The biggest mistakes that we see from candidates are related to not being prepared for the interview. Failing to research the company, role, or industry before an interview can signal a lack of genuine interest and initiative. Thoroughly research the company, its products or services, industry trends, and competitors, and come prepared with thoughtful questions to demonstrate engagement and enthusiasm. We expect candidates to do their homework on the role, the interviewer and the company, just like we expect of our Account Executives prior to a prospect meeting. Asking questions when the answers could have been easily found online and not showcasing knowledge when they should have studied up on the company is a clear sign of not being prepared.

So much of the sales KPI tracking has been automated (# meetings, Pipeline generated, funnel progression) so I find the manual ones more difficult to track, but move the needle the most. ie: how many on-sites did a rep conduct this quarter? It's a manual process for reps to log into a CRM and update a meeting field as "in person" and often gets over looked in an organization. There is no substitute for in person meetings. Another example that's difficult to track things like how many new business units or contacts from other business units you broke into in a month, quarter, or year.

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"

The best sales leaders have a few things in common: -They have a deep mastery of how to sell effectively -They are incredible coaches and development focused with their team -They care a LOT about their people Why these three things? First, I've often heard the refrain that "you don't want to hire the number 1 sales rep to be a manager." That said, no one wants to follow a sales leader who isn't incredible at sales. Imagine if you had a new manager promoted over you, and their average attainment was 60% of goal. How would you feel about working for them? Not great right? So if you are interested in sales management, I would first learn how to crush your quota and become a top 15% rep. Second, the best managers I've worked with are exceptional coaches. Many new managers struggle with what we call "super-repping," where they have 7 or 8 reps, and they get on every single call and sell for their reps. Sounds great right? You tee up the call and know your manager will knock it down. But this has a hidden cost. A manager can't be everywhere at once, and their team never truly learns how to do it on their own. Coaching and development focused managers spend their time building up the skills of their reps - not to sell exactly like them - but to lean into their own style and develop 1 skill at a time, constantly adjusting the coaching to challenge the rep to push their skills further. As a manager, you have leverage (the ability to dramatically scale your impact beyond yourself) in developing great new sales people, not selling yourself. You don't want to be the hero, you want to build heroes. Third, the best managers I've ever worked with truly care about their team's success over their own. People can tell if you care. You will often make more money as a top rep, so don't become a manager unless you truly want to help build the next top performing sales rep. I once received the advice from a leadership coach that "people will forgive a lot of mistakes if you show you truly care about them" and I find that to be true. They'll also be way more committed, open to your coaching, and willing to invest their emotional energy in winning if you have their back.

While tech may have downsized lately, great sales professionals still have lots of options. The major driver of recent layoffs were to create more efficiencies in businesses; which leads to lower burn and more profitability. There are few roles as efficient and impactful on profitability as a top seller exceeding their quota. By nature these folks will always be sought after and have options - so retaining top talent should always be a priority. The biggest mistake I see in retaining talent, is front-line managers DAM'ing their team. They only manage: D- Deals - when the deals are there and closing life is good! When they're not, the only lever they have is to drive activity. A - Activity - when deals are there, activity check-in's are infrequent and leading indicators of poor future pipe are missed. Once the pipe dries up, poor managers micro-manage activity and ramp up the urgency on activity without offering much actual guidance on how to drive better conversions. "Do more" is the mantra. M - Morale - any decent manager is going to check-in with their team. If they aren't truly helping their AE be successful then morale will probably be good when they're winning, and lower when they're not. Especially low when they're being micro-managed for prospecting... Now let's compare this and understand why a top performer would stay in the first place. There are 4 core reasons and an elusive and fleeting 5th reason. 1. They feel successful, are making money, and feel they're being fairly rewarded for their work. 2. They're developing skills and growing. They know that the hard work they put in today will pay dividends down the road. 3. They see opportunities for career progression and advancement. They believe there is opportunity to get promoted, or take on meaningful work that would represent professional growth, in an acceptable timeframe. 4. They're having fun and/or enjoy the people they work with & for. If you hit all 4 of these and/or if you are a part of a very mission-driven organization with inspirational leadership, you can tap into the 5th category: 5. They feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. This last one is a by-product of doing a lot of other things right. But if you can reach that pinnacle - this issue will take care of itself. Now if we apply the DAM method to why people would stay: 1. If the deals are there, the DAM Manager would theoretically focus on and help the AE close their deals. When pipeline is present the DAM method can work. Of course if it's not - this is strike 1. 2. Outside of situational deal coaching, there's no skills development carved out in the DAM method 3. Promotions are a by-product of hitting your number or not 4. It's fun when you're winning and unless you're on a great team, you don't really enjoy where you work when you're in a slump. A normal person needs 3-4 to feel good about where they work, 2 to be okay with it, and 1 to begrudgingly stick around. Literally everything above is dependent on there being enough pipeline and the AE closing deals. There is absolutely no reason for someone to push through to the other side when things get difficult. This is what causes someone to hit the bare minimum of requirements and demand a raise or promotion. They aren't having fun (4), they're not developing skills (2), they aren't making the money they want to make (1), so the only way to justify their existence is to get promoted (3) - which will give them fleeting relief until they move on 6 months later after the other 3 don't change and the next promo is 2 years down the road. So what DO you do: 1. Everything is easier when you're winning. I'm not going to break this down too deep - but more people feeling successful, hitting quota, making money, setting records, the more they'll want to stick around and keep doing it. Also check quotas to ensure they're realistic, attainable and surpassable. Make sure comp is competitive and I'm a big fan of accelerators to ensure your most talented AE's put the hammer down after they've hit quota instead of backing off. You can also get creative and make the highs higher. President's Club produces so many memories and is a silent motivator throughout the year. Hi-Po dinners or events for top performers throughout the year are another worthy investment. Once you've had a taste of being in the exclusive club for top performers you never want to back. 2. Working on Skills Development is where I think most companies can improve their standing with talent. Learning slowed down when we went remote. You used to have to be less intentional, and the osmosis of hearing everyone do the job, or being able to ask your neighbor a question, improved skills naturally. This has dropped off a cliff. According to the Bridge Group, ramp time now sits at 5.7 months compared to 4.3 months in 2020. This is an industry wide problem. While you can (and should) analyze your onboarding program, possibly hire outside training for a shot of adrenaline, and look at your enablement team for help here - it's not all on enablement. The gap is more on day to day coaching. Leaning in and investing in your front line leaders to be better coaches and develop THEIR skills to uplevel the AE's skills is where you'll have the biggest impact in my opinion. The bar for this also gets higher as the AE gets more talented, so it's important that front line leaders can not just coach the basics, but can help talent get to the next level. "Coaching" or "skills development" in general however just doesn't take up much real estate on enough managers' calendars. 3. Upward mobility is another silent motivator that drives people to keep working hard in the background. If your most talented people have reached the highest rung - you should identify this as a risk and think through if there are opportunities to create a new promotion level, carve out more responsibility, or add a rung to the ladder in some way. I've interviewed so many AE's who were talking to me because they felt "they had learned everything they can at their current company." Don't ever let that be the case, or don't be surprised when they leave. One thing I undervalued coming up as a leader was clarity of promotion path. I thought it was obvious that if you performed at an elite level, you would be in the conversation for a promotion. Some people can put their head down and operate at their best under these guidelines, but you miss your core performers. Core performers hate this answer, and by getting more clarity around the exact expectations for a promotion, you can often get more out of these folks as they work towards checking off all the boxes. I have also tried to talk talented people off a ledge who felt like it just wasn't clear how they get to the next level. We need to know that taking a new job, with a new title, at a new salary, is always crystal clear. So if someone is in their office at home, thinking through their next couple of years - if they can't see how they would move up in your organization, it's going to be a lot easaier to believe their easiest path is to go somewhere else. Change this, and prove it. It's so important to show promotions and ensure everyone knows those stories - what they did, how they did it, and how "you too can get those same results." 4. In a remote world "fun" is a lot harder to come by. I used to love coming to the office. My teams typically loved it too. We had a great group of people that genuinely enjoyed working together for the most part. Energy was through the roof. We had tunes going, people on the phone, we celebrated everything, gongs were ringing, jokes were made on the floor, deals were broken out live, people were learning, succeeding and had camaraderie around them to push through it if they weren't. We'd go out together from time to time and we made work fun. That is just near impossible to replicate in a remote world (if you have the secret sauce DM me!). What you can focus on however is building culture. Putting together an intentional team that wants to lean in, engage, and work together in this new capacity. Create opportunities to collaborate, learn and grow together. Anoint members of your team who have a pulse on the rest of the team to step up and help drive this so it lands. They can fill your blindspots. Invest in getting people in office whenever you can. If someone really likes their boss, this can make a huge difference too. Ensure your front line leaders are a big plus in this column. Which leads us to number 5 5. While a lot of things need to click for the team to feel like they're a "part of something bigger than themselves" there's one quality that will keep people around well beyond the point of logic, and help create a dedicated army for the cause. Inspirational leadership. You can find this at all levels - however you've heard about an inspirational leader behind many of the world's most iconic runs. Tesla had Elon Musk. Apple had Steve Jobs. Yammer had David Sachs. Hubspot had Brian Halligan. OpenAI was about to lose the whole company when they tried to oust Sam Altman. People will follow inspirational leadership through hell and come out the otherside unscathed and still committed. It doesn't need to be a silicon valley legend however. There are inspirational managers, directors, VP's and team leads across the industry. I feel this is undervalued however. If talent is really thinking about leaving - are they inspired? Are you inspiring them? If this feels like a gap - start with clarity of the Mission. What hill are we taking, what's our goal - beyond just hitting revenue targets. What's the strategy for hitting that goal? Why does that matter for the team? What's in it for them? Why are they lucky, one of the chosen few, to be on that mission here and now? If you can answer all of those things - people are probably inspired. If not - it mght be a good exercise. I map all of this out in detail to provide the ability to audit your own org, or an individual. You would love to answer yes to all 5, but identifying where the no's are can give you a clear roadmap on what to fix to systematically retain talent. 1. Do they feel successful, are making money, and feel they're being fairly rewarded for their work? 2. Are they developing skills and growing? Do they know that the hard work they put in today will pay dividends down the road? 3. Do they see opportunities for career progression and advancement? Do they believe there is opportunity to get promoted, or take on meaningful work that would represent professional growth, in an acceptable timeframe? 4. Are they having fun and/or enjoy the people they work with & for? 5. Do they feel they're a part of something greater than themselves?

* 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.

To build a strong enablement culture within the sales organization, it's important that we: 1. Understand the impact of the enablement. How will this help them do their job better/faster? Will they see the results in more time available, more opportunity to pursue, more money? 2. Allocate the time and resources to complete the enablement. Ensure you're delivering the training in the best mode possible for the highest outcome. Does this need to be delivered in person or will virtual sessions provide the same impact? Is the learning something that can be done through a job aid or process document, or will it require hands-on experience? 3. Offer the opportunity to practice and gain an understanding of the learning in a real-world application. Watching recordings of a skill can help in theory, but practical application will make all the difference in an individual's absorption of the material. 4. Demonstrate the success of the enablement. Create buy-in from leadership as well as the individual sellers by providing proof of the impact and what it means to the individual seller, their leadership and teams.

KPIs are helpful in unpredictable markets, because they remove a layer of uncertainty. If everyone is making 100 calls per day, and then pipeline generation expands across that channel, then we can help validate that channel - we can then properly inspect other indicators for success in this: what time of day are people calling? What are they saying on the phone? What is their call to action? Frequently, sales teams are lead by the unpredictability of a market and get swept away by a specific pitch, a singular customer response, or a particularly lucky day that a rep was having. Successful KPIs will provide a range of outcomes for each action (good/bad/indifferent), but will still allow for predictability at the top of the funnel (demand planning / capacity planning), the middle of the funnel (demos, meetings, on sites, etc) and bottom of funnel (quotes distributed, scoping calls held, ROI exercises held). Very thoughtful question — hope this helps + very interested to hear other voices on this topic!

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.

I am so glad you asked this question - discovery and storytelling is such a huge passion of mine, so happy to share my perspective: Best Practices I See From Top-Performing Sellers 1. Deep Discovery During Every Interaction – High performers never stop doing discovery - every conversation is an opportunity to learn more from your prospects/customers. While doing discovery, they don’t just ask closed ended (yes/no) questions, instead they focus on open-ended questioning (e.g., “Can you tell me more about that?” or “What happens if this problem isn’t solved?”). They uncover not just pain points but the underlying business drivers. 2. Structured and Flexible Approach – They follow a repeatable discovery framework but remain flexible, adjusting based on the conversation rather than checking boxes. 3. Active Listening & Strategic Note-Taking – Instead of rushing to pitch, they actively listen to their audience, ensure they summarize key points, and document these insights that allow for them to reference in future conversations (e.g., using Gong or CRM notes to track recurring themes). 4. Customer-Centric Positioning – Sellers will then translate what they learn into highly relevant recommendations, aligning their messaging with the prospect’s specific needs instead of delivering generic value props. 5. Multi-Threading Early – Top sellers engage multiple stakeholders early, and often, ensuring broader buy-in and reducing the risk of deals stalling due to a single point of contact.