David Brown

Thanks to RevOps Automated and HubSpot for organising a great discussion over dinner last night. It's incredibly useful to hear how other sales leaders are tackling the problems of how to grow businesses in 2024

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Tell me if you agree. This is true. However to achieve this, the supporting teams like Product, Engineering, Support, billing etc. will need to scale up and ensure that the CSMs are not having to deal with things line downtime, support ticket updates, frequent product/platform failures etc. Trust me, managing customers who are unhappy because of downtime or silence from support or unstable product/ platform is draining for the CSMs. If this is managed by the respective teams with Tech Support playing the first line of defence/ update for any thing tech, CSMs can do magic with customer experience and revenue.

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Here are a few of the questions submitted ahead of the webinar on 'SDR Team of the Future' with David Wilkins Shabri Lakhani and Nicola Anderson Are sales cadence tools harming or helping? Is SDR outreach really the best way to grow your business? Best operating model for SDR teams ? How to manage tenured SDR's and ensure continued performance? Team structure, process, KPIs, all the good stuff What makes an SDR Team successful? From my experience to date, AI can get you 90% there at best, but you still need a human to check and make it 100%. How long do you think it will take for us to get to 100%/fully automated and in the meantime, who should be responsible for checking the AI output (SDRs, AEs or leaders)? Is the SDR function (for humans) dead ? How do I integrate AI successfully into our outbound motion? And what tools should we be looking at, apart from chatGPT Best practice for creating smooth marketing and sales teams focused on solely conversion What does a ‘best practice’ SDR team look like today and what are thoughts on overcoming the remaining challenges most effectively in the future - ie what next? Why are so many SDRs missing target? How should we comp SDRs to facilitate the creation of good quality pipeline, whilst simultaneously allowing them to maintain control over their compensation? If we don't invest in SDRs, what happens to our talent pipeline of the future? ****** There's a lot going on in the world of SDRs right now! If you want to hear the answers to your questions, you should join us 13.00-14.00 this Thu, May 9th! Link below. #sdr #pipeline #bdr #outbound #prospecting

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What does it take to drive revenue while leading with empathy? I sat down with Alexandra (Alex) Gold, Customer Success Leader at GoCardless to find out and below are the key takeaways from our conversation. 👇 👉 Customer Success isn’t just about reducing churn—it’s a growth engine. The strong relationships CSMs build enable them to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities organically, focusing on addressing customer needs rather than simply selling. 👉 Align Customer Success with customer outcomes. When you help customers achieve their goals, expansion conversations happen naturally—it's about delivering ongoing value, not pushing new products. 👉 Hiring for CS is about finding balance. Candidates need both soft skills, like empathy and communication, and the technical skills to solve complex problems. Focus on current team gaps—for instance, prioritizing technical skills if you’re already strong in commercial expertise. Above all, look for a coachable mindset, a hunger to learn, and cross-team collaboration. 👉 Keep your team motivated with transparency and a focus on control. By openly communicating changes, you build trust and keep everyone aligned. Last but not least Alex shared an unconventional tip: Build open, personal relationships with your team—sharing life updates and encouraging them to do the same. It builds trust and deepens connections, humanizing leadership rather than diminishing respect. For more tips, you can find the full interview below 👇 #SuccessmadeSimple #leadership #RevenueGrowth

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New batch incoming. 56 playing cards each covering a role or team in a B2B SaaS company. ➡ Marketing - including VPs, directors, managers and teams across growth, brand, field and more ➡ Sales - including VPs, directors, managers, AEs, SDRs, AMs, Renewal, Partners and Solution Architects ➡ Customer Success - including VPs, Directors, Managers, Onboarding and Tech Support ➡ Revenue Operations - including strategy, insights, systems, enablement and deal desk Map out your current go-to-market team on your board table. Identify gaps, remove silos, plan what-if scenarios and rearrange your hierarchy. Bi-product - teach your family members what you do for a living.

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I’ve had some real a-ha moments around revenue teams in 2024. They’ve come from personal experience and many of my own hard learnings. From interacting in revenue communities, to reading the current state of sales and in my drive, passion and capacity as an enabler for sellers and leaders alike. 〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️ What fires me up? People and their mindset, team culture and success of sales teams and what’s needed to drive to common goals. A big theme from so many communities is the state of current markets and attainment of sales people right now. Just look at RepVue for a reality check outside your own company. Sales leaders, slow down and understand the reality and impact of the buyers markets on your sellers right now. Captain obvious here, but what’s your data telling you? Every single day, my feed tells me, it’s tough in the markets today for revenue professionals, people losing jobs, many great talented people missing quota and becoming demotivated and apathetic to our profession. We all have a responsibility to align on what success looks like, together 🙏 Struggling Markets aren’t an excuse to cast blame and it’s not and excuse not to do the work, it’s a call-out and a flag to pull teams together more than ever right now. Leaders and their teams need to get back to basics and focus on the plan, the actions and the skills needed to get there. Business leaders, please get back to basics, the market most definitely drives humility around perceived value prop and go back to basics of knowing what helps your customers to win better. And please STOP expecting sales to save the day. Revenue is a team sport 🏏 Sales IC’s, you in particular need to have a loud voice and be part of planning and vital conversations around numbers. This is YOUR responsibility. Make it your business to share your insights. If you stay silent you’re driving the problems deeper. Afterall, future leaders, you are the ones who can share what’s what on the ground and the ones who’ll do the work. Let’s focus on sales team culture and create an aligned plan and bought-in goal that everyone can get behind as something to strive for. Set everyone up to achieve targets that are attainable, invest the time being close to the details of what your sellers are experiencing every day, take time to coach, practice and evolve and develop your teams this year. Create and nurture culture, and the systems to enable, inspire and hold people accountable, give them input targets that can be measured and review them together. This post was inspired by Collin Cadmus yesterday - see comments. What do you think 🤔 he says it all really #reality Let’s stop ✋ the clock, pause, take a look under the hood of your business and adjust to what’s reasonable, motivational, inspiring and achievable. Teams, it’s half way through the year, what you gonna do with the rest of it and how can you help each other? #leadership #sales

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How Will the Role of CS Evolve Over the Next Few Years? Vitally.io asked 30 experts on their thoughts. Download the report (see comments). Ever since I worked as a CSM and had the task of being onboarding, a strategic partner, and own some part of troubleshooting I knew that wasn't sustainable. One person can not do the job of 3 let alone be an expert in all 3. Having defined swim lanes and clear expectations on each role not only helps employees do their best but also allows for the right resource to support customers when needed.

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Revenue lost to inefficiency is revenue your competitors gain. Are your current go-to-market processes costing you deals? As a sales leader, the obstacles never end – intense competition, evolving customer expectations, and more. Despite investments in CRMs, forecasting tools, and training, revenue and profits are stalling. Why? - Disconnected go-to-market strategies can create costly gaps and missed opportunities. Leaders often find themselves making reactive, costly decisions in a system designed for the past, not the present. Discover the solution forward-thinking leaders are adopting. Download the industry report, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services: Breaking Down Silos to Boost Sales Performance and Drive Growth, and get: 💡 Exclusive insights on how misaligned sales plans hinder growth 💡 Advice from leaders at PepsiCo, Celonis, and Deloitte on rethinking GTM strategies 💡 Proven strategies that can help maximize ROI on your sales investments Why wait? You could lose out on a 4-10% growth in revenue if you do. Download the report today. ➡️ https://lnkd.in/gx4Q9Mcm Varicent, Deloitte, Marcus Minten, Nora El-Muttardi

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I am so looking forward to this! The conversation about #AgenticAI will be amazing with Ketan; and with the introduction of Spotter, I'm excited to talk about how an AI data analyst or business analyst embedded in applications can take business innovation to a new level! New business models, new revenue streams, new levels of customer experience! Let's do this!

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Wasting your time on personas and accounts who can't buy or are window shopping is holding you back from hitting target... 😥 A bloated pipeline means you aren't focusing all your time and energy on in market accounts. The best way to analyse this is to go back through your pipeline to figure out: ✅ Does this account align to our ICP? ✅ Is this a persona that can buy or can significantly influence a purchase? ✅ What's the compelling reason they would buy my product right now? ✅ What impact would we have on their process if we came in now? ✅ Do I have clearly defined and meaningful next steps? If you can't answer these questions, the chances are your deal isn't real 😰

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Limitless. It’s time to go beyond human capabilities. 🧠AI Call Agents with perfect memory. 🐘Recognise past conversations & preferences. 👀 Fully searchable conversations for team 🔥Never miss a sales opportunity Imagine you have a team answering the phone. All of your team have so much know how in their heads, all the conversations they had last week and exactly the tone in which people replied. But that’s invisible to you. With a team of AI call agents it’s now fully searchable and your AI agent never gets tired, works 24/7 and has perfect memory. It’s time to augment your team with AI agents. Implement AI Piers Linney Samuel Rodriguez ShiSh S. Vikas Arora Rahul M. Victoria Jayne Damon Crawford Alaric Wilson

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Thanks Linkedin for having some of us today at the Customer Success Leader’s Summit in lovely Farringdon in London. Great learnings, awesome speakers and the much needed networking. Here's a few of my notes: 💡 The economy is turning - are we ready? 💡 A simple reminder: profitable growth is simply - increased revenues & decreased costs. Which really means CS is a P&L 💡 Measuring CS can simply be measuring customer engagement 💡 Our gig is really about "getting enough high-quality conversations with the people that matter" 💡 CS needs a commercial mindset, but we are not sellers 💡 We have finally moved away from "happy customers" to the more grown up "successful customers" 💡 Differentiating CS roles can streamline execution - onboarding specialists, adoption specialists, product or scenario specialists 💡 Use of tech (did we say #GenAI?) to save time needs to be coupled with guidance on how to use that saved time 💡 How to ensure Sales and Customer Success work together: communicate communicate communicate & synch compensation plans 💡 Use data to run CS operations 💡 Churn classification is essential 💡💡the most illuminating one - according to a recent survey "assisting with technical implementation deployment" is #1 priority for customers and last priority for CS! Ouch! And the most revealing and simple truth of it all: 💡 💡 💡 💡 Revenue Growth = Sales Revenue Retention = Customer Success 💡 💡 💡 💡 There's nothing more enlightening than being able to share your thoughts and learning from like minded people. And nothing more exciting than seeing old and new friends! Which topic is your favourite? #CustomerSuccess #SalesStrategy #GrowthMindset #BusinessCollaboration #CustomerSuccessExcellence #Csm #leadership #csleaders #csleadership #customersuccessleader #csthoughtleader

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A few weeks ago, Tom Richards, Pete Prowitt, and I were chatting when Pete framed the role of RevOps and its part in the modern sales team in a really powerful way. Annnnd it completely re-framed my thinking about the role. RevOps has evolved—big time. It’s no longer just about lead routing or cleaning up CRM data. It’s about owning the entire customer lifecycle and driving growth at every stage. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲: ✅ From Siloed Segmentation to Unified Targeting 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲: Customer segmentation was fragmented. Marketing, sales, and customer success each had their own ways of grouping customers, leading to mismatched priorities and inconsistent messaging. 𝗡𝗼𝘄: RevOps centralizes customer data across teams, using real-time insights to build actionable segments. Everyone—marketing, sales, and customer success—works from the same playbook, ensuring we target the right customers at the right time with the right message. ✅ From Reactive Account Monitoring to Real-Time Customer Behavior 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲: Account health was monitored sporadically by different teams. Too often, churn was a surprise instead of something teams could proactively prevent. 𝗡𝗼𝘄: RevOps integrates data (product usage, and CRM) via tools like Pavlov to create clear pictures of customer actions and value. This empowers teams to leverage automation or act early to reduce churn, and uncover opportunities for upsells and renewals. ✅ From Fragmented Post-Sale Ops to Seamless Customer Journeys 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲: Post-sale operations were an afterthought. Onboarding was clunky, handoffs between teams were messy, and renewals felt like a fire drill. 𝗡𝗼𝘄: RevOps streamlines onboarding, aligns customer success with revenue goals, and enhances the entire customer lifecycle. From onboarding to renewal, RevOps ensures growth through customer satisfaction. RevOps isn’t just a support function anymore—it’s the engine behind sustainable growth. It ensures that every customer touchpoint adds value. #revops

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How do you get AEs to prospect more? Turns out, a simple driver might be...streaks? We added a small, almost accidental feature in AccountAim - a daily activity map, inspired by GitHub’s contribution tracker. It’s become a huge driver of AE prospecting output. 🔥 Reps don’t want to break their streaks 🏆 Visible competition motivates the whole team 📈 Activity leads to impact - reps can easily sense the correlation between activity and opps created when presented visually Combine this with prescriptive targeting, and many of our customers have more than 2x’d AE prospecting activity. It’s no wonder gamification has taken off in all of the consumer apps, it’s actually a game-changer. Credit to Brett, our CTO, for this one!

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Sales and RevOps leaders are always on the hunt for solutions to help their sales reps get away from admin tasks so they can spend more time selling. PipeLaunch and SalesMethods Ltd are offering a bundled solution to help sellers cut down on admin AND improve data quality. Check out the article to learn more!

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Do you use Intent Signals to help your Sales Teams prioritise their efforts? I only ask as I spoke with a Sales Director last week, who talked of her frustration that their Intent tool is actually "reducing" the chances of success for her Sales Team, which intrigued me. We discussed the analogy of "Giving them a Sat Nav in their car, powered by black-box AI. In essence, they are told where to go but there is no insight on why they should drive to the destination...and as often as not they are sent down back alleys, dead ends and places they get no benefit in driving to. Eventually they switch off the Sat Nav and start researching their old fashioned road map again" This really hit home....if you have a black-box intent engine which sends SDRs and Sales off on wild goose chases, wasting their time on poor-fit accounts not actually in-market it means: - They miss potentially good opportunities - It negatively affects their close rate % - It destroys their trust in the intent - It undermines Sales and Marketing alignment. You need intent insight which you can have 100% trust in, gives the WHY behind that insight, ensuring Sales are only focusing on in-market companies who are ready to buy, and they can actually sell to. This is exactly how Demandbase works... take a look here and ensure your SDR and Sales teams spend 100% of their time only on companies they can actually sell to: https://lnkd.in/eB7s9Q7A #intent #closerates #b2bsales

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Gentle reminder, there are only two days left in the quarter for many of us in tech. While hitting your sales number is crucial, creating long-term value for your customers is the best way to secure their business now, next quarter, and for years to come. Remember to prioritise the customer first and the rest will follow. #sales #createlongtermvalue #customerfirst

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𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴? Here's my top tip: Practice Active Listening 👂🏼 → Pay Full Attention: When customers talk, focus entirely on them. Avoid distractions and make them feel heard. → Ask Open-Ended Questions: Encourage them to share more about their needs and concerns. → Paraphrase and Summarize: Repeat back what they've said in your own words to ensure you understand and show you’re listening. → Read Non-Verbal Cues: Notice their body language and facial expressions for additional insights. Understanding your customer starts with truly listening to them. Try it and see the difference! ♻️ #activelistening #customerexperience #customerinsights #businessgrowth #listeningskills #customerengagement #customersatisfaction #improveyourbusiness #understandcustomers #businesstips #weblozy

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Can you imagine a world 25% of all senior sales leaders believe their sales team would be better WITHOUT enablement?! 🤦🏻‍♂️ Well, that is one of many alarming stats from a new report from Replicate Labs that I was very happy to be part of….and there’s more ✍️ 80% enablement teams have CI as part of their stack, but 2/3 of reps claim CI to be a waste of time 😮 This might all seem doom and gloom, but I think all it shows is that a new way is needed and that while there are some crazy stats in the survey, it shows that, more than ever, alignment across all revenue depts is needed with a focus on being buyer centric🤝 If you want a look at this industry defining report comment ‘show me the new way’ and the brilliant James Pursey will send it over #enablement #salesenablement

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