I think there’s a lot to be said about optimizing sales processes with AI. As software continues to improve this will allow AEs to be more productive, manage larger books of business, and deliver highly customized outbound messaging. That said, given the sheer volume of outreach prospects receive today, it’s more important than ever to differentiate yourself, build your network, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your space. If I were an AE starting today, I’d focus on what I want to specialize in and start building relationships—not just with prospects and customers but also with partners in the ecosystem.

Excellent revenue leaders turn into outstanding revenue leaders based on how and who they hire. Your number one job as a leader is to hire the right people, followed by supporting them. If you only hire A+ talent, your team will only need you for strategy vs. blocking/tackling personnel and process issues. Some things to consider: 1. Define the sales culture: 1. Talent density: Slow down to speed up. We only hire A+ talent. Those who embody the innate skillsets that are difficult to teach (i.e. humility, hustle, high IQ/EQ, curiosity, relentlessness) 1. Create a robust recruitment process to ensure you don’t deviate from top-tier talent. Great books to reference: Who & No Rules Rules 2. Crystal clear on your mission, vision, values, and the importance of maintaining a strong culture especially at the age of our business. 3. What are the skillsets and behaviors of your top performers today? You use the current examples of what you have to help define what sales excellence means to your business. 4. Create revenue incentives to drive the right behavior (i.e. AE & CS comped off expansion so they can work together to drive customer outcomes) 5. Recognize and reward top talent, while also celebrating the struggles and failures in order to learn and grow 2. Define and create a revenue motion: 1. Define clear roles & responsibilities for all revenue 2. Define clear KPIs, both shared and individual 1. Expectation setting on performance/winning culture 2. Performance management. Make tough decisions early and often 3. Create and constantly iterate a revenue playbook in order to drive repeatability in our motion and forecast 4. Leverage data to gain insights into sales performance, customer behavior, patterns of successes/failures, and leverage leading indicators to guide decision making 3. Establish virtuous revenue training: 1. Clearly defined onboarding program to reduce time to ramp. Learn from your previous new hires. Every new hire should help iterate the onboarding playbook for the next round of hires 2. Continuous call reviews to ensure our ICs are following your sales methodology. MEDDPICC can be fairly outdated. I recommend building a model from several methodologies that get your GTM team to understand customer use cases, challenges, desired outcomes, how to solution sell vs. feature sell, key risks within deals, executive alignment, multi-threading, etc. 1. Custom training dependent on findings (i.e. value selling, objection handling, negotiation, competitive positioning, etc.) 3. Foster collaboration, problem solving, sharing best practice 4. Sell 90 initiative: ICs spending 90% of their time with the customer. This means we remove all internal inefficiencies. 1. Technology overhaul: What’s working, what’s not? 4. "We are customer obsessed": 1. Customer-first mindset. Maniacally focused on value selling, understanding pain, providing solutions, and making your customers' lives easier. 2. "We pride ourselves on building long-term relationships" 3. "We don’t put the competition down, we’re trusted advisors and know our competitors gaps inside and out"

* A clear perspective backed by data and customer examples * Brevity while still ensuring substance * Creativity in finding solutions that may not align perfectly to only the thing you had in mind. I screwed up both these things on two separate occasions in highly visible roles where the cost to me (and my sanity on the days that followed) wasn't small. I didn't let the work nor my commitment to finding a suitable resolution fade into the background. Instead I doubled down my commitment to find creative solutions, digging more deeply into the data and customers and using 1:1s and quick actions to show my commitment to seeing solutions through.

Oftentimes, conflict exists because we aren't listening or are unwilling to consider another person's perspective. I've found the best way to resolve conflict between team members is to actively listen to understand each party's viewpoint while remaining neutral to avoid taking sides, and encourage communication to find common ground or goal. You may find the right answer lies somewhere in the middle of both parties.

Many businesses focus on the effectiveness of a seller, where most of the attention should be. However, it can be very important to look at the effectiveness of those supporting your sellers, by measuring AE ramp time. If you can turn a 6 months period into say 4 months, you not only improve your revenue, but you can also improve the AE experience, leading to better employee satisfaction, higher referral rates, and lower attrition.

Having been someone who has expanded an office in a new region I can certainly empathize with anyone who is in this situation at the moment and I totally understand the hard work that goes in to getting a new market off the ground and eventually hitting goals. In this scenario I would recommend taking the time to understand the cultural buying norms of the new market and not assuming this new market will look immediately like your top performing markets. It takes time to understand a new market and the buying intent of customers. Set yourself KPI goals based on shorter time periods and make sure you review the success of these goals on a regular basis. Be willing to switch them up when you see any trends forming. Finally, don't be afraid to admit when things haven't worked. Just be prepared to change it with a strategy that makes more sense for the market you are in and be able to defend the strategy shift backed by intel you have gathered while selling in the new market.

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

There are two primary paths for sales professionals who want to continue to level up in sales. The individual contributor path and the management path. Individual contributors might start as an Sales Development Rep or Business Development Rep. These are entry level sales roles that involve appointment setting for a more senior Account Executive who then takes a meeting and works to close business. At most tech companies, the most junior Account Executives work in the small business division, and more senior reps sell to progressively larger segments. So career progression might look like BDR -> Small Business Account Executive -> Mid Market Account Executive -> Enterprise Account Executive On the other side, if you pursue the management track, you may promote in any segment from account executive to manager. Typically this involves taking on leadership responsibilities (something like a team lead program to get experience) and coaching peers to development the management skillset. This could look like BDR-> Account Executive -> Sales Manager -> Director -> VP of Sales.

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.

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.