Get answers from sales leaders
Andrew Zinger
Fastly Senior Director, Global Sales Enablement • January 10
In my experience it's been less of a challenge enabling the sales/account team on 'hard skills'. Over time you can see to it that people become comfortable with demo'ing your platform, using your tech stack, understanding the financials. However, trying to coach someone in the art of 'customer storytelling', or doing deep 'discovery' is something every enablement team struggles with.
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George Cerny
Iterable VP, Growth Sales, B2B2C Sales & LATAM • November 15
By far the most over-hyped KPI is total pipeline created. This is certainly a key metric to track week over week as a health check, but it provides little insight into what's actually going on. The problem with total pipeline created, is at no point should the conversation end with that KPI. If it's low - why? If it's high - why? Was it one large opp? Was it a bunch of baby opps? Was it quality pipeline? Was it from one AE/Segment/Business Unit - or is everything firing on all cylinders? At best it provides directional guidance to tune into major variances and inspect. At worst it provides false confidence in a pipeline that won't get you to goal. Typically addressing total pipeline creation falls into one of two camps: 1. Mention & move on. These are meetings where the metric is called out, compared to last week and it's either * Good - "great job, let's see if we can stretch this 10% higher next week" * Bad - "we really need to prioritize pipe gen this week. Get on it." 2. Paralysis by analysis. These meetings show the metric, and then dive into 40 slides with individual permutations of how everything performed over the past week; leading to information overload and very little insight into what actually needs to change. This is why instead of just tracking total pipe creation - we want to take a three-pronged approach: 1. How are we tracking towards our pipeline generation goal (which is a leading metric against future bookings)? 2. Identify the factors that are contributing to the current results. 3. Define strategies to optimize the path to goal The standard discussion described above hits the first objective, skips number 2, and the only strategy is often "do more." We could write an entire post on steps 2 and 3, but here are a few variables that can take your basic "total pipeline creation" reporting to the next level * # of opportunities created & average opportunity value. This controls for the one big opp skewing results. You generally want more big deals, but don't want to have to rely on only one big deal to hit the goal. This helps monitor quality & quantity. * Split by region/segment/AE's - this allows you to identify people and parts of the business that are doing well and understand why (do more of it, share learnings, double down). It also ensures that those who aren't doing well don't hide behind overall success of the business and get neglected. We want to identify why they're struggling, and ideally get them unstuck to improve performance. * Pipeline by opportunity source - attribution can lead to some sticky conversations, but tracking where the pipeline is coming from is necessary to improve the overall output. This isn't meant to start a blame game, but you can't optimize something you don't measure. So if AE's, SDR's, Marketing, Partnerships, or PLG is slacking - what can we do about it? If something is working incredibly well - how can we do more? * Pipeline conversion metrics - how is the pipeline that's coming in converting through the funnel to closure? Are disco to demo conversion rates improving, declining or staying the same? What about win rate? Any new trends where we should ride the wave? Anything that's not working which we should stop doing? These metrics will give you a much deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to current results and lay a strong foundation so you can define strategies to help optimize results. With a strong team and partners in marketing, partnerships, SDR and RevOps leadership - you're a brainstorming session away from having your best pipeline generation quarter yet.
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Roee Zelcer
TikTok Head of Sales, Products & Services • February 9
Essentially, scaling a successful sales team all comes down to the people you hire. The members you are adding as part of your team will define the team culture. I always aim to hire people that help create a culture that fosters innovative thinking to enable growth and progress. Similar to adding ingredients to a recipe, scaling should be done slowly and steadily. Try to find the right people who share the passion, vision and values that you foster within the team. At a later stage, after you have found and hired the right people for your team, make sure you are creating a structure that will enable all team members to grow. Eventually, you will scale up to a point where you will need to develop managers within your team. Make sure that you are nurturing the right people that have the qualities that you look for to make them leaders.
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Eric Martin
Vanta Head Of Sales • November 28
This is a great question and a task that I was asked to take on for Vanta twice over the past two years - first helping us break into the mid-market, and later helping us break into the enterprise. My first piece of advice is to make sure that there's cross-functional alignment in your company around the desire or need to move upmarket. It's really important that the entire company is on board with this decision. From there, I'd have representatives from GTM and EPD take a long hard look at any "upmarket at bats" that your company has had to date, listening to Gong calls, reviewing Salesforce data, etc to see what's working and what isn't working. You'll want to have the best assessment that you can have on whether or not your product is ready to move up market, where the gaps are (or might be), and whether or not those gaps can be resourced and built. You'll also want to make sure that you have the best initial pulse possible on who your upmarket ICP is. i.e. How are they similar or different to your current ICP? You probably won't know this initially, but you'll figure it out. Finally, you'll want to make sure that you're being thoughtful with how you (in sales) are going to approach generating and working these deals - probably setting aside a small team of sellers to help with the testing. Moving upmarket is generally a tough assignment from my experience and one that really only has a shot of "working" or "feeling good" if your company allocates real cross-functional dollars and resources to it.
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Grant Glaser
Salesforce Director, Sales Leader Excellence Coach • January 10
There needs to be a problem to solve. Begin by finding out what problem exists. Then, * Create a clear problem statement * Define the current vs. desired future state * Outline KPIs/metrics you want the program to impact * Build an MVP to shop around with sellers & sales leaders * Ensure you have sponsorship & buy-in from your sales leaders & teams * Deliver the program * Capture feedback * Iterate & repeat
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Alicia Lewis
Culture Amp Senior Sales Director • April 24
* Lack of Relevant Experience: It’s concerning if a candidate's resume lacks relevant sales experience or is not tailored in a way to showcase how their experience is relevant to the open role. Including a personalized cover letter or tailoring the summary/objective of the resume to highlight relevant skills and achievements is important to show alignment. * Inconsistent Job History: A history of short tenures at previous companies can raise concerns about a candidate's commitment and reliability. Aim to demonstrate stability and longevity in your roles, and be prepared to explain any job changes or gaps in employment during interviews. Additionally, always make sure that your resume aligns with the roles on your LinkedIn profile. It’s not a good sign when either the resume or LinkedIn is inaccurate. It’s surprising how often we see misalignment. * Not closing the interviewer: When it comes to a sales interview, not being prepared to ask for the next step in the process or get buy-in on their candidacy is a huge miss. As a sales professional in a sales interview, you are expected to close. It shows you investment in the role and your ability to move a conversation forward. * Skipping thank you notes: It may seem a bit old school, but the best reps I’ve ever hired have all written extremely thoughtful thank you messages during the interview process. Take the time to reiterate your interest in the role and thank the interviewer for their time and insights. It’s a sign of strong follow up and rapport building skills and can further set you apart from the candidate pool.
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Maria White
Cornerstone OnDemand Vice President Sales Enablement and Education • April 6
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.
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Tim Britt
Freshworks Senior Director of Channels Europe • February 14
My advice is to keep it simple, leadership has a habit of introducing multiple tools, and worksheets ( excel or google ) try and have a single source of the truth that everybody use's, I think its key to have a structured CRM solution with the correct data and workflows/gates in place to manage the sale process. I often see this as the number one complaint from reps is they are not sure where to input the data and what information is required, make it simple clear and easy to update.
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There are many KPI's and metrics you can evaluate for pay raises. Ultimately this is situational based on your companies revenue targets, values and policies. I believe there are 3 key factors in justifying a pay raise: 1) Craft: Mastery of your craft and demonstrated ability of your roles key competencies. 2) Impact: Have you had an outsized impact on Revenue and your GTM organizations key objectives. Some of the key KPI's that I look at are Revenue Growth, Attainment, New customer acquisition and Deal size. Secondly is any contributions you have made off the dashboard to impact the broader team i.e. Process improvements, enablement and creating assets that can be used by the team. 3) Behavior: Demonstrating the right behaviours in how you conduct yourself. I.E. Grit, resilience, positivity etc.
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There are many ways to crush your sales interview, but an excellent sales interview usually comes down to 3 core elements -- #1) Preparation #2) Storytelling 3) Self-Reflection. The best candidates I've interviewed will always come PREPARED to: * Answer why they are interested in the company and the role * Answer what they know and don't know about the industry/role (having thoughtful questions for your interviewer shows you're curious and eager to learn) * Pitch the service/product you're trying to sell (assuming this is a quota-holding sales role) But it is not enough to come prepared, you must also showcase your STORYTELLING skills. Selling is storytelling at its best, and the best way to highlight your strengths is through concise and effective examples from the past to show, not tell your interviewer how you're qualified for the role. Here are some stories (real-life examples) you should have in your back pocket: * Think of a time you successfully overcame an obstacle (how did you do it?) * Think of a time you unsuccessfully overcame an obstacle (what happened and how did you deal with it after?) * Think of a time you worked collaboratively with teammates or other teams (what worked well and didn't work well in that example?) * Think of a time you had to resolve a conflict or misunderstanding between a client or colleague (what approach did you take?) Remember that true storytelling means painting a picture for the interviewer of what you would be like in certain scenarios. So be sure to do more than just give an example -- be sure to explain why this story is important and what you learned from it. Try to always tie the lesson back to a relevant skill for the role. Finally, the ability to SELF-REFLECT can help you stand out from the crowd. Everyone always talks about how great they are in an interview, but not everyone has the self-awareness to speak about their areas of development. We all have things we need to work on. So the more aware you are of the good, the bad and the ugly that you may bring to this role, the more you appear to be self-aware and coachable. Here are some good self-reflection questions: * What may some challenges be for you in this role, and more importantly, how will you address them? * What is your plan to ramp up and set yourself up for success when you start? (What is your 30/60/90 day plan?) * What are one or two things that may set you apart from all the other candidates? What is your secret sauce? * How will you stay motivated in this role during difficult times? Do you have examples of self-motivation in the past? If you can come PREPARED, STORY-TELL and SELF-REFLECT in your interview, you will surely impress your interviewer. I know I'm always looking for sales candidates who have done their homework, know how to paint a picture or highlight their strengths effectively, and be vulnerable about what they need to work on.
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