Love this question, too. It's true. There are a few reasons: 1. You will always have outliers in a sales org. Sometimes a rep has a windfall and reaches quota without hitting KPIs, I've seen it. But the point of KPIs is the make success repeatable. 2. It gives your managers a tool kit to help coach and manage performance. 3. How do you eat an entire elephant? One bite at a time. Each KPI is a "bite" and we do best when faced with a big task (annual quota) to break it down to as small of pieces as we can.

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.

Sales and Customer Success shouldn't be two separate islands. These groups have to be incredibly synced in order to best serve your customer base. This is why I recommend a business hire a revenue leader who oversees both customer acquisition and customer retention. That way, you have an executive who isn't selfishly focused on one area of the business. Roles & Responsibilities + Compensation Incentivization: * Be sure to clearly define roles and swimlanes between AEs & CSMs * Recommend AEs build pipeline, close deals, expand accounts (full stack AEs) * Clearly defined handoff/partnership process once initial land is closed. * Account plans are a must based on mutually identified threshold (i.e. ARR, propensity to scale) * Customer journey mapping: Outline clear partnership touch points from pre to post sales to determine contribution amongst account teams. How might you quantify services for large scale deployments? Don't give anything away for free, use your concession playbook if post sales services are included. * Recommend CSMs renew customers * CSMs incentivized to generate expansion opportunities and will get % payout of net revenue retention (expansion) * Recommend RevOps is also incentivized to hit a revenue target. RevOps is the most crucial partner to your revenue leader. They need incentivization to support the sellers get their job done. Make them feel a part of the team and reward them for their work. * Shared KPIs: * Customer obsessed culture: 1 team, 1 dream, always asking “what’s in it for the customer?” * Pipeline (conversion vs. vanity stats), new business vs. expansion revenue, NPS, retention, churn vs. contraction, product/feature adoption * AEs & CSMs must have have consistent meetings to knowledge share, discuss and implement process improvement, strategize on key accounts, share feedback from the customers, etc. Pairing AEs and CSMs by segment can drive a much more seamless working relationship internally and for the customer Don't forget, hiring A+ talent is what keeps these teams motivated most. People want to be surrounded by high performers. The moment you hire a B player, the entire attitude, work ethic, morale, and throughput of your team completely changes. Never settle for anything less than A+ talent/ * Identify needed skills by role in changing landscape. Don't hire the same profile every time. Find teammates who balance each other out. Look for innate skillsets you cannot coach (persistence, hustle, humility, selfless, grit, competitiveness, hunger) * Performance management: Atomic unit of efficiency * Continuous coaching: Call reviews * Career development: Career laddering across the entire organization. Invest in your SDRs and build a low lift, high return SMB segment to promote them into. * Sell 90 Initiative: * Frontline reps spend 90% of time on customers * Automate/remove as much manual friction as possible from outbounding to accounts to renewing customers. Your customer facing team should never worry about anything other than their customer

When handling objections throughout the sales process, I generally advise first understanding the 'why' behind the objection/question, and then when you are comfortable with your understanding of the objection/question, then use a variation of the ARC Process (shown below) to manage the objection/answer. Understanding the Why behind an objection In sales you never want to answer questions that are not asked, and you never want to answer questions without knowing the intent behind the question/objection. If you have a suspicion as to the objection or the question, then I’d suggest normalizing it and better understanding it by reversing and framing your question back by saying, “Typically when a customer asks…it is because…to what extent would you say that is the case here?” Then once you fully understand the objection and the why behind it, you can use a variation of the ARC Process to overcome it: * Acknowledge: validate the objection/question and normalize it * Re-frame/Respond: clearly & succinctly provide your perspective * Confirm: then finally confirm that part of the conversation with a proposed path forward and validate that is acceptable with the prospect Example The prospect raises concerns over the cost of your solution, and you understand it's because they are also investigating a competitors who is cheaper but of lower quality. The ARC framework would sound something like this... (Acknowledge) Naturally, cost is always a consideration and I would be surprised if you hadn't raised it. (Re-frame) Our customers have shared that while we are a premium offering compared to other providers, the enhanced quality, speed, and performance of our solution not only provides better peace of mind, but also saves money over the long-term duration of the relationship, which makes it a sound investment. (Confirm) throughout our conversation, you've said that quality & speed are your top two criteria in choosing the right solution for you. If that's the case, is there any reason why you would not choose to invest in the best option?

Hitting the number is the first thing - But this wasn't all that easy to do over these last few years, so here are some things that will provide value to the C-Suite as a sales leader. 1. Keeping the troops aligned to the big picture -- Keeping the team engaged, happy, and focused on the big picture is exhausting but rewarding. C-Suite will pick up an unrelenting positive outlook and will reward sales leaders when applicable 2. Organizing feedback loops from the field to the C-Suite. The C-Suite is always looking for something insanely positive to share with the Board. If you can create feedback loops on things that are working well in the field, create a system that captures and shares it across the business. Slack is great for this. Bring key stake holders in a channel where you share Win Anecdotes about your sales team. I had a channel called #baller-emails. It was just a channel of killer emails my reps sent to customers and their super-positive responses. My CEO ate it up because he would share customer responses with the BoD 3. Continue to find areas of the business that can be optimized/organized. This can be tricky if you are stepping on others' territories -- but if you see there is a solution to a problem or process that, when asked, the process owner says "We do it that way because that's how we've always done it" then lean in and see if you can share a solution. If you're stonewalled at the operational level, find a sponsor in the business who is aligned on making the fix, build yourself a short SMART goal around it, and see if you can make a measurable impact. Record the work, record the results and get a read on if the impact/change was enough to get the interest of the C-Suite. If so, share in the right setting. Take the thank you, don't ask for more. Over time, more problems will need fixing and you might be the person who is asked to "run to the fire" thats where the money usually is.

Measuring seller ramp is key to understand if your enablement is effective, but it's one factor into the seller's ramp. You need to consider the individual's prior experience, tenure in the organization, understanding of your market and product, as these can all factor into how quickly your new seller ramps in their role. When measuring enablement's effect on seller ramp, consider the following: 1. Benchmark the average time for key seller metrics (whatever those may be for your organization). How long does it take for your top seller and the average seller to hit those metrics? For example: 1. Activity metrics/efficiency: lead conversion rates, call volume, meetings held, etc. 2. Sales stage success rate: time in each sales stage, % of pipeline in each stage, etc. 3. Quota attainment: avg. attainment, time to reach 25% and/or 50% of attainment 2. Once benchmarks are established, compare new sellers against these data points. Are they reaching average seller levels in a similar or shorter time frame? 3. Also, compare new sellers against each other, considering their prior experience with skills, your organization, products, or the market. This comparison can reveal areas where additional enablement efforts are needed and where ramp time can be accelerated.

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.

KPIs are best socialized in the largest setting, where they are relevant for all stakeholders. This establishes transparency and consistency for those who it applies to. For smaller companies this might be a Sales All Hands, while larger organizations might be done in a Team Meeting. Of course, you'll want to allow for questions and clarity to be proven. This can be done in either a group setting, but I also suggest you give space in a 1:1 for nuanced questions to be addressed. Every seller should be crystal clear on what their goals are and how they are being measured. Once your measurement period is up, whether that be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, it is important to reflect with your seller on their specific performance and how it compared to expectations. Speak about what they did to exceed expectations (have them share best practices with their colleagues) as well as what got in their ways from achieving expectations (coaching opportunity on removing obstacles). KPIs should not be a secret and how sellers are performing against them should be very transparent. Do your sellers a favor and don't sugar coat the performance. Clear is Kind.

KPIs which are not tied to objectives, initiatives or strategic goals are irrelevant. E.g. why should someone focus on ratio between emails sent to meetings booked if meetings will only be scheduled via phone. Why looking at seasonality or amount of revenue booked in the final 2 days if the pattern stays the same month over month or quarter over quarter?

It's a great question. I believe that all reps are continuously motivated by earning potential and career growth opportunities, regardless of the stage of the company. To get more nuanced, you'll see earlier hires more motivated by the combination of equity and cash, and you'll also see earlier hires hoping to leverage their early arrival to accelerate their career growth (vs later hires). As an aside, one of the real joys of leading and scaling sales teams is rewarding those deserving early hires with promotions, additional equity grants, etc. We've had the opportunity to do a lot of this at Vanta. More broadly, my advice is to spend a lot of time thinking about the design of your compensation plans (revisiting them at least annually) and also to map out levels and definitions for career growth sooner vs later. Make sure that you're putting your team in a spot where they believe they can hit their goals, and where they understand intimately what career growth means for them, and how to unlock it. Easier said than done. :)