Asad Zaman

Catie Ivey, CRO of Walnut, recently joined me on The GOATS of Growth to discuss the differences between selling in today's environment versus selling just a few years ago. Of course, as a GTM recruiter, the thing that stuck out most to me was what she says in this clip below about the level of talent required on the go-to-market team when budgets are tight. There's a big difference between great sellers and CSMs and everyone else--and it's never been more apparent. We also talked about: -Creating buyer-centric experiences -Unit economics and KPIs she tracks -Her transition from VP to CRO -Traits she looks for when hiring -Much more Access to the full episode will be in the comments, or just search for The GOATS of Growth online or in your podcast app. Catie, thanks again for joining me! Please follow Catie for more great content.

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Calling All SALES People – YOU HURT YOURSELF WHEN YOU DO THIS!! A huge piece of advice to all of you included in SALES process for your business including CEO’s, MD’S, SALES Directors, Client Directors, Head of Sales, EVP’s, VP’s, SVP’S…I think you get the drift. If your business is taking part in an official RFP process and the RFP states the lines of communication to be used (which it will) i.e. people you should contact (probably a #Procurement person or maybe a Stakeholder)…then abide by it! Now sometimes during the RFP process you may learn of other more senior people who may have an impact on the RFP outcome. This may be via demos or chemistry sessions, or your senior people already know and have a relationship with senior people in the business… BUT please, no matter how desperate or brilliant you think you are…. DO NOT CONTACT THOSE SENIOR PEOPLE DIRECTLY (unless requested to by the contact in the RFP!) It may in your mind seem like a smart thing to do, as you can influence the outcome and get advantage…and I get that is the SALES person in you, and you’ve seen it pay off sometimes… But here’s what actually happens: If the Procurement team are valued and are in charge of doing the official RFP - then take it as given!! All that will happen by your actions is that the senior person will reach out to the Procurement team and tell them…. and guess what that does to your proposal…? Don’t think for one second, your proposal goes to the top of the pile. IMHO, IT’S A HUGE BLACK MARK! What your actions have actually managed to achieve are: 1.     You will have annoyed the Procurement person managing the RFP 2.     You will have annoyed the CPO or Head of Procurement 3.     You will have annoyed the Senior stakeholder who is sponsoring the RFP 4.     You will probably annoy the Senior person you contacted… after all there’s a Procurement function to deal with this stuff! So, SALESPEOPLE…no matter the temptation, do yourself a favour and abide by the RFP rules of communication. You have been warned! _________________________ 😃 Hi I'm Steve Walton. I help companies to fully realize the value procurement brings in terms of cost savings, risk mitigation, supplier innovation and sustainability. DM me if you’re ready to move procurement beyond a tactical purchasing function, and need consultancy and training. 💸📉📊

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𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝟔𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬!   Just a few hours to go before Sameer Pant, Senior VP of Revenue Growth at Animaker Inc., dives into: ☼ Solutions to tech sales pain points ☼ Emerging AI-driven strategies️ ☼ Skills every sales pro needs today   Don't miss this chance to gain 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 and elevate your 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 game in the AI-driven era!   Seats are filling fast—secure yours now! Register before it’s too late!   𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰! - https://lu.ma/bej6457y   #techsales #aisales #salesstrategy #revenuegrowth #salesleadership #aiinnovation #futureofsales #digitaltransformation #salesdevelopment #aiinbusiness #salestrends #salesprofessionals #b2bsales #aitechnology #salescapabilities #salesinsights #salestransformation #businessgrowth #hr #humanresource #sales #event #webinar #live #register #technology #ai #insights

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Enterprise Salespeople - just a friendly push (from someone who isn't impacted by your results but wants you to kick ass) May & June - time to fine-tune  😎 If, on average, you have a 6 + month sales cycle - hopefully you rested up this long weekend.... It's GO time! Any Discovery Calls booked inside what's left of May & the month of June have a shot to close by Calendar Year End. Factor in some down time in July & August & December. This is when you want to: 🚀 review and own the heck out of next steps with ops inside your CRM 🚀work with marketing to provide timely and intelligent collateral for each stage gate of your ops 🚀ensure that decision makers are identified and introduced 🚀hammer away with your sales leader/founder the key accounts and get support 🚀build plans with your champions to get these deals to their natural close 🚀understand how market forces/head winds/corporate budgets etc might create a sense of urgency for prospects Good Luck & Go CRUSH Your Quotas - like only you can!!! AND make sure you have some personal activities for growth inside your daily calendar!!! That part is always non-negotiable!! If I can help - happy too! startupsalesgrowth.ca #sales #saas #saassales #founders #startups #startupsales #proptech #realestate #enterprisesales #ae #bdr #salesteams #salesculture #salesprocess #salescycle #salesstrategies #salestips #quotas #salesquotas #revenue #salesleadership #salespeople #worklifebalance #marketing #salesandmarketing #mentalhealth #salesprospecting #crm #nextsteps #coaching #b2b

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US & #CANADA #commercial and #enterprise #accountexecutives 💸 Commercial AE $125k base 50/50 split - $1m quota 💸 Enterprise AE $150k base 50/50 split- $1.2m quota Average Deals- $20k - $500k deal sizes - 6 months sales cycle You keep account in your book of business for upsells while CSMs do renewal - goal is to get them onboarded, and expand immediately #seriesbstartup, working under one of our longer term #vpofsales who JUST started - you must have experience - at an earlier stage org - selling a complex solution - ideal experience selling into #gtm #salesleaders or deep desire to - #salesledgrowth expert - you will have #sdr support (ideally 1/1) but do not depend on this for now $ignals are one of the most important aspects of monitoring what is working, and the best way to target, support and optimize every account. they use: Outreach Apollo.io Hubspot Clay This solution combines Sales, Marketing, Community and Operations and uses AI to enrich, score and analyze intent :) get on my schedule #accountexecutive #enterpriseaccountexecutive #commercialaccountexecutive #gtmsales #gtmaccountexecutive

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4 tips for running better discovery calls +1 bonus tip +1 one give-away [last line] Discovery isn’t just a stage in the sales process. We've all heard this. Yet, too many reps walk away without truly understanding the pain or the cost of doing nothing. Here’s how to fix that: 1. Start with curiosity. Don’t dive in with generic questions. Instead, open with something thoughtful: → “What made you take this call?” → “When did this challenge first show up for you?” Simple, yet effective. 2. Go deeper. Surface problems aren’t enough. Your job is to dig into the why. → “What’s causing this issue?” → “Who else is impacted?” → “What happens if it doesn’t get fixed?” Get them talking about the ripple effects. 3. Tie pain to metrics. No impacted metrics = no urgency. Find out what matters most to their business: → “Is this impacting win rates, pipeline coverage, or forecast accuracy?” → “What’s the cost of missing those targets?” You’re not just finding pain. You’re quantifying it. 4. Call out the cost of inaction. Paint the picture of staying as is. → “If this isn’t fixed in 6 months, what does that mean for your team?” → “How does this impact hitting revenue goals for the year?” They need to feel the pain now. Bonus tip... 5. Know when to walk away. Not every problem is urgent. If the impact isn’t big enough, qualify out. Save your time. And theirs. Great discovery isn’t about pitching. It’s about listening, digging, and connecting the dots. Get it right, and you’ll build urgency without ever needing to offer a discount. Which number could you be doing more of? ------------------------------------------------------- 🔔 Follow me for more on sales James Bissell ♻️ Repost and I'll send you a Discovery Call talk track.

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💡 Want more revenue? Focus on product, product marketing, and sales enablement. In today's cautious market, simply adding or swapping out sellers won’t guarantee more revenue. However, when your product is a “Must Have,” your value proposition is crystal clear, and your sales team is armed with the right tools and support, you can thrive—even in tough times. This is where you truly stand out. I see too many companies fixated on their sales teams alone. But more sellers, regardless of their hustle and training, won’t make a material difference if your product, materials, and tools aren’t rock solid. Investing in product, product marketing and sales enablement not only improves your near-term odds but also ensures long-term success. Agree? #RevenueGrowth #ProductMarketing #SalesEnablement #MarketStrategy

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Signals are the future of outbound sales! Just had an awesome catchup with Simon Brossard - a friend and former colleague from lemlist who recently launched HoneyPipe. He's helping you start conversations with your prospects by understanding their interest and intent based on their LinkedIn activity. Every like, comment, post is a potential opportunity to start a conversation and eventually book a meeting. Really looking forward to seeing how big this can grow. But more importantly it's a part of a bigger picture. Intent and signals are the name of the game. Been seeing signal based prospecting being promoted by the majority of sales leaders and creators here on LI. Person level identification tools like Warmly, and RB2B are getting more sophisticated allowing you to know who's browsing your site. Seen companies like Common Room and UserGems 💎 pick up speed and start filling this space with great content and attracting sales leaders like Florin Tatulea, Jed Mahrle, Becc Holland to join them or advise them. To anyone saying outbound is dead. Dude.. It's only the beginning! How do you use signals in your outbound campaigns? #prospecting #outboundsales #signals #sdr #bdr  

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By simplifying their Quotes, we saved over $300K for our first client at RevSolutions. If you’re a VP, you know that: Accurate quotes close deals. But getting them right is a major challenge. Sales teams often struggle with: → Inconsistent pricing, → Manual errors, and → Lengthy approval processes. These issues erode trust and can cost you business. That’s where the Q of the CPQ system comes in handy; Especially if you’ve complex pricing structures. CPQ tools make the quoting process efficient, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the board. → Automate complex pricing calculations → Standardize discounting practices → Speed up quote approval times With accurate quotes, you build trust with your clients. They know they can rely on your pricing, which makes them more likely to do business with you. Moreover, your sales team can respond faster, turning leads into customers with minimal friction. Accuracy in quoting means credibility and efficiency. How reliable are your quotes? #cpq #quote #pricing

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If you are selling software to improve lead gen, data accuracy, just about anything that can remotely move the needle on the sales side, most sales leaders want to hear about it So that is why you are seeing all these people talk about how their SDR team is 150%, 250% 4000% to quota Not saying they aren't doing good work, Just saying it is the most relevant pain point in the world today And if you are focused on pain as it pertains to sales leaders you will certainly book meetings and, maybe close some deals. BUT I ask you, Is AI commoditizing sales enablement software. Every coder and non-coder alike (no code apps) are building small businesses around small workflow solutions, in the hopes to get bought by Salesforce or other, And with the "chasing the next shiny object mentality" it becomes a never-ending cycle of Octopus-like tech stacks, that overcomplicate the process, AND confuse the startup founder what is the real trick to their early success, I got news for them, there is none. That's probably more of their problem than anything Thinking there is a shortcut to success. More on this throughout the week. Stay tuned! Happy Monday!! #abh #livecoldcalls #chillycalls #sdrinsider #brand30 #salesdevelopment   #conversationconverters #coldcaller4L #outcomes #activations

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SDR leaders, why prospects shut down your SDRs with "we have that tool already" Just sat down with Jake Hollis, one of OpenText's most impactful leaders whose career began making 150 cold calls daily from a boiler room at age 22. Now he's pioneering 'everboarding' because traditional onboarding creates forgettable training that kills SDR performance. His most powerful insight came from continuous coaching: SDRs aren't selling products. They're selling conversations. The transformation was simple but profound: - Ditch the feature pitch (it screams "we have that!") - Share real customer wins - Make prospects curious enough to ask "How?" Result? His team stopped hearing "we already have that" and started hearing "how did you do that" Full episode unpacks: - His journey from 150 daily cold calls to award-winning leadership - 6 pillars of everboarding that transform SDR performance - Why continuous learning beats traditional training - Future-proofing your SDR team against AI - Building high-performing teams that stay Want your SDRs to stop hearing "we already have that"? Watch the full conversation in comments.

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Sellers who have "need for approval" from their prospects are 35% less effective (RAIN Group). It's not your job to make your prospect feel "good" all the time and here's a prime example: When Spencer Ivey is asked for a discount, he simply nods his head and says "....Okay..." He doesn't jump to justify his pricing. He doesn't immediately start negotiating. He lets the silence linger. No doubt, this makes the prospect who just asked him for a discount feel somewhat uncomfortable (Ironic, since that's what they were trying to do to HIM when they demanded a discount!). 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞, 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫𝐬. Salespeople that want their prospects to like them (need for approval) will immediately jump to problem solving mode when they get asked for a discount. But the best? They're ok with a little discomfort, even if it means they're less "likable". They know that the discomfort will compel the other party to justify their ask with more information (information is your greatest ally in a negotiation).  

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Want a quick hack to tell if your sales cycle is longer then it should be? Do this - it'll take you 30 seconds 👇🏻 For closed won deals, take your annual contract value in dollars, Divide that by 1,000 and multiply by 2, And you should get pretty darn close to what your average sales cycle is in days. For example, if you annual contract value is $15,000, Divide that by 1,000 and you get 15, Multiply that by 2 and you get 30, So your average sales cycle in days should be around 30 days. If it's significantly longer than 30 days, you've got a problem somewhere, If it's significantly shorter than 30 days, you've got opportunity to increase your price. I've found this pattern typically holds true until you get into the $40k - $50k range of annual contract values. And one more caveat = this is for b2b, not b2c. PS - just calculated this for myself and was +/- 3 days, right where I'd expect us to be. Happy Tuesday y'all ✌🏻 #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #analytics

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Struggling to scale your #SalesPipeline? Bregal Sagemount faced the same challenge. They partnered with Predictable Revenue™ Inc. to achieve a remarkable 10x increase. Their case study reveals how: - structured prospecting, - targeted outreach, - and continuous coaching Transformed their #SalesStrategy. Adopting these tactics streamlined their #SalesProcess, enhances team performance, and drives growth.

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The Unicorn Seller Dilemma! Only 5-10% of candidates interviewed for SaaS sales roles meet the "unicorn seller" criteria—those who align perfectly with your sales motion and target market. These candidates bring industry expertise, technical knowledge, and a proven track record but are highly competitive to secure. Need help finding your unicorn seller? Let’s strategize on how to attract and retain top-tier talent.

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We have analyzed over 200k cold calls made on our platform and put together a doc that contains how to get your calls delivered... Yep, I know that sounds absurd but that's what's happening with carriers like AT&T and phone companies like Samsung and Apple, They are all filtering your calls based on several factors and sending most straight to voicemails without the phone even ringing. As cold emails become more and more technical, I believe cold calling is making a massive comeback To win at this game, you need three things - A solid calling infrastructure - A validated list - A way to skip over answering machines Most SDR teams have none of these, but a few are experimenting with maybe just one of these three - Few teams are sold on parallel dialing without solid infra or list validation strategy ↳ This results in their numbers showing up as spam and leads to dialing more and more people in parallel, pissing people off - Few teams do solid list validation by using services like Phone Oracle ↳ Just dialing a validated list with bad numbers will get you better results but you will still have lower pickups due to bad infra - Few teams dial from business lines (their actual landline phones provided by the company) ↳ These teams get the highest possible pickups, but still struggle with manual work like putting in the phone numbers etc If you want to win at cold calling, Scriptify.AI can help ↳ Scriptify.AI has Phone Oracle list validation engine built in ↳ It has ultra low latency AMD and parallel dialing ↳ Provides business lines to dial from (Stir / Shaken, CNAM, pristine quality numbers) This is how you win at this. The doc has all the details you need on how to set up a solid cold-calling infrastructure for your team. If you want it, like the post and comment "Guide" below and I will send it over.

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If you want to hit $100M ARR (and position your company for true scale), you must master enterprise sales. Here are the 11 critical skills your team needs to consistently close 6, 7 and 8 figure deals: 1. Understanding fundamental differences between transactional selling and enterprise sales 2. Developing the right pricing strategies to align with your customer 3. True multi-stakeholder and multi-threaded sales processes 4. High impact account-based marketing strategies including dedicated virtual programming 5. Field sales support and in-person program development 6. Territory design and comp planning 7. Building the team including pre-sale architects, reps, and customer success 8. Aligning the organization and staffing new functions 9. Building out services to ensure your customers solve their problems 10. Mutual action planning built around client outcomes 11. Deal management at the Board level These are all fundamental skills Pavilion taught previously but the scope and intensity are different when it comes to true Enterprise sales. That’s why Enterprise GTM School is so important and it’s become a foundation of our educational curriculum. We’ll teach you the entire enterprise playbook, give you the workbooks, tools, and processes, and prepare you to hit true scale. The course is included FREE with Executive Membership. It's an absolute can’t miss! And it starts TOMORROW Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ezspvCZe P.S. Not a member yet? DM me to get 10% off Enterprise GTM School

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At the best of times, cold calling can be rough. Yesterday, we made 654 dials and booked no meetings. Selling in the US is a different kettle of fish. 38 calls connected with a 6% connect rate and we had 21 live conversations with CROs / VPs Sales. Of the 21 connected: - 5 were leaving the role and moving somewhere else - 10 it wasn't a good time and they hung up the phone - 6 asked to call back in Q1 As much as skill, precision and activity go into the equation. Sometimes, it's just about connecting with a person who has the right pain points. There are a number of clear differences I've noticed when calling into America that are very different from the UK. Some parts are good, others bad. In general, the connection rate is 50% lower than in the UK. Therefore, you need to do 2x the number of dials to get the same number of conversations. One could assume that because there are more sellers targeting companies, the volume of cold calls is much higher. In turn, prospects are less likely to pick up the phone. When live in conversation, the approach is far more direct. You will get a clear sense of interest rapidly. If it's a rejection, you'll know about it. If there's interest, you'll book a demo with much less friction. It then becomes about getting business done rather than being in a state of uncertainty. There's less politeness around hanging up the phone. Sometimes, you will hear "not a good time", followed by the phone being hung up before you have a chance to say another word. Calling with a British accent definitely gets a few kudos points. Prospects frequently refer to "being on the other side of the pond". Overall, both markets have pros and cons. The UK can be easier to get through to prospects, but then, typically, deals will move slower. We're selling to both markets simultaneously to get the best out of both worlds. UK in the day and then US at night for 2x the pipeline. Smile and Dial is the best mantra.

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