Brendon Cassidy ❤️‍🔥

Hot Take… RIP #PLG, Long Live #SLG But before you throw shade, let me explain… 🔹 There are undoubtedly exceptions, I’m sure many will highlight monday.com, Freshworks, etc. 🔹 PLG works well for low ACV deals with low CAC… think SMB and mid-market customers. Target CAC payback <12 months 🔹 PLG is a fantastic top of funnel marketing channel for enterprise sales ⭐ But for 6-figure enterprise sales, you need enterprise salespeople pressing the flesh with customers

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What does 'Execution Excellence' actually mean? And why are Marc Benioff + Amit Bendov obsessed with it right now? Killer insights from Charlie Moss on how category leaders like Salesforce & Gong are resetting expectations to win despite headwinds!! 💥 “More rigor, more discipline, focused enablement, and a refined GTM strategy are a major part of their approach.” Specifically, Gong is investing in the following: - Greater accountability for the sales team + sales management - Weekly KPIs, weekly results, + monitoring key activities - Tracking every single deal with MEDDIC Achieving 'execution excellence' when it comes to running revenue teams is the WHY behind founding Accord... Ensure rigorous execution across each deal, and translating the winning strategy to the field in a way that actually works for sellers! Including tracking MEDDIC without feeling like homework, automatically updated in your CRM. Sales + CS Leaders using Accord to drive execution excellence understand what it takes for their sellers to win in 2024. Eg, we pulled data across 500+ Opps for a customers at their QBR, and saw: - 28% Win Rate across opportunities without Accord - 56% Win Rate across opportunities with Accord .... 100% increase in Win Rate when using Accord. This market isn’t about doing more with less. Its about doing the right things – consistently.

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Top Sellers aren't begging for specific features to beat competitors Or more training... what do they think will help drive more revenue?? 👀 See the report below for the real data 👀 Met with killer revenue leaders at Gong's annual conference last week and read their report on the "State of Sales Productivity" Similar to what we saw re: GTM Execution being a top priority for Founders / CEOs, this report shed light on top challenges impacting reps and hindering productivity... And it resonated. The least motivating thing when I was a seller? Wasting time OFF THE FIELD updating fields + busywork that didn't help my customers / prospects. I've yet to meet a successful seller who'd rather focus on internal tasks vs spending time moving deals forward... No surprised the top 3 areas that negatively impact rep productivity: 61% - Admin Tasks 47% - Inneficient processes 37% - Time management *Spending time on non-selling activities is de-motivating *BS internal processes slows down deals *Time is the most valuable asset to sellers / Opps (time does kill all deals) From spending time obsessed with making customers successful and being at the top of the leaderboard, I can tell you firsthand most GTM tools don't help with what frustrates the field the most. And is why I felt passionate enough to quit an amazing gig at Stripe to build Accord. To win in 2024's market, every moment counts. Revenue leaders can’t expect their team to be hit targets if they are not setting them up for success. Take the admin work out of it, and have fields populated automatically IN the flow of work. Build a repeatable playbook that is foolproof and can help leaders identify slipped deals, before they slip Make sure you team isn’t spinning their wheels on pipeline or activities that don’t move the needle. Are you making sure your team is motivated, focused on their customers, and setting them up for success going into the final weeks of the year and into 2025?? 📈

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Check out the latest GTM Secrets podcast by Identity Matrix with Saad Shaikh at CAST AI! He's a RevOps guru for both enterprise and mid-market orgs. Learn what he thinks we should be doing to accelerate the sales cycle, how to structure revops, and what it takes to rock in your gtm operations. Get the full episode on YouTube, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, and more! Link in the first comment. #gtm #revenueoperations #martech

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Want to elevate your sales game and win over C-suite executives? 📈 Learn from the best with ZoomInfo's top sales tips, including insights from our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck!  Discover the definitive guide to selling to the C-suite in 2024: bit.ly/4aSCL3i

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"sales is really hard... and anyone who tells you it's easy is *doing you a disservice*" Amen. Alex Kane, one of the very best in the craft of Enterprise Sales, joined for what might have been the most energizing + impactful episodes yet! LinkedIn isn't reality. Let's be real about what it takes to win in the world of Ent sales The preparation, mindset, and attitude it takes every single day to compete Maintaining incredibly high levels of positivity when you hear "no's" all day The confidence you need to have in yourself Knowing that you're always just 1 turn away from the best thing that could happen that year.... Approaching each call, email, and meeting with that attitude! I love the sales profession, and believe what separates Good from Greatness in the space has more to do with mindset and manifestation that the perfect disco questions or cold opener Have a listen and let me know your thoughts! 💭

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For Revenue Operations Directors, staying on top of market trends is essential. With the rapid growth of sales technology, evaluating RevOps tools has become more important than ever. A valuable resource for this is the HG Insights IT Spend Report, which helps identify spending trends and make data-driven decisions. In this article, key takeaways from the Sales and Marketing section of the report are highlighted, emphasizing the importance of investing in RPM software like Xactly. Read on: http://spklr.io/6043Q0w1

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Want to build a sales team that consistently exceeds its targets? 🎯 In the latest podcast episode of Building Elite Sales Teams, I had the privilege of interviewing Adam Aarons, a seasoned sales leader who has led companies like Okta from startup to IPO. 🚀 Adam shared his two pillars for building a high-performing sales team: Operations and Enablement. 🏗️ Adam dives deep into how these two pillars work together to create an execution engine that drives extraordinary results. 📈 Want to learn more about how to build a sales process that's repeatable and scalable? Listen to the full interview and discover Adam's insights on: 🎯 Getting early warning signals when your sales plan isn't working 🚨 🎯 The difference between a champion and a coach in a deal 🏆 🎯 How to hire the right sales talent 🤝 #SalesLeadership #OperationsAndEnablement #BuildingEliteSalesTeams

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A wave of consolidation is sweeping through the sales tech industry. I recently listened to a brilliant episode from the Topline podcast, featuring Salesloft CEO David Obrand, that shed light on the current state of the GTM tech landscape. As highlighted in the episode, key players like Clari, Gong and Outreach are expanding their offering to boost their TAM and offer more comprehensive solutions. Whilst the trend is understandable, the danger is long-standing partnerships start to fray as overlapping functionalities emerge - partnerships that were once the lifeblood of the sales tech ecosystem. For us, it begs the question. In a world of all-encompassing GTM suites, is there still a place for specialized, best-in-breed solutions? I believe the answer is a resounding yes - but only if they can offer extraordinary value. To thrive in this new era, point solutions must not only deliver great results but also seamlessly integrate into a company’s core tech stack and existing workflows. At MultiplyGTM, we’re laser-focused on providing planning intelligence that complements rather than competes with the everyday solutions revenue teams rely on, and goes deep in addressing a critical need - empowering revenue leaders with the confidence and clarity to achieve their goals. Whilst we may lack the resources of larger players, our goal is to provide unparalleled planning intelligence and insights that drive revenue, while growing sustainably and delivering immense value to our customers with our domain expertise. We're on the cusp of announcing some game-changing partnerships too that will extend our reach and impact, while maintaining our focus on delivering the revenue planning capabilities that drive profitable efficient growth. Stay tuned! 🚀

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The new episode of The Science of Scaling Podcast dropped today. In this episode, I speak with Ang McManamon the VP of Sales at Crunchbase. We dissect managing sales through a pivot, specifically how she managed the team as the market transitioned from one of the most bullish markets in tech in 2021 to one of the biggest down markets in tech in 2022. Example discussion points include: How to manage a board that is demanding an unrealistic revenue target? (1) Educate them on the current bottoms-up GTM model by showing them where the team has been performing on the key drivers of revenue outcomes over the past 2 quarters (i.e. the average productivity per rep (PPR), MQLs generated per month, average sales cycle and close rate on sales opportunities, etc.). We implement this framework with our portfolio companies Stage 2 Capital before issues like this even surface in order to establish the narrative from the beginning. (2) Illustrate where these metrics need to be to achieve the revenue outcomes they are demanding. Often this analysis yields the conclusion that the team would need to 2x PPR, MQL generating, and and close rates essentially overnight. Hopefully, they start to see how unrealistic the plan is and that the plan is going to lead to unnecessary burn and departures of top performers (3) Using the bottoms-up model, devise an aggressive but realistic plan that assumes say a 10%-20% Q/Q improvement in each of the performance drivers and the revenue outcomes that this performance would yield. (4) The board may ignore this line of thinking but at least we have educated them on the revenue mechanics and can use that framework to report back results at the next meeting. How to quantitatively assess whether a revenue miss is due to a macro condition, like the economy, or sales execution, like hiring and training the salespeople? An area few boards and leadership teams look at to conduct this diagnosis is the quarter-over-quarter performance of individual AEs, especially the consistent top performers on the team. If the company misses the target and you look under the hood and find that the historic consistent performers are still performing as usual and the miss was driven from AEs hired in the last year, we have a sales leadership execution issue. However, if we look under the hood and see that even the top performers' PPR decreased, perhaps at about the same time and about the same amount, then we have likely have a diagnosis outside of sales execution (i.e. economy, competition, product, etc.) Anyway, Ang is awesome and was completely open about this journey that so many leaders experienced over the past two years. Check out the episode here! https://lnkd.in/e2QiuPEH

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Are you experiencing longer sales cycles? Need more enablement for your sellers? Feeling the pressure on deal sizes? Do you need more pipeline to make the same revenue goals? Watch this on-demand webinar to learn how to drive efficiency across the funnel and keep winning in a tightened market. My favorite takeaways: 1. Create your ICP and personas, and integrate them into your targeting 2. Make efforts to collaborate between teams with shared metrics and feedback 3. Develop a simple or comprehensive lead nurturing strategy to engage buyers 4. Follow up first and personalize it using lead notes, expanding on their reason for shopping 👉 The Efficient Funnel: Lead Targeting and Engagement Best Practices: https://gtnr.it/4cv83gp #Webinar #LeadManagement #Efficiency Gartner Digital Markets Tom Cox Matt Hanson Alison Wong

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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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"If you want revenue, you need pipeline. And if you want pipeline, you need to prospect." – CRO Latané Conant (she/her) So how can revenue leaders get their teams bought in on prospecting? In her latest article for Forbes, Latané reveals how our own team at 6sense tackled that challenge with PG (pipeline generation) Tuesdays. See how #PGTuesday turned prospecting from a dreaded chore into a consistent, repeatable and successful process across our revenue team – and how you can do the same: https://okt.to/1Ro8I6

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CS teams NEED to start "managing up" with execs and the board by talking about REVENUE. Yes, you can keep talking about sentiment and feelings, but start with the $. Don't lead with churn- Bottom-line-focused execs don't like that headline, so you need to tell the story better. An informal poll had CS teams owning over 50% of the revenue of many SaaS companies. Lead with this and have it be your first talking point. From there you will be able to get more things done with other departments, as your requests will be revenue-focused Need to get a Customer Success Platform as you scale? Point to revenue and the potential to lose revenue without efficiencies Need to hire more to prevent burnout? Point to Revenue potential with renewals and upsells Talk in the language your execs and board want to hear.

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🎯 The Evolution of Call Transcripts: Insights on the Rapid Shift It’s fascinating how quickly recording every conversation has become standard practice. Here’s a quick overview of how some major players are carving out their niches in the space: * Sales-focused solutions: Gong and ZoomInfo (Chorus) are optimized for capturing individual sales calls. * Meeting assistants: Platforms like Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai focus on supporting various types of meetings, making every interaction accessible. * General record-it-all platforms: Google Meet and Zoom are widely used to capture almost any type of meeting. This is just a snapshot—each platform has unique strengths, and there’s a wealth of potential value companies can unlock. Here are a few trends shaping the way companies are capturing and using these insights: 🚗 Driving Actionable Follow-Up Winning customers requires more touchpoints than ever. These follow-ups aren't just about regurgitating what was said on a call—it’s about ensuring follow-through across multiple, timely interactions. This is where true sequence and funnel management shines. Do you have the insights you need to guide each rep on the right next steps? Can you identify who on your team is most effective at engaging the right persona at the right time in the right way, across multiple contact points? Current transcription solutions are great at summarizing the action items but don't do as well on bridging to the next touch point. 🥅 Capturing Opportunity through Playbooks Playbooks are powerful, but only if they’re leveraged effectively. Is your team consistently applying them? Better yet, who might be succeeding by adapting or going beyond the playbook? Current transcription solutions require a lot of manual effort to dig through calls and understand what is working and what is not. There is also no good way to discover little tricks others might have uncovered which help them succeed. 📊 Revolutionizing Data Capture “I love filling out CRMs,” said no one ever. While today’s AI tools are making CRM data entry easier, the future is all about bypassing manual data capture. Imagine drawing insights directly from your pool of transcripts, emails, calls, and documents—without the tedious data entry. What gaps are still in your CRM? And do they even matter? Being able to ground your insights into specific calls is nearly impossible. And keeping fields up to date is still labor intensive. Extracting insights across multiple calls and contact points is purely manual if done at all, but it doesn't have to be. Any others that stand out to you? Any of these you've seen done well?

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“Lack of visibility is the enemy of revenue.” Joe Vitalone (Strategic Advisor, Extreme Networks) said this on a recent Clari webinar. And I couldn’t agree more. Without visibility, CROs and revenue leaders: - Miss critical deal insights that could help prevent slippage or loss. - Struggle to set accurate forecasts because they don’t have a full view of the pipeline. - Lose alignment as marketing, sales, and customer success aren’t operating from the same data. - Fail to spot revenue leaks early, allowing problems to grow unnoticed. Visibility isn’t optional for revenue professionals — it's a must-have.

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Whew. The last few years in SaaS sales have been turbulent. Longer deal cycles, disappearing budgets, HUGE buying committees, and so much "consolidation." Strategic sell betweens and ROI proof are now critical to every deal, no matter the size. Two-thirds of sellers (67%) said a deal of theirs has suffered or been slowed down because they couldn’t produce relevant, specific customer evidence in a timely manner. I'm THRILLED to announce that UserEvidence has launched UserEvidence ROI Studies to help folks get quantifiable proof, backed by real customer outcomes and third-party verification, without the hefty analyst price tag or long wait. Details in comments below.

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How most sales reps sound like in deal reviews: 🗣 "We had an amazing demo with the prospect XY. They are really interested. They love our product. They said they need to discuss it internally with the CRO, but do not see a problem with this - money should not be a problem. They were also looking into competitors but do not like them as much as they like our solution." 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 Excitement is important and should be conveyed But the deal reviews are not the place for that Slack channels and meetings with the whole team are I struggled with this for the first 3 years (and still do). As salespeople, we have to be short-term pessimists and constantly ask ourselves the following questions: 👉🏻 Do you have a quantifiable business case? (Why any solution) 👉🏻 What exactly do they need that only we can provide? (Why our solution) 👉🏻 What happens if they do not change anything? (Why now) 👉🏻 What are potential risks and how are you mitigating those? 👉🏻 What is the next step concretely? If it is a meeting, what do we try to achieve there? ✅ In deal reviews, sales reps should sound more like this: 🗣 "Prospect XY is currently evaluating an initiative to reduce the time the salespeople spend entering data into the CRM. The 50 salespeople are currently spending 20% of their time on these tasks, which can be reduced by 50%. The prospect confirmed that they believe our solution can do that for them. No other solution they looked into integrates with their CRM. They also said that they are willing to spend 30% of what they win on efficiency. If they do not act now, they won't reach their yearly target. Our champion will present the solution to the CRO on the 10th of January. Unfortunately, they could not invite us. We have the debriefing meeting with them the day after" Recognise the difference? If that is more like you do it, well done. You will be far ahead.

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✨ Imagine a future where your sales performance management is unified, adaptive, and seamlessly collaborative.       🧬 Where resilient growth initiatives are fueled by flexible planning that evolves with your business.       🎯 Where incentives dynamically optimize channel partner performance amid shifting market conditions and misalignments are pre-empted through integrated workflows.      This isn’t a long-awaited dream. It’s reality.       At Varicent, this future-ready sales performance management guides our advancements in the industry we helped pioneer. 🚀 It led us to completely rethink sales planning, creating a purpose-built solution that adapts with your changing approaches to GTM.         As we continue to innovate and evolve SPM with the Revenue Performance Engine, the path forward rests on the three strategic pillars guiding our future-ready approach at Varicent.      3️⃣ Strategic Pillars for Future-Ready SPM:      Resilient Growth Initiatives 📈   Sales planning today demands flexibility - balancing territories and quotas, adapting sophisticated go-to-market models each year. Purpose-built, unified solutions like ours rewrite the rules to support your most complex planning needs.      Agility and Flexibility 🏎️💨   In a world of rapidly shifting channel incentives, legacy systems fall short. You need to detect and swiftly adapt to market changes. With AI-powered agility, our platform revolutionizes partner engagement and performance.      Enhanced Collaborative Efficiency 🤝   Eliminating cross-functional misalignments and “costly patchwork” is vital. We embed workflows that sync planning, execution and motivation, enabling unified objectives across your teams.      📣 The future of sales performance management is resilient, agile, and collaborative. Realizing the opportunities of tomorrow requires shedding the limitations of yesterday. Is your sales performance management strategy ready?    Join us on this journey to redefine sales performance and lead the charge into a future of unmatched growth and potential. See how you can build a high-performance revenue engine: ▶ https://lnkd.in/g6C8MZPA #SPM #RPE #revenueperformanceengine #salesperformancemanagement #salesplanning #varicent

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