Devon Lawler

Just got off a call with Udi Ledergor 🏳‍🌈... That could be the whole post, couldn't it? 🤩 🙇‍♀️ But wait - there's more! ha Udi so kindly offered up time on his calendar for Gong users to learn key ways to leverage the platform for *marketing* Of course, I instantly raised my hand. 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 30𝐦 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥: ☝ There are SO many new ways I can pull info from Gong to guide marketing efforts: content direction, win/loss analysis, key message tracking compared to performance... I was like a kid in a candy shop. 🍭 Marketing candy 🍭 ✌ Gong/Udi is genius. Offering 30m of their time to drive product adoption, customer retention, and most importantly this rush of *excitement* directly tied to their platform... pure gold. Golden tips and a golden marketing play, folks. 𝐒𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐰, 𝐈'𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠: How fast can I get these new Gong trackers live? and How can Daxtra create a similar kid-in-a-candy-story rush for *our* customers? 🤔 I'll share more as I dive into both. Thx Udi! #b2b #marketing #gtm #productmarketing

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts.  With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds.  Ready to give Copilot a try? Request a demo: bit.ly/3Kj4myP #ZoomInfoCopilot

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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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In my experience, I see sales reps offer POCs when the selling team (ahem, primarily the rep) has either 1. not qualified the opportunity fully, or/nor 2. conveyed the value of the identified solution (ahem again, using the customer's/prospect's definition of value). I also have seen reps using an unrequested POC as a cherry-on-top, but this is usually because it's the rep not the customer who isn't sold on the value! ...so as a greatly-respected SE leader once taught me, "don't put a POC in in the way of your PO".

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“SDRs are lazy.” “SDRs don’t care about revenue.”  “SDRs don’t take ownership.” If any of these sound familiar, I’ve got news for you: the problem is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 your SDRs—it’s how they’re being managed. Here’s how we approach this at SpotDraft and empower our SDRs to take true ownership: 𝟭. 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀: We’ve designed a replicable process that allows anyone on the team to hit around 80% of their target. But getting to 100%? That takes extra effort. The stretch keeps things challenging and motivating. 𝟮. 𝗚𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀: We don’t just hand out targets. We give our SDRs full visibility into the company’s broader goals, so they know exactly how their work ties into the bigger picture and what’s at stake if we miss targets. 𝟯. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘀: My SDRs are closely involved in 2-3 deals every quarter, right through to closure. This helps them understand the entire sales cycle, customer pain points, and the AE’s perspective on things. We also offer additional incentives for closed-won deals, helping shift their focus from just SQLs to overall revenue impact and see the bigger picture. 𝟰. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: Whether it’s processes, tech stack updates, or new initiatives that directly impact them, our SDRs are part of the conversation. This involvement creates a sense of ownership and significantly boosts their engagement. 𝟱. 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀: Too many orgs treat SDRs like second-class citizens while relying on them to build the entire pipeline. It’s time we change this mindset as an industry. SDRs are just as critical to a company’s success as any other role, and they should be treated that way. 𝟲. 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Enablement isn’t just about skills—it’s about motivation. Writing personalized emails that get left unopened or facing constant rejection on cold calls, can drop morale. We focus on recognizing small wins and giving the team opportunities to recharge, like team dinners or virtual hangouts. 𝟳. 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳𝗳: Once SDRs are trained to hit targets and understand what conversion rates look like, let them plan their outreach. A manager’s role is to advise, not develop every strategy for them. Step in when they’re stuck but encourage them to try things on their own first. 𝟴. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗸𝗮𝘆: As Akshay Doshi always says, “𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵-𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴.” It's only a problem if you make the same mistake again. When SDRs aren’t afraid to make mistakes, they feel empowered, take higher ownership, and have faith in management to back them up. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽? #sdr #sales #leadership #growth #spotdraft

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Our partnership with Brex now gives us unparalleled insight and breadth in SaaS purchasing reports

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"Most Talked about RevTech" prizes go to: CPQ Competitors Nue.io and DealHub.io Clay has come up in every roundtable/meeting I've been in Lead routing competition coming in hot with Chili Piper Apollo.io coming in cheap against ZoomInfo Rattle 🦖 (for workflows) and Recapped 🎯 (for deal rooms) Inflection.io and Iterable (and how marketing automation needs disruption) And Gong coming in hot taking with consolidation Who is coming up for you? #tech #revops

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💯 In my experience, CSMs who did what the company asked had unhappy customers. The CSMs who did what the customer needed had happy customers. Focusing on real communication and understanding what is important to the customer will drive success. Focusing on getting a customer to say they are happy at this moment is pointless.

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SDR Dashboards - what do you want to see? Gimme your top 3 stats/charts/reports you like to see on YOUR dashboard for pipeline gen. There's the obvious activity levels and SQL/SAL volumes but what else do you like to see.....

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It's finally shipped. The top direct integration request for Inari (YC S23) is live now: Gong! You can now directly integrate Gong with Inari to ingest all sales call transcripts from specific workspaces then Inari will automatically analyze each conversation for useful customer quotes, sales blockers, feature requests, and praises. Instead of manually sifting through Gong calls transcript by transcript, Inari automatically surfaces clusters of top trends in your sales convos so you know exactly what problems and feature requests are blocking new deals, praises your customers are sharing, and provides metrics to make prioritization and reporting easier. Try this out and let me know how we can improve the integration or make better use of sales calls and insights for improving product development!

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SaaS CROs/CSOs with sales teams that struggle to prove value: 👉Check out the benefits of hiring a Fractional Value Leader/Advisor/Engineer providing Value Management-as-a-Service vs. adding it to an existing team member's already overloaded list of priorities Better results: ✅ Increase sales win rates by 40% or more ✅ Reduce discounting by 10-25% ✅ Improved expansion with over 25% higher deal size ✅ Less churn 4 ways a Fractional Value Leader gets better results: 1️⃣ Brings proven tools (Value Discovery, Value Model Design, Value Calculators, Value KPI dashboards, Value Alignment Workshops, etc.) but knows how to tailor them to your go-to-market motion 2️⃣ Leverages experience with diverse companies to drive deeper integration into existing processes across marketing, sales, implementation, customer success, pricing, and product development 3️⃣ Anticipates obstacles to drive higher adoption through better training, coaching, and incentives 4️⃣ With value as their only priority, a fractional value leader provides faster and more thorough sales and customer success support particularly when other initiatives are consuming in-house resources Investing in a Fractional Value Leader is at least a 10x payback within a year. ⚠️ Maximizing the return on your value (ROV) is too important to rely on an employee with other competing responsibilities. ⚠ 💬 DM me or set up a meeting to learn more *  *  * I help SaaS startups accelerate growth and enhance margins with quantified value | Value-powered Growth Accelerator | Value Management-as-a-Service

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Prospecting just got FASTER 🚀 With the new ZoomInfo and Clari Groove integration, you can add leads from ZoomInfo directly into Groove Flows. NO exporting, NO importing, NO manual steps. Now, your team can engage high-potential prospects instantly with accurate, Salesforce-synced data. Want to learn more? Check out our blog to explore real-world use cases and see how this integration transforms prospecting for revenue teams: https://bit.ly/3YvmFri

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Revenue Leak is a $2 Trillion silent killer. Every year, revenue teams lose hard-earned dollars to hidden leaks. The source? - Inefficient processes - Errant forecasts - Misaligned teams To equip revenue leaders to shut down leaks, Clari launched the 2024 Revenue Leak Report. This report features input from 420 revenue professionals across IT/Technology, retail, financial services, and more. Find out: - Why 61% of companies missed their 2023 revenue target - Where revenue teams are investing their tech dollars - How 26% annual Revenue Leak impacts your bottom line - And much more Grab your copy of the Revenue Leak Report and start shutting down leaks today: https://lnkd.in/g9gnGrdz

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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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Hey CROs: Don't hire a "RevOps Team of One" until you really understand what you're getting into. Let me explain. Why you (should) want RevOps: - You need to build the GTM team - You need to set the vision and lead the team - To do this effectively you need a lot of operations - You need an Annual Plan, Territories, Targets, Quotas - You need goals and metrics across sales and marketing - And you need your systems integrated, working, used daily So, you hire a RevOps person to do this for you But.... - Systems updates are endless - Requests flood in all day every day - You need a technical person for this - But this is all they will have time to do - And often it is all they know how to do You've hired a Salesforce ninja and they're going to have more requests for updates to Salesforce than they have time in the week. Many of those requests will be for things that aren't important but they likely don't have the GTM expertise to prioritize the work. And even if they could, they don't have the expertise to do everything else. So, you, as the CRO, are left with.... - All the "strategic work in RevOps" - Annual Plan, Territories, Targets, Quotas - Aligning goals across Sales, Marketing, CS - Analyzing your GTM metrics on a regular basis - Planning a RevOps Roadmap and prioritizing items - Etc. Do you have time to do all of this? Is building and leading the entire GTM team a part-time job? If not, here's what you're left with: 1. You have less time to do what you're best at doing 2. Your RevOps person is doing a lot of low-priority work 3. Some of the most important work is done poorly or not at all 4. You and your "RevOps Team of One" are both exhausted What else am I missing here? 🤔

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hey RevOps - if you're a high-velocity SMB shop selling a large number of small deals, how should you grant quota credit to AEs? 🤔 Signature date? Payment date? Contract effective date? Like most things in RevOps, simple questions like this do not have simple answers. This question was posted in the RevOps Co-op Slack group recently and the community provided some 🔥 feedback like: 📍 Signature date seems to be the most popular choice, but always with a big caveat 📍 That caveat relates to the amount of churn or turnover when it comes to signed deals that don't pay - if the AEs are closing crumby customers that don't pay, then you want to use payment date instead 📍 If you have deals that get signed far in advance of the contract effective date / subscription start date, this adds additional risk to revenue - so may want to consider using the contract effective date instead 📍 Some folks do a mix; for example, 50% at signature, and 50% at payment (or some other metric, like 6 months after deal signature) 📍 In all cases, you want to make sure the structure is set up to drive the behavior you want to encourage without a huge delay between the work done and incentive provided Anything else you'd add to this list? #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #compensation #incentivemanagement

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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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Renewals are the lifeblood of every SaaS company. However, we don’t talk enough about what makes a great AM/CSM who handles renewals. Since there are so many lists on what makes a great AE, I thought I’d take a stab at what makes a great AM/CSM who handles renewals: 1/ They prioritize the renewals that move the needle Renewal rate comes down to simple math. What renewals are going to move the needle for them? Great AMs/CSMs spend their time where they’ll get the most bang for their buck. 2/ They prepare 6 months in advance Average AMs/CSMs prep 3 months in advance. Great ones plan 6 months in advance. This includes asking hard questions well ahead of time during a mid-year QBR, so they know where to spend their time. 3/ They can re-sell the product Stakeholders change. Priorities change. Competitors try to break in. Great AMs/CSMs can sell the product as well as their AEs and know how to position their value props and handle objections. 4/ They know how to negotiate I don’t know any procurement person in the post-ZIRP era who doesn’t try to negotiate their contracts. A great AM/CSM knows how to turn negotiations into win-wins. 5/ They know the difference between procurement and decision-makers Similar to point four, they know how to negotiate and with whom. Negotiating with procurement is much different than negotiating with a key stakeholder. Each party wants something different, and it’s important to recognize what that is. 6/ They know how to rope in their AEs or extended teams Just like the best AEs know how to “quarterback” deals, a great AM/CSM knows how to rally resources to help with renewals. AEs, Execs, SEs, and Professional Services can all be brought in to help show the customer extra love. 7/ They develop a renewal champion We always talk about champions in the presales process, but not enough about champions during renewals. A great AM/CSM knows how to develop champions to help push renewals through. An AM/CSM who knows how to do these things is worth their weight in gold. Keep them happy as long as you can!

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