Becky Lazell-Wright

Sales Lessons from Gareth Southgate and England at Euro 2024 ⚽   Anyone in sales or sales enablement knows the feeling. One minute you're celebrating a smashed quota, feeling like you're unstoppable 💪 The next, you're staring at a spreadsheet of missed targets, questioning every sales tactic you ever learned. It's a rollercoaster and sometimes it feels like the freefalls are never ending. 😭   This emotional pendulum swing reminds me a lot of Gareth Southgate and the England team so far at Euro 2024. Remember the heat he took after some shaky performances? The pundits were calling for his head, questioning every decision. Tactics? ❌ Lineup? ❌❌.   Then, Southgate did something bold yesterday. He subbed out his captain, Harry Kane, for a player, Ollie Watkins, that played ZERO minutes in the entire tournament. 😱 😱 A gamble some might say, but a gamble that paid off in spectacular fashion – Watkins bagged the winning goal against the Netherlands!   The lesson here? Even when the pressure's on, and the critics are circling, stay true to your strategy. Just because someone hasn't had their big moment yet doesn't mean they can't be your game-changer. So, the next time you're feeling like you're at the bottom of the sales well, take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and remember: 💠 Believe in your process. You got this far for a reason. Keep refining your approach, and the results will follow. 💠 Don't be afraid to make bold moves. Sometimes, shaking things up can lead to breakthroughs. 💠 There's always an "Ollie Watkins" out there. New ideas and approaches can come from unexpected places. Stay the course, and never lose sight of your self-belief. Let's go!!

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The job of sales enablement is NOT to create a great onboarding experience. 😳 Unfortunately, that's often the first and key task enablement team members are asked to focus on. And then performance rates and motivation drop, whilst the churn rate soars to an all-time high... 😓 The key to preventing this is a long term learning and development strategy that exceeds the first six or eight weeks of employment and ideally continues throughout the entire sales career of the IC at your company. Developing your SDRs and AEs with a weekly team session, where they're asked to "bring a topic we can discuss" and perhaps a workshop with an external trainer once a year simply don't cut it anymore. 😖 Sellers want and need consistent training and access to resources that enables them to improve their performance whenever they feel the desire and need to do so. Pairing autonomous 20-30min daily training sprints with weekly team training facilitated by their team lead emerges as the new standard among high performing sales organisations. Some even add an additional hour of external coaching. 🤩 Bottom line is, your enablement strategy should plan the your employees development throughout the entire career at your company. Make sure they've got all the resources the need and, for the love of god, please don't tell them "just go buy a book or watch something on YouTube" and call it a day. (Both can be great mediums as part of a larger strategy framework though 😉 ) If you want to learn more about consistent training and have a chat about how this can be achieved for your DACH sellers, hit me up. 😎 Does your company have a long-term enablement strategy? #sales #saas #sellinDACH #sdrsofGermany

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🎥 Look mum I made it! 😂 Take a listen to this quick tip on #leadnurturing and #inboundmarketing to help you boost your #B2Bsales 💸 #customersuccess #sales

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Struggling to hit your KPIs as a Customer Success Manager or Account Manager? Join Retention Seekers for an exclusive webinar where we'll be hearing from Jessica Roberts, Senior AM at Highspot and winner of the Account Manager Award and Alice Bedford, Senior CSM at Salesloft and winner of the Customer Success Award at The Elites 2024! They'll be sharing their winning expertise to achieve and exceed your targets... 📈 Proactive Customer Engagement: Discover how to anticipate client needs and build stronger relationships to drive satisfaction and retention. 📊 Data-Driven Strategies: Leverage data analytics to identify trends, measure success, and make informed decisions that align with your KPIs. 🗣️ Effective Communication: Master the art of clear, consistent, and impactful communication to ensure alignment and transparency with your clients and team. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain actionable insights and strategies that will elevate your performance and help you hit your KPIs every time. Register now! https://lnkd.in/ebqqreMs

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PayCaptain are one of our first smb and high growth customers in the UK to embrace agentforce. Check out how quickly PayCaptain built an Agentforce use case at the recent agentforce event. Now PayCaptain are bring Humans with Agents to drive customer success together. Learn how you too can build and customize autonomous AI agents to support your employees and customers 24/7. PayCaptain are leveling up productivity with Agentforce! PayCaptain is serving their customers better, faster, and smarter with scalable, easy-to-deploy agents. From handling donation inquiries to strengthening their customer relationships, Agentforce helps them do it all. This is the future of #AgentFirst transformation! ❤️🤖#Salesforce #Agentforce #Trailblazer

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CS leaders ☝ What's stopping your teams from starting renewal conversations earlier? Something I’m hearing a lot recently from Customer Success leaders, is they are realising they need to be looking at renewals up to 6 months ahead if they want to make an impact on account health before it’s too late to save. Seems to be especially important right now as a high percentage of renewals tend to happen in Q4 as Sales love to get a last minute deal in! #customersuccess #csleaders #customersuccessleaders #csm

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Does anyone in my network have any experience running Gong alongside Hubspot? How similar are they? What is the overlap and where are the differences? Struggling to articulate this to leadership so if anyone could spare me 10 mins for a chat, I'll send you a coffee. I have sat the Gong demo but it was about 6 months ago. #Sales #AE #SDR

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Salesloft creates efficiencies at every level, from individual team members to sales leaders. Hear how Gabby Winfield and her team at Staffmark are achieving success using Salesloft: https://lnkd.in/eSJh8FTn

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Seen some interesting discussion about digital sales rooms (DSRs) on here recently As with most sales tools, part of it comes down to the end user - would you blame Orum or Nooks for a bad cold call? Having sent +2,000 myself, here are some top tips to make them work: 1- Make them personalised - prospect's branding, business cases, call summaries, demo recordings, MAPs 2- Introduce them early 3- Show your buyers how it's going to make their life easier before you send it 4- Don't overwhelm buyers with all information at once. Evolve them over time 5- Adapt to each deal. There is no 'one size fits all' - a DSR for SMB will be different to Enterprise 6- Use video to give context. People retain 95% of video information vs 10% in text 7- Make mutual action plans collaborative, don't just set homework 8- Encourage collaboration through live chat, comments and huddles 9- Focus on the DSRs that have the most engagement 10- Make them on brand 👆 The feedback from our customers' customers is overwhelmingly positive when you follow these steps And if buyers aren't willing to look at a digital sales room, they might not be *that* serious about buying 😬 #digitalsalesrooms

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Taking time off as a CSM can be stressful. 💔 Things never stop breaking 🤖 Product never stops releasing 🔨 Processes continue to change 📩 Customers don't stop emailing 💸 Renewals don't stop happening Many CSMs either give up taking time off or end up logging in when they should be enjoying the beach. But it genuinely doesn't need to be like this... A few years ago I developed a social contract with my team: - Nobody logs in during their time off - Everyone prepares for their time off in advance We developed a PTO prep checklist and kept building upon it based on our lived experience. Here's what it looks like: - Book your holidays at least 8 weeks in advance - Add your OOO to your email signature ASAP - Book the day you come back off in your calendar to give you time to catch up on your inbox - Let your customers know when you'll be OOO in every call - Ask customers to submit any questions/issues in advance (by X date) - Create a manual on how customers can get help during that time that you can send to customers and add to your OOO email - List all your renewals for the period you'll be OOO - Get signatures early for the healthy and happy customers - Work on mitigation and save strategies for customers at risk - Aim to have every renewal deal closed before you leave - Anything left open, delegate to a colleague a week in advance from your PTO with introductions, CTAs, good notes and context (make this a central document for your manager so they can follow-up for you) - Let colleagues on internal projects know you'll be OOO - List all tasks and deliverables you have until your PTO - Work on delivering each of them ahead of time - Ask a colleague to be a buddy for you while you are out - Cover your OOO with your manager before you go - Schedule important customer meetings for that week ahead of time to avoid falling behind on coverage - Review any open roadblocks for customers 24 hours before leaving and add to your PTO document for your manager to follow-up - Put your OOO on the day you leave on email and slack Every CSM that implemented this left for their holidays feeling confident. And the best part? Nobody had to log in during their time of!! As a Director, I still use this checklist (albeit an adapted one). What's your top tip on how to prep for holidays? 📥 If you're interested in Customer Success, consider joining 8.5k+ CS Professionals who read my weekly newsletter on how to build and scale a CS Team [sign up in the comments section]. #csm #customersuccess #retentionstrategies #customerexperience #customerretention

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👀 Salespeople reveal what they're thinking in 2024…    🔎 We've just released our latest report, in which we asked hundreds of AEs and sales leaders for their views on everything from their sales process and tooling to their confidence in the year ahead. Here's the results 😮 🥺 Only 9% of AEs believe their company’s buying process is very good. (Definitely some room for improvement!) 🤯 1 in 2 AEs lost a deal during the handover to Customer Success. But, when these teams collaborate effectively, customer churn plummets. 😤 78% of AEs find it difficult to multithread beyond their champion—highlighting an opportunity to improve and learn how to strengthen relationships across the buying team. 🧘🏼‍♀️ In the spirit of buyer enablement we’re not even harvesting your email address and flooding you with sales emails…simply download the full report, in peace, in the comments. #SalesInsights #trumpet #SalesStrategy #AccountExecutives

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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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"60% of clients churn yearly" Stats from the Recruitment CRM giant themselves Bullhorn What are you doing to ensure spot business isn't the standard? Hinterview's customers are reporting a 62% increase in repeat business since embedding the platform in their client's processes. How much untapped revenue sits in your database? #videoforrecruitment #exclusivebusiness #retainedbusiness #repeatbusiness https://lnkd.in/dn5KNW2M

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Cognism has just launched something super exciting 👀 Introducing the State of Cold Calling Report, for 2024 💥 For our sales teams over here at Cognism - we’re huge advocates for the phone. It is the strongest outbound channel for reps to let their personality shine through. Sellers can reveal their communication skills, which becomes even more important in the AE role. As someone who oversees our enterprise AEs in the US, it's a core skill that I look out for. As I was reading the report, something that Chris Ritson said, summarized the state of cold calling clearly: “From the communication perspective, with calling you have the ability to leverage your tone of voice - it is 4.5x more powerful than the words that you use. With emails, LinkedIn DMs, etc, you can’t leverage your tone of voice in the same way.” If you’d like to read more on what we found, from over 50,000 dials, you can read the full report via the link in the comments ⬇️

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What I hear a lot from SDR/BDR Managers focusing on cold outbound! 👨‍💻 Their reps are struggling to speak to enough people…..connect rates are sitting about 3% in the US and around 7-10% is the UK Their data quality is poor, so they’re not getting through to the right people or calling bad numbers! The reps call culture is on a decline because they spend all day dialling listening to voicemails and answer machines! (Even when the call goes to the right person they’re being marked as SPAM) What does that mean for SDR Managers and their teams ?🧐 They’re struggling to hit quota because they aren’t having enough conversations…. Pipeline is on a low…. They’re always trying to find ways of motivating their team to dial! If you’re looking to take back control by improving your teams efficiency, Allowing them to have more conversations Improving calling culture (Reps feel like they’re wasting time when they see no ROI on their time) Calling dynamically to ensure your using your data effectively Then let’s have a conversation! Drop me a DM 🚀 P.s Cold calling is the BEST form of outreach I don’t care…..

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🚀 Salespeople reveal what they're thinking in 2024…👀🚀  We've just released our latest report, in which we asked hundreds of AEs and sales leaders for their views on everything from their sales process and tooling to their confidence in the year ahead. It’s really insightful with some surprising stats that might have you rethinking your entire sales strategy. 🔍 Only 9% of AEs believe their company’s buying process is very good. (Definitely some room for improvement!) 🤝 1 in 2 AEs lost a deal during the handover to Customer Success. But, when these teams collaborate effectively, customer churn plummets. 🧵 78% of AEs find it difficult to multithread beyond their champion—highlighting an opportunity to improve and learn how to strengthen relationships across the buying team. If you’re involved in driving sales success, whether on the front lines or in strategic roles, you’ll want to have a read of these insights! 👉 In the spirit of buyer enablement we’re not even harvesting your email address and flooding you with sales emails…simply download the full report, in peace, in the comments. #SalesInsights #trumpet #SalesStrategy #AccountExecutives

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Please stop renaming outbound It’s the dumbest trend Well done outbound is now called Value based outbound which is now… Trigger led outbound which is has been changed to… Prospect led outbound which, this just in, has been renamed to… Inbound-outbound but slightly midbound with a hint of closebound Good lord Y’all sound like my 2 year old trying to form a sentence It’s outbound, evolving to market demands Relax, you didn’t discover the new way #sales

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Aaaaand we're back! 🇬🇧 After fighting off some serious jet-lag and beating the blues of no Big Gulp's readily available, we're back in the UK and ready to get chatting to some Sales Leaders who are looking to upskill their team. Here's the thing, coaching is the number one thing Sales Leaders know they can do to move the needle and support their team, yet often it's the thing that happens the least - with 28% of SDR's saying they 'never or almost never get coaching', crazy to think right? If you're a rep or a Sales Leader who thinks that stat relates to them, then let's chat! My dm's are open 💻 #sdr #salescoaching

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With September on the horizon, many enablement leaders will be looking at assessing what is working and what's not when it comes to measuring and reporting on sales performance.. What we have found when we are having conversations about this in the past is that most leaders know that what they have in place is misaligned. They don't have clarity over their entire tech stack and as a result, no indication over where to address training gaps and therefore miss out on an opportunity to significantly move the needle on performance. If you are looking at elevating your enablement strategy and getting granular on personalised development journeys within your commercial teams, I have attached a white-paper which we typically send to revenue leaders who are looking to make some changes:

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