stage 1 conversions by 20% within the next 90 days. * Assign projects: Assign specific projects to members of the sales team based on their skills, expertise, and areas of responsibility. * Align individual OKRs: Connect individual projects to sales team OKRs by setting individual key results that contribute to overall sales objectives. * Success Criteria: Clearly define the success criteria for each individual project and how they contribute to the overall sales objectives.
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904 Views