Shannon Karaka

Introducing GTM Mentors APAC, a new series by talking tenets. Episode #1 Nathan Schubert: The new SaaS economics of Go To Market - Implications for Sellers & Sales Leaders A GTM and RevOps expert with a unique background, he's also been an AE. Most recently he was Head of GTM - New Products with Go1. He believes that unit economics are broken in many SaaS orgs. Lean is better to combat the challenges of unit economics and the importance of optimizing CAC payback time. The way in which SaaS companies achieve this can have far-reaching implications for AEs. If done well, AEs could find greater support from a unified sales, marketing and RevOps team, be laser focused and intentional on a the right customers, at the right time. Done poorly, AEs will face more pressure to do much more, with less support. 🔗 Listen or Watch now (Links in comments).

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“Top sales reps don't get laid off”   I've seen this a few times recently.   On paper it's hard to dispute.   But let me tell you a quick story.   In 2021 I helped a pre-IPO firm build their GTM team in ANZ.   We spent a year recruiting the best folk in the industry.   AEs. SEs. CSMs. Channel. SDRs.   All genuine A-players.   They did great. Signed some big logos. Tracking well.   Then the CEO announced they were pulling out of ANZ.   The entire team was let go including the VP.   It was properly shit. We felt terrible but no one saw it coming.   Now I can't speak for the rest of the world, but if hiring in APAC you've got to take this into account. Many SaaS firms completely pulled out of region here. Stop assuming good people dont get laid off. Being ignorant will cost you.   #techsales #gotomarket #saasrecruitment

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Access to real time cash flow with Marmalade will turn your business from survival mode...into THRIVE mode! HOT TIP #2 - Take total control over your Payroll and Staff Retention - avoiding the pressure of Labour Costs Labour costs are often the largest expense for businesses, and they can quickly become a pressure point during cash flow crunches. Access to real-time cash flow enables businesses to manage payroll without the constant stress of balancing pay periods against incoming revenues. With this liquidity, businesses can ensure that payroll commitments are met consistently, even when clients are slow to pay. This stability is essential for employee retention, as staff rely stability in the workplace and are more likely to stay loyal to a company that demonstrates financial dependability. As an added benefit, knowing you have the cash to support payroll gives you the flexibility to invest in new talent or increase employee benefits, strengthening your team without straining resources. Chat to our team to work out how you can avoid the crunch on labour costs - https://lnkd.in/geAj64CF #business #sme #smb #enterprise #smallbusiness #accounting #bookkeeping #cashflow #cash #growth #xero #myob #qbo #intuit #discount #marmalade #cashisking

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SWAT teams rather than armies. Hearing this phrase from lots of sales teams recently. And there is lots of logic - to a smaller highly trained (and coached ;-) elite team rather than a larger team, whether SDR’s or quota carriers. Here’s the drivers… - Sales Efficiency, the obvious one. Growth at all costs is gone, presumably forever. Cost of acquisition and sustainable growth are now key. - Raise The Bar, a smaller elite and well coached (couldn’t resist this time) team removes the weakest performers, the time and resources spent trying to pull them up and raises the bar for everyone on the team. - Bottom Up Economics, teams resourced based on on actual pipeline not multiplying quotas by team size. Quota carriers, even if good prospectors, can’t and arguably shouldn’t create all their own pipeline. If you don’t have the pipeline from SDR’s and inbounds, the team is bloated. - Elite is easier , With a smaller well chosen/recruited team, it’s more realistic with time and resource to help make them elite. And with an elite team, everything is easier. - Cheaper, it’s not just sales efficiency. It’s cost and budgets. They are smaller and what is possible or affordable has changed. What are you doing to create your SWAT teams?

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Sean’s Sales Tip 🚫 Focusing solely on increasing the pipeline to meet sales quotas is a misguided strategy. It is akin to saying I will risk $300 in the slot machine, instead of $200 to make a win. 🔔 Salesforce's recent decision to require 3x pipeline coverage, up from 2x, rang the alarm bells for me. 💸 Such an increase demands significant effort and resources, leading to a dramatic rise in customer acquisition costs (CAC) and other bid related costs without guaranteeing an equivalent increase in revenue. 🤔 Think about the optics of this announcement. You are saying to your sales teams it is OK to lose 66% of your deals now, instead of 50%. 🎯 The emphasis should shift from maximizing pipeline to optimizing win rates and accelerating deal velocity. Step 1 🏆 Improve Win Rates Improving win rates is a more efficient and cost-effective approach to achieving sales targets. For instance, a modest increase in win rates from 20% to 25% can yield substantial revenue gains with no extra pipeline required. Step 2 🚀 Accelerate deal velocity To enhance deal velocity (and also win rates), salespeople need to focus on creating pain, recruiting, and equipping champions within the client organization so that your deal gets done and becomes a priority. 💡 Prioritizing win rates and deal velocity over pipeline growth is a smarter and more sustainable strategy for achieving sales quotas. This means that Sales Leaders need to be trained in how to coach their teams effectively and for them to get out of the office more often.

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Too many sales leaders are obsessed with scaling: - More calls - More leads - More emails - More meetings - More opportunities Without nailing: - ICP - Discovery - Messaging - Buyer journey - Value proposition Better to 2x what works than to 10x what doesn’t.

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We collected the 58 highest performing email templates used by Brex, Salesforce, Gong and others including Salestools to drive outbound sales. If you like a copy simply: 👍 Like this Post 😎 Comment your favourite Steak Cut or Fish 🔗 Add me as a connection and I will return the file

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Feeling like a boss ... Why? An APJ VP was frustrated with the candidate pipeline for an AE role. He needs to build a first-on-the-ground team for a well-funded, pre-IPO rocket ship (yes, they still exist)... He wants 2x Mid Market AEs with a solid outbound cadence and demonstrated success in identifying> close in an ambiguous, low support, high expectation scale-up environment. Hiring the wrong people would mean delaying time-to-revenue, missed opportunities and losing credibility... However, the CFO was not allowing using a head-hunter to bring better quality candidates ... So, he fought the good fight internally ... and got approval to engage Switch ... Go time! Our collective reputation was on the line... 𝐉𝐨𝐛 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐠: Day 1 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: Day 4-6 (total of 5 candidates) 𝐇𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬: Day 7-9 𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤: Day 9 (drum roll .... actual excerpt from the email below) "𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝... 𝐈 𝐬𝐮𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞." 💥 Boom. ... Currently, Sales Leaders are struggling to get approval to engage agency recruiters due to cost pressures ... They are time-poor, under pressure and face high demands from CXOs Yet they need to hire the best people for their high-stakes mission. The Hiring Manager's expectations are high ... The Candidate's expectations (top performers) are high... Matching people and meeting their expectations is hard... So, some days I lose ... some days I win. So, I'm choosing to feel like a boss (at least for today) My point? 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐮𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬. What's your little win today? #littlewins #interviews #leadership #recruitment #switchmethod

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The top decile enterprise sales leaders I’ve met enable their reps with one thing in particular, that the bottom 90% neglect. Across the several hundred revenue, sales, and value leaders I’ve spoken to as we’ve built Minoa, there’s a recognition that proving value and ROI is tough. Now, hand that responsibility over to a rep too busy dealing with admin, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for miscommunication and lack of customer buy-in. We get this question all the time - “how do I get reps to adopt our value selling initiative”? This frames it as an issue related to rep discipline, when the problem has nothing to do with this. It’s not that reps don’t see the point - they just don’t know how to navigate communicating the quantitative impact of your product’s value. The very best sales leaders empower their reps with clear frameworks of how quantitative impact (be it for revenue, cost, time etc.) maps to value drivers and use cases. Proving value can be hard, but having the power to communicate and match product value to measurable business outcomes in a long and complex sales cycle cuts through the noise. At Minoa, we help set up the value frameworks, calculations, and guardrails that give every single rep the ability, and more importantly the confidence, to use data and quantitative impact to sell on value.

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Confluent spent $553,000 on sales and marketing for every net new customer added in Q3. That's actually a big improvement on Q3 of last year where they spent $1.5M per customer add. Some other highlights from Q3 for Confluent: - ARR growth of 27% (slowed from 37% ARR growth last year) - Reduced operating loss by 31% (loss of $94M for the quarter) - Magic number improved from 0.40 to 0.45 -CAC payback improved from 39 months down to 33 - NRR dropped from 130% to 117% Trading at about 8X ARR right now

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Here's the stark facts in sales today. - 31% of reps are making quota - Nearly half (44%) of deals slip - Sales cycles are double digits longer, win rates are double digits down - Inbound leads are down - Salesforce recognised the need to increase pipeline coverage to by 50% (from x2 to x3) Most of those we speak to recognise all these challenges. But they are stuck. "Do more with less" is the message. They have cut teams and fought for those remaining. Their organisations are stuck with blind hope and knives sharpening. The only solution they know is to fire and replace. Because the real problems aren't acknowledged. The market has changed and it's harder. But are teams are not more skilled. The same teams, that could achieve in the old world are failing in this one. And the last message anyone wants, is we need to spend some money to solve that. "That's your job isn't it?" cries the leadership to time-starved managers and leaders. Anyone want to guess what's going to happen to sales manager average tenure (already at an all-time low of 18 months)????

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Meet one of your mentors Tim Teale 🌟 Tim is an Enterprise Account Executive, at Aussie Tech Unicorn Go1 where he has worked for 5+ years. Originally hired as a Jnr CSM he moved into Sales after 1 year and has never missed quota, ranking as GO1 #1 rep in the region & multiple presidents club winner! We sat down with Tim and asked him some questions about her journey through sales, check out the answers below 👇 How did you land your first job in Tech Sales? 👀 I landed a Customer Success gig by applying for a role on Seek and messaging the recruiter directly (with something outside the box). I knew I had no experience, so had to rely on ‘people skills’. Before the interview, I read up on CS, learned a few buzzwords and did my very best to connect with the recruiter + hiring manager on a personal level to help me stand out.   I.e. Through small talk, I figured out the Hiring Manager was a keen gamer. As such, I managed to weave in my very limited niche gaming knowledge into our chats.    People hire the same way they buy.    “Buy on emotion and justify on logic” – Zig Ziglar What advice would you give your younger self for success in Sales? 💜 Deals are won/lost in discovery. Be an expert in the field you’re selling into. Prospects don’t care about your products, they care about solving their problems. Know your numbers and understand sales theory to keep management off your back. What key traits do you consider crucial for successful Sales professionals? 🙌 Thick skin. Street Smart. Money hungry. Commercial acumen. Any tips for individuals aspiring to start a career in Tech Sales? 🏆 Don’t be put off an SDR role – prospecting skills mean you’ll never need to rely on anyone else. You’re trading stress, pressure and lack of job security for a fat paycheque. Be prepared. When not immersed in leadership and work, where would your network expect to find you? 🥧 Surfing a beach or point break in and around the GC, or demolishing a Pepper Steak pie + Sausage roll at the best bakery in Australia (I dare you to dispute this claim) #saas #sales #coaching #mentoring #training #launchpadacademy

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Top sales talent leaves B2B SaaS firms regularly within <12 months, because there's a lack of pipeline, process, and professional sales enablement. In Dutch, we call this "mopping with the tap open" 😁 Founders without a solid GTM approach often make this mistake. I can't blame them. The mission of Manuel and Florian at SalesPlaybook resonates with me: To close bigger deals faster and retain rockstar talent by: -> Building & scaling repeatable pipeline generation -> Coaching, training & enabling sales leaders -> Increasing efficiency & revenue per rep The result? You close more and bigger deals faster, and you retain your top talent because they're set up for success. Because losing any top sales talent is like losing a 6-figure ARR deal: "Priceless". Want to learn more? DM me if you’d like a direct introduction—I highly recommend them!

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Nick O'Neill is the greatest sales person in the southern hemisphere! The way he has helped Hype & Dexter | 5x APAC HubSpot Partner of the Year | Part of the Avidly Group grow over the years has been absolutely incredible. If you want to learn a thing or two from one of the experts in HubSpot and sales, tune in to the new RevSpot episode! Listen Here --> https://lnkd.in/e2nWjVGE #revops #crm #sales #ai #marketing #service #hubspot

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Sales Leaders - should you hire in Q4? The Great Debate! Q4 - possibly the most critical in your financial year, and if you're one of the majority whose Q4 also coincides with the end of the calendar year and holiday period, should you be throwing additional hires into what is already a very complex mix? 👍 Pros of Q4 Hiring 👍 🟢 Talent Availability Q4 often sees a larger pool of candidates as job seekers who paused their search during the year re-enter the market. This offers the chance to find a strong fit for your team during a time when options are more abundant. 🟢 Reduced Competition With many companies slowing down recruitment during Q4, competition for talent decreases. This can make for a smoother recruitment process, as candidates may be more receptive to offers. 🟢 Budget Benefits End-of-year budgets can sometimes allow for more flexible or enhanced compensation packages, which can attract high-caliber candidates. 👎 Cons of Q4 Hiring 👎 🔴 Holiday Distractions The holiday season may create scheduling conflicts, making it difficult to organize interviews or assessments. Careful planning is required to avoid disruptions in the hiring process. 🔴 Limited Onboarding Time Bringing on new hires in Q4 often means a shorter onboarding period before year-end. This may pose a challenge if your training is complex or requires extended integration time. 🔴 Timing Uncertainty Candidates might prefer to start a new position in the new year, potentially leading to delayed start dates and affecting project timelines. ☝ Making the Right Decision In summary, choosing to hire in Q4 depends on your company’s specific needs. Think about what your strategic goals are for the year ahead and make a calculated decision based on the above criteria. Anything further to be added?

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There are 33 closing days until the end of the FY for most sales teams in Australia. There are 3 types of sales leaders right now. 1. I have made my team number and we are in bonus time. The biggest challenge is “what do I keep for next year while maximising bonuses and commissions for the team this year?”. I hope this is you! 2. I will make my team number but I need a few key deals to close. The total focus is on closing those deals. If you are not in category 1, I hope you are in this group. 3. I am not going to make it. Do I push as hard as possible to get as close as possible, or do I keep it all for next year. I hope this is NOT you. Does the CEO/Owner and CFO know where you are at? How are you going to address your key challenges whichever category you are in? If you are in category 2, here are some questions for you to ponder: 1. What is the customer’s process from now to contract signature? Who is involved and when? 2. What happens if they do nothing and let it slip until next year? Is there an impact on their business? 3. Are you across their business case? What is unique about our solution that means they have to select us to get those outcomes? 4. Is there budget to spend on this? Or is this process to get budget and then we need to get further approval to spend that budget? This is the process from contract signature to cash in the bank. If you are in category 3, our proven sales framework will ensure you are not in the same place next year (95% success rate over the last 5 years). #founders #salesleadership #salesframework #pamice

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Calling all B2B sales professionals. With our friends at Aircall, we need your help with our State of Sales Coaching survey 2024. 3-5 minutes of your time could win you amazing prizes - the latest AirPods, Sonos speaker, Nespresso machine, and of course MySalesCoach scholarships. Sales coaching is widely considered the most critical function of a frontline sales leader. Previous studies demonstrate that it significantly boosts win rates and quota attainment. However, many sales organisations find it challenging to establish and execute an effective sales coaching culture and strategy. Our survey seeks to identify the key trends, best practices, and impacts of sales coaching in 2024. You'll be first to get the study published in October packed with insight, data and trends. Leaders and Individual Contributors should complete the survey - with scholarship places up for grabs for each. Your voice really matters, complete today for a chance of these amazing prizes and to be first with the report. Link here to complete - https://lnkd.in/eKRcTPXV

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Between September 2023 and January 2024 I spent hours with leaders in APAC in different roles, different industries to try and learn where the biggest gaps where and this is what I learnt. 1️⃣ AE leaders DO NOT think your SDRs are ready to be in the AE seat but you as an SDR leader do 🔋 2️⃣ Leaders who aren’t ready to be leaders. Businesses lost a lot of senior leaders through all the redundancies and now we have a huge skill gap where we promoted junior leaders into senior roles too soon. The result? Churn, employeee satifaction goes down and burnt out leaders not knowing what they did wrong. 💣 3️⃣ Metrics / Cross Functional Allignement .This may sound obvious but from enablement to CSM to AE to SDR if we do not have a metric that matters to us all, it will always be a combination of competing priorities, lacks of alignment and it doesn’t matter how many operating principles your business has, you need to be clear about what you want from your teams and it needs to be aligned. 📈 🎦 Tomorrow I’ll do a video about a fix to these 3 points! #leadership #saas #talkingpoints

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So much overseas talent moving Down Under.   AEs. SEs. SDRs. CSMs. Execs.   Reckon I get at least 5 people a week reaching out.   It's great to see. What a journey ahead of them.   The shit part is I often can't help.   SaaS firms rarely hire through a recruiter if a candidate needs sponsorship.   You feel bad as many only realise this once they get here.   I speak to some who've been looking for months.   We aren't talking average either. Many are genuine A-players who would be a shoo-in if they were PR or citizens.   So on that note: Is anyone hiring who can sponsor?   Let me know what you're looking for and I'll intro some great people. DM or email [email protected]. All free of charge of course. Let's help these people live the Aussie dream.   PS. To anyone moving to Sydney: Manly is 100x better than Bondi. I'll die on this hill. #techsales #saaasrecruitment #gotomarket

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