Brendan Holey

Tired of losing hard-earned deals? Solve for Revenue Leak. In Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report, RevOps leaders said leak happens at every stage of the funnel. - Creating: Poor and slow upsell pipeline tracking - Converting: Unsure where pipeline is dropping off - Closing: Slipped deals Don’t let Revenue Leak drag down another quarter – or another year. Download the Revenue Leak Report for more: https://lnkd.in/g9gnGrdz  

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SALES, SALES, SALES - Let's meet & work together for the rest of your sales career - Account Executive Opening$ 💘 Revenue Tool - SaaS Series B $125- $150k base $1m- $1.2m quota $7k- $500k deal size selling into #saas #sales #gtm teams actual inbound $$ growing their sales team from 5-12 SDR support (one on one for now) for #startup rep$ only 💘 Direct to Healthcare Tool - SaaS Series B $900k quota Some SDR support ideal candidate has worked with #insurance and has #saas background 💘 Manufacturing ERP Account Executive & Implementation Consulting org $95-$110k base. $200k++ OTE $200k+ deal size Must MUST MUST have sold #erp to manufacturing companies this is NOT a platform, or a RESELLER, this is a CONSULTING ORG that sources, refines fit and works with the customer throughout a very long up to 2 year implementation process - you will be the #csm #am NO COLD CALLING OR SALES EMAILS you will work DIRECT with JUST the founder open to seeing #sdrs who have sold #erp to manufacturers who want to get out of software, and into consulting - SDR Opening$$ 💘 Direct to Healthcare Tool - SaaS Series B 10+ qualified attended meeting a month selling into #hr mostly within #nonprofits and #homehealthcare $55-$65k base, up to $200+ per qualified, attended meeting do not contact me if you aren't going to take my coaching seriously :) cold call me 10x in a row text me send me a blind invite do what you got to do <3 #sales #salesrecruiter #gtmsales #founderledsales #saleshiring #salesjobs

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To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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SDRs can be taught to be AEs SDRs can be taught to be CSMs [shoutout to Eric Partaker for the post inspo] Also... SDRs can be taught to be Managers SDRs can be taught to be Marketeers SDRs can be taught to do almost any role Fact: It's better to hire someone who is 60% ready with the right behaviours. Than 100% ready with the wrong ones. SDRs deserve a chance. Do you agree? PS. Share ♻️ with others in your network. And follow Chris Ritson for more sales content like this.

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The best "cheat codes" every AE should know: 1. 1:1s with your boss. Approach them strategically. Proactively share format and content. Biggest deals you need support on. Challenges you need help with. Forecast for the month, quarter, etc. Wins. 2. Perception. Performance is your fire. How you're perceived internally (aka your brand) is the water or gas that gets dumped on your fire. Attitude, how you show up, handle change, communicate, matters. Hold yourself to a high bar. Two levels above where you're currently at. 3. Document everything. Take the time to write down your own sales playbook. Every strategy, process and template you have. Store it on your personal computer. The value of this over time is immeasurable. I can't state this enough. 4. Problems are a good thing. Anytime there's a problem that's an opportunity to solve it, improve it, and add value. Some of the biggest opportunities I've gotten in my career came because I dove head first into problems and helped move the business forward. Startups always have problems. Don't be the negative person. 5. Time management. Block Monday mornings every week. Don't go to meetings if they're not worth your time. Most things can be solved async. Make meetings 15 to 20 mins. Sometimes you need a whole week of no meetings to catch up, get organized and do deep work. Don't feel bad for saying no to people. They'll understand. 6. External coaching. Up level by listening to podcasts, taking courses and building an external network. Don't rely on your company for everything. Even if they're doing a great job get the perspectives and strategies of other people for a significant edge. What would you add to this list? - Mike G 👉 Join 5,000+ sellers getting my (free) sales newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gwQVvVBK

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I don’t think it’s the case that all AE’s need to have started as #SDR’s. However I’ve seen time and time again that AE’s who cut their teeth in the SDR role score much higher in these 3 critical areas: 💥 Resiliency 💥 Humility 💥 Ownership over their day/routine And it just so happens that these 3 areas are for my money the most important criteria for an AE’s success. These are the intangibles (& transferrable skills in any career) that can’t be trained on the job very easily. Great work SDR’s!! ❤️ 👌 #sdr #softwaresales #saas #enterprisesales #salesteams #salestraining #salesculture #startups #coldcalls #salesprospecting #sales #ae #saassales #startupselling #salescoaching #salesteams #emailcadences #humility #routine #b2bsales #salesleadership #selling #success #transferrableskills #salescareers #salesroles #salessuccess #knockingondoors #

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From a Buddhist perspective, this statement highlights the profound influence of relationships on our well-being. Our interactions with others, including our managers, shape our mind and heart. A good boss fosters a supportive, compassionate environment, reducing stress and promoting mental peace—much like the Buddha taught about harmonious relationships. However, true peace comes from within. While external factors, like a kind manager, can uplift us, our ultimate mental health depends on our ability to cultivate mindfulness, detachment, and equanimity. We should seek balance both internally and externally. #Mindfulness #CompassionateLeadership #InnerPeace #WorkplaceWellbeing

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I booked 178 qualified meetings in under 10 months. The fastest in my class of 55 (killer) SDRs to get promoted to AE. Objection handling was my secret weapon. Other SDR's problem: They immediately tried to 'handle' the objection. Using the company script to counter everything a prospect shared. But I learned (the hard way) the first objection often isn't real. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗜 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱: 1/ "We're on a budget freeze until June" ↳ “Oh, wow. I'm sorry to hear. What's driving the budget freeze?” 2/ "Can you send me an email with more info first? ↳ “Absolutely. I’d love to! What would you want to see in that email?” 3/ "We already have a solution in place for that today." ↳ “Oh, that's great! I'm glad to hear you are investing in the space already! Are you comfortable sharing who you are leveraging?” Once you learn the real objection, you can handle it more appropriately. Final Day is today for the big sale for Systematizing Outbound. 𝟯𝟰% 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝘂 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆: https://lnkd.in/gk3rKNy2 Join 2,000+ sellers.

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Your SDR just quit. Your Sales Engineer is overwhelmed. Your CRO is underperforming. Pick one to fix first." TRICK QUESTION. ⚠️ Here's why this mindset is killing automation & manufacturing companies: Your sales ecosystem is interconnected. Fixing one piece while ignoring the others is like changing one tire on a misaligned car. We just helped a $50M automation company rebuild its entire sales organization in 90 days: • 2 SDRs • 3 Sales Engineers • 1 Sales Leader ALL passive candidates....ALL President's Club-level talent. #salesleadership #automation #manufacturing #hiring"

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It’s unethical to hire large groups of SDRs only to lay them off 3 months later. PSA to revenue leaders & CEOs: You won’t be able to increase your revenue from $XX to $XXXX solely from an SDR channel. SDRs have traditionally been demand capture channels. It’s not possible to capture demand at scale without creating the demand first. This means one-of-two things must happen: 1) Replace your SDRs with NDRs (Full-cycle growth reps suggested by Mac Reddin 🦕) 2) Launch a massive demand gen campaign to enable your outbound team Thanks again for having me on Parthi Loganathan & Letterdrop

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99% of SMB sellers think they need to get promoted to enterprise to make $300,000 a year. They're wrong. What they REALLY need is a hungry market and a decent comp plan. Here's 4 reasons why SMB reps can out-earn enterprise reps. 1. If your company isn't firmly "upmarket," enterprise reps struggle. In my heyday at Gong, the highest-earning salespeople were SMB reps. I knew several who cracked $300,000. We had not yet 'crossed the chasm' to selling to the enterprise. Yet startups and SMBs were RAVENOUSLY hungry for what Gong had to offer. Enterprise reps struggled. SMB AEs routinely hit 200% of their number. When you have commission accelerators in place, that's big money. 2. Enterprise customers are "laggards." Again, if your company hasn't "crossed the chasm," most enterprise buyers view new technology with skeptical eyes. They want to see other enterprises "go first." They aren't trying to get a fast-mover advantage. They're trying to not f*** up. It can take YEARS for your company to "crack" the enterprise. 3. Enterprise is feast or "famine." The people who make HUGE incomes in enterprise? They close 2-3 MEGA deals per year. They aren't hitting a bunch of singles, doubles, and triples. They choose to go "all in" on a few home runs. If it pans out, they make millions. If it doesn't, they make their base pay. 4. Your quota in enterprise is much higher. Here's a dirty secret for you, coming from a former sales leader who designed comp plans: If your OTE goes up, so does your quota. Senior business leaders know that quotas must be at least 3.5x to 5x the size of your OTE. It has to be that way. Otherwise the math of the business falls apart. 5. Product/market fit in enterprise and SMB are VERY different. Just because you have product/market fit in SMB doesn't mean that applies to the enterprise. Big enterprises have DIFFERENT demands on your product for it to be considered. SSO and advanced security capabilities to name a couple. Many companies are light on these features. So enterprise reps have to "sell around those gaps," which is REALLY hard. Ok. To the future guy in the comments: I agree with you: There are long-term career reasons to want to land an enterprise sales role, even if it means making less money short term. I support that. But don't tell me for a second that SMB reps are destined to make peanuts and enterprise reps are destined to make millions. Rarely happens that way. Especially in hot startups. You can make $300,000 in SMB if you find a hungry market. P.S. I had dinner recently with the COO of a $2B publicly held SaaS company. He formerly worked at Box in their heyday. Mentioned their highest-earning salespeople were SMBs reps, often topping out at $500k. Something to think about. P.P.S. I've watched over 3,000 discovery call recordings "by hand." Here's a list of the 39 best questions that sell: https://go.pclub.io/list

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🤯 “Ramping up SDRs, AEs and CS people  takes us no less than 6 months.” 💣 🙈 This is what I heard on a recent demo from  a CRO of a rapidly scaling tech business. 📈 Time to efficiency is a struggle Heads of Sales Enablement and Customer Success are going through across their commercially-driven teams… 📖 At the moment, they expect internal  sales and CS decks, call recordings,  business pitches, etc. should do the job. 🙄 But it doesn’t! 🗓️ They're wasting too much time for people to start performing, closing deals, effectively onboarding customers, reducing churn & upselling… ❌ Sometimes, they still don’t perform... And then guess what? Off leaders go through to recruiting mode again starting from ground 0. 🎯 Hence the need for action-based learning.  Not just passively reading through PDFs  and listening to call recordings. 👨‍💻 Below are some use cases we see our customers here at UJJI AI ✨ leveraging our tech for: 🔸 Business-specific lead gen and outbound 🔸 Pitching quick and easy over the phone 🔸 Delivering demos and answering queries 🔸 Effectively onboarding new customers 🔸 Efficiently implementing product features 🔸 Practising great customer support 🔸 Guiding customers to upselling 🚀 Ultimately, growing tech businesses comes down to predictable new business development, high customer retention and low churn. 💬 So, DM me if you want to see examples  of AI-powered. easy to build and consume knowledge equipping experiences. 👇 Anything to add to this, Sales and CS leaders? Gautam Rishi Rohan Dickinson George Heron Russell Mitchell Callum Hartley Jon Teale James Dixon Seán Colfer Caroline L. Guy Rubin Jake Carter David Muscat Arun Raveendran Steve Eveleigh Ayo Kukoyi,

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Ashi from Gong is fast (😮‍💨10k) But not as fast as Gong Engage users when they use Lavender. Access to your Gong calls in our personalization assistant ✅ Access to our coach & "Ashi fast" personalization in Gong ✅ Better 🤝 Faster 3.0 (and so much more) coming soon

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Sales folks especially SDRs and AEs I will tell you a hack about how to achieve more in less time ↓ "Start blocking your calendar thoughtfully and strategically every single day" Working out of whims & fancies and adhocism will not get you the desired result you aspire to achieve. You need to have a plan for your day even before starting the day. Every time you block your calendar make sure you block it for a single activity and you define what output you want to achieve out of this activity. Have a time block for at least Prospecting, Identifying new accounts, and Follow-ups on a daily basis, the rest you can block based on your roles and KRAs. Remember: "You cannot control time but you can surely control how you want to spend the time"

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A few hot outbound prospecting takes on this crisp and cool Thursday from a full-cycle AE: 1. I do not really use sequences/cadences anymore for my outbound, I use manual emails and follow up tasks.. It doesn't take me more than 3-4 touches to get a response. Cadence/sequence simply keeps me organized and so things don't slip through the cracks. 2. I also think the idea of needing "12-14" touches to get a response is absurd. This is a lie you were sold on and forced you to do "outreach at scale with automation" *if your messaging was relevant and problem focused, it wouldn't take you that many touches to get a response* 3. I also think most people use sequences/cadences as a crutch and end up forgetting to complete their later stage tasks any way 4. Automation in sequences/cadences rarely works anymore 5. And lastly, you can get a response on the first few touches if you: a.) Understand prospects do not care about your featues but do care if you can help them solve a problem b.) Understand prospects only care about personalization if it's relevant in context to the problem you can help them solve (aka a trigger) c.) Understand and empathize with how much spam your prospects get and be thoughtful in how you reach out to them d.) Stop listening to everyone else's advice and A/B test to find what works for you. (like me using manual emails and not sequences :) ) That's all. Thank you. 🔥

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Average Contract Value by segment: Strat - $278K ENT - $180K MM - $57K Direct correlation with your expected payouts? Yes. Average OTE by segment: Strat AE - $280K See more: https://lnkd.in/gEqj9YQz ENT AE - $255K See more: https://lnkd.in/gb7GeWzW MM AE - $165k See more: https://lnkd.in/gDkDDg5w The larger the deals you're selling, the more earning potential. The more earnings potential, the higher the expectations. All open SaaS roles here: https://lnkd.in/ggz4efaD Any of these surprise you? 🦙

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Everyone in your revenue org has a different view of what's going on. Learn how to leverage it: VPs: “We’re tracking behind on our Q3 revenue target. We need to increase our ACV by doubling down on Enterprise opportunities.” Sales Managers: “We’re tracking behind our Q3 revenue target. We don’t have enough opportunities to double down on. We need to increase our outbound activity to drive pipeline.” Account Executives: “I’m behind on my Q3 target. Building more pipeline isn’t going to help me this quarter. I need to close at least 50% of my open opportunities to get back on track (even though my average is 25%).” Same Problem. 3 Completely Different Approaches. If you work in revenue enablement, you have the unique opportunity to be a bridge between team members at every level. Here’s what that sounds like… To VP’s: “If we want to increase our team’s ACV by moving up market, we’ll need to audit how we qualify opportunities and make sure we’re getting the right stakeholders involved in discovery. Do you have time to collaborate on a new rubric for our SDR’s and AE’s to qualify champions? I’d expect this to take about 3 months before we start seeing consistent results. Is there any opportunity to focus on mid-market win rate in the meantime?” [Once approved, go to your sales managers] To Sales Managers: “I understand we need more activity, but until our reps are identifying the right people to get on a call, it’s going to be wasted effort. Leadership is working on a new qualification framework for next quarter, but in the meantime, you can still hit your target by focusing on moving more of your existing pipeline in S2 & S3 into later stages in the sales cycle. What are some high-value deals that you feel are stuck right now?” [Then, go to your reps] To Sellers: “Your managers have identified some deals that are stuck in the early stages of the sales cycle. In the past, I’ve noticed you tend to use discounts as a lever to push deals through faster. How would you go about advancing these deals if you weren’t able to discount them at all?” By taking the time to listen to different perspectives from across the org, Enablement becomes a force multiplier that get’s everyone moving towards the same goal.

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Hot take: most SaaS companies should not have a separate CSM and AM for each customer. We are already seeing the full sales cycle AE on the rise. I think we'll see the same with a merged CSM/AM role. Full-stack GTM roles are the future (yes, AI-assisted).

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The path from $1m - $50m ARR is a graveyard for sales leaders. The average tenure for CRO / VP of Sales is under 18 months. You almost never hear of the same sales leader leading a company from $1m to $50m+. Why is it so rare for sales leaders to level up as the company scales? The "$0 - $1m" sales leader struggles to get to $10m. The "$1m - $10m" sales leader struggles to get to $50m. And so on. You see so many examples of this across the B2B SaaS industry. Working in an early stage company is kinda like playing jazz. Everyone member of a jazz band has their speciality, but the music comes from how they improvise and push each other to play. As you scale, the company looks more like an orchestra than a jazz band. Each section of an orchestra is highly specialized. The music is structured to blend each section together to make a sound - a symphony. Sure, a jazz player can learn to play in an orchestra. But it is rare. In the same way, the $0-1m sales leader can learn to be the $10m or $50m leader. But this kind of personal growth is uncommon. It requires a level of self-awareness and a commitment to learning that most people don't have. I've heard this trait called "dynamic range" - the ability for a leader to improve their skills to match the stage of the company. When you have a leader on your team who shows dynamic range, invest in them. Give them the opportunity to learn how to play in an orchestra.

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