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.

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.

My favorite to ask always starts with, "Tell me a story about..." The ending can be anything from professional to personal. Tell me a story about your proudest customer win. Tell me a story about a lost opportunity that you wished you won. Tell me a story about the last vacation you went on. Tell me a story about someone you stopped being friends with and why. For me it's not the answer, it's how you give the answer. In sales you need to be quick on your toes and engaging. Storytelling is the key to all of it.

I'm going to include some red flags on resumes since I have already talked about common mistakes people make in sales interviews. Some resume red flags: * Resume is multiple pages long (people pay most attention to the first half of the resume so if it's very dense, you will lose your audience) * Having every single job the person's ever had listed on there (relevant job experiences only please) * Having little-to-no quantitative results (e.g. % attainment, conversion rates, etc.) on the resume, especially for sales roles * Basic spelling or grammar mistakes (shows that there was no detail to attention if you have a lot of them)

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.

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!

How to convert ClassRoom Enablement into 'real world' experiences Effective account discovery can be the subject matter to be trained on. Normally these enablement sessions would use case studies based on potential experiences that could happen during the account discovery steps, giving insight but no "real world" examples. To convert your training you can do this in five simple steps. 1. Use an example case study - this is to expand on techniques for effective discovery. 2. Get each attendee come prepared with three accounts they can work on during the workshop. Create exercises that allow time for them to work on their own account discovery during the workshop. This will allow them to apply what they learned directly to their own accounts. 3. Get feedback from each group. What did they uncover during the exercise? Encourage feedback. 4. During their discussion allow the class to share their own approach to discovery expanding on their experience with the "own account" exercise. 5. Make sure you have a note of all the accounts they have worked on during the sessions to prove the value of these workshops. How to scale this across an organization in 3 simple steps. 1. After running a few sessions you should be able to prove the value of the workshop. Build documentation outlining the number of accounts that were worked on during the session and quantify the pipeline value. 2. Once you have secured agreement from stakeholders to run this workshop at scale get volunteers from the Sales community, you can then train them to assist in the roll out globally. 3. It is critical to schedule sessions in advance as well as having back up trainers ready just in case. Measure the success of the program and keep your stakeholders informed of the success of your program.

Begin by baselining critical metrics for new seller success. It could be things like: time to first deal, deal velocity, time to pipeline, etc. Then: * Divide new sellers into 'cohorts' * Measure their metrics against more tenured seller cohorts * Understand trends that support or refute your hypotheses * Draw correlation where you see it to infer if your programs are working Causation is near impossible but with large enough data-sets, you can find correlations & trends that will help explain and direct future learning.

I recommend socializing KPIs in team meetings, emails and in your slack channels. I have a weekly schedule I've followed over the years: MONDAY: Make it personal, pre-call prep for the week, praise from last week, etc TUESDAY: Who needs to get excited about the next 4 selling days? Who needs a gut check? WEDNESDAY: KOOLAID! Press hits on your company, new case studies, competitive wins, etc. THURSDAY: Low/High/KPIs. It's not too late to turn it around. It's time to praise those that have worked their tail off the last 4 days. FRIDAY: Praise. I also recommend managing up. Don't look at it as bragging, look at it as keeping people in the loop. Can they get a glimpse into your world? This is what I've included in the past: * Warm & Fuzzies from a winning perspective * Stat Rat (Sales KPIs) * Demand Generation Updates to keep the pipeline growing * People Updates (Good & Bad) * Top Competitors * Top asked for product integrations * Upcoming Pitches (it's a small world after all) * Personal updates 

The main differences to me between an Account executive and a Senior account executive comes down to organization, pipeline management, and using a solid sales process like MEDDPICC. Senior AEs always have their CRM (like Salesforce) up to date, accurately forecast QoQ, and know how to multi-thread deals. More Junior AEs tend to have "Closed lost reasons" such as "Wrong Decision Maker/Not the DM" or "Client went dark" This typically shows an inability to build strong relationships or following a consistent sales process.