Eamon Foley

Your deals don't close for likely one of the following reasons: 1. Wrong ICP 2. Poor Sales Process Discipline 3. Single-Threaded Engagements 4. Lack of Urgency in the Sales Cycle 5. Hyper Technical vs. Hyper Business Focus 6. Lack of Business Case and Value Alignment 7. Delayed or Lack of Access to Decision Makers Do this often enough and you'll end up like me in the pic below... You're ride is over and done, and you're about to fall, dreading the paddle back out because you're mentally and physically exhausted. PS - Down to 2 open slots left at Surf & Sales Nov 15-19th

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It might be time to find a new VP of Sales if… They don’t believe AEs should self-source a portion of their own pipeline through outbound. Sounds crazy, I know. But I see this a quarter of the time when a team is struggling. Reluctant AEs starts with senior leadership. And the root cause of this problem is usually a VP of Sales who isn’t truly bought in. 1) They’re afraid reps will push back (and many will), so they avoid it 2) They blame marketing for not filling the pipeline 3) They think it's the SDR org's job to make sure AEs don't have to outbound 4) They believe outbound is a WASTE of a seller's time 5) They believe everything will get better if they could just focus budget on finding "hot inbound leads" ~~~ I'm telling you—this situation doesn't end well. When more reps start to miss quota because pipeline is thin—the pressure's on. You'll have no choice but to ask AEs to self-source pipeline. So what happens? You have a team full of AEs who don't know how to do it. A team full of managers who don't know how to coach. And a culture that never believed in it. And that's a recipe for attrition and missed sales targets.

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"67% of sales reps don't expect to meet their quota this year, and 84% missed it last year. 🤯 59% of business buyers say reps fail to grasp the unique goals they aim to achieve. 🤯 86% of business buyers are more likely to buy when vendors understand their objectives. 🤯 " Don't wait for your turn to talk 🗣 Listen to your customers & prospects and ensure you understand the assignment 📖 Check out more from the #Salesforce state of sales report - link in the comments below ⤵ #stateofsales #buyers #quota

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Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

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You can take a high velocity seller and teach them to succeed enterprise sales, but you cannot take an enterprise seller and teach them to succeed in high velocity sales. Ask any sales leader who has tried…it doesn’t end well. [ok sure there are exceptions to every rule but...] It demands a distinct approach to building rapport. Success hinges on the first five seconds of contact. Every word matters, especially on calls where visual cues are absent. Any hesitation or uncertainty immediately damages credibility. Professional conduct takes precedence over personal connections. Unlike relationship-based selling, high-velocity sales require focused, value-driven interactions. The goal is demonstrating business value and problem-solving capability - not building friendships. Tone and delivery significantly impact success. Product knowledge translates directly into vocal confidence, helping reduce customer risk perception. Energy management is crucial. Reps must balance enthusiasm with professionalism. Too little energy suggests disinterest; too much appears desperate. A well-designed script serves as the foundation for success. It enables consistent, efficient delivery of value propositions while respecting the customer's time. In high-velocity sales, rapport building must be intentional and efficient. The key is delivering immediate value while maintaining unwavering professionalism throughout each interaction. One of the companies I invested in earlier this year Sellfire - is literally ON FIRE with growth right now and they wrote about this world here: https://lnkd.in/eknebTsQ

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The Sales Leaders Playbook: This podcast conversation is a MUST for Sales & Enablement leaders. I talk with Lucy Lee & Danielle Dacunha-Howarth from Purple Patch about: - Successfully onboarding new sales hires & setting them up success (and the most common gotcha to avoid) - What's working in prospecting right now, how to reach out to a C-Level vs a Manager (there's a difference!). - A good vs a bad sales culture, why you need to know what your sales culture is. - Tech Stack: what tools do you need in your tech stack and their favourites! - AI in Sales: what part does AI have in the tech stack In this snippet we're talking about the COVID factor is STILL having an impact on sellers particularly those who started their career virtual selling. SOOOO much ground covered in this conversation! Check it out & listen here: https://lnkd.in/gfSBBemD #Podcast #Sales #AIinSales

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It should not be so hard to empower your sales teams. But, in 2023: 📉 53% of CROs struggled to increase sales velocity and rep productivity 📉 72% of salespeople spent time not selling 📉 28% of sales reps expected to attain quota This year, learn how to leverage the power of sales enablement 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gZ7qQftm #salesenablement #change #saas

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The unhappy path to quota: ⛔️ Work account list from top to bottom ⛔️ Work a ton of smaller deals ⛔️ Waste a lot of time chasing unqualified deals The happy path to quota: ✅ Work accounts most likely to engage ✅ Work a balance of large and small deals ✅ Invest all your energy into qualified deals This starts with territory planning. Play the odds and invest energy in accounts with the highest likelihood of closing. Sales leaders, provide guidance for reps so they spend time on the right accounts. Here's a 3-part strategy you can use for QBRs later this month and next: 1/ Analyze every deal worked in the last 6 months: ↳ What are the top two industries where you win the most? ↳ For the closed/won deals, what persona(s) was the first meeting with? ↳ What personas mobilized the deal internally? ↳ What use cases/solutions did you sell the most of? ↳ For the closed/lost deals, what made them a bad fit? ↳ What size were these companies? ↳ Were there patterns in specific department headcount or growth? ↳ What triggers did they have in common? 2/ Make a list of closed/lost deals to re-approach: ↳ Timing was bad ↳ Contract renewal dates are coming up ↳ Missing features or capabilities ↳ Didn’t get access to power ↳ Lost to a competitor ↳ Lost to no-decision 3/ Add your accounts into Sales Navigator, and run these searches: ↳ Accounts with prospects who are past employees of current clients ↳ Accounts within industries where you have the most success stories ↳ Accounts with newly hired executives that match your personas ↳ Accounts with good emails/phone numbers of your ideal personas ↳ Accounts with ideal triggers (hiring, etc.) ↳ Accounts where you have intro opportunities through teamlink ↳ Accounts where your leadership has connections ↳ Accounts where you have 1st-degree connections ↳ Accounts with contacts in your local geography ↳ Contacts who follow your company on LinkedIn ↳ Contacts you’ve had past interactions with on LinkedIn ↳ Contacts who are newly promoted into a leadership position ~~~ A proper territory strategy goes narrow and deep—not wide and shallow. Future efforts should be informed by your org's past successes. Use this list as a cheat for your next QBR. What would you add to the list? #Sales #Prospecting #Outbound

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A downside to AEs owning expansion sales is that it can distract from net new customer acquisition and negatively impact long-term growth. Can it work sometimes? Yes Can it backfire? Also, yes. The question that is still often asked is, "Who should own renewals and expansion, CS or Sales?" But we need to ask a different question, which is, "How do I determine who should own each revenue component for my company?" If you ask each individual team, you'll often get biased answers. Sales may want a land grab of all of the revenue and say that they have the commercial skills, not CS. Depending on the leader, CS may respond with "We shouldn't own revenue because it will ruin our trusted advisor status" or "We should own it because we 'own' the customer." To bring some objectivity to it, here are some of the questions you should ask: 1) What are our long-term revenue goals? How are we going to source this revenue? This includes determining what new customer growth we need to continually fuel NRR goals YoY. You don't want to become overly reliant on your customer base for revenue. You don't want to exhaust your pipeline from a saturated customer base and flat line. This does happen. I've witnessed it. 2) How complex are your expansion sales? Do you have upsells in the form of user license add-ons? Or do you have complex cross-sell deals that are very similar to new business sales? Or a combination? Given the relative product complexity, what's the optimal buyer and customer journey? 3) What can the business' economics support? Are your contracts high ACV and include complex sales cycles? Does this warrant an AE team focused on new business, an AM team focused on expansion, and a CS team focused on renewals? Or is such a large commercial team too costly? 4) What are the jobs to be done in order to enable buyers to buy and customers to adopt? RACIs are great for this. Who is best positioned to do each job? And how do we incent each role to focus on each job? If we model the comp plan based on the above, is our Compensation Cost of Sale healthy? 5) What skill is required, who possesses the skill, and what skill development are we willing and able to invest in? 6) What stage is your business and how can I feed my sales team? For earlier-stage companies, the right thing to do might be to split AE targets b/w new biz and expansion to give them a chance to hit their quotas as the company becomes more established in the market. You have to think of the humans on the other end of your decision, too, if you care about employee retention and culture. Is it difficult to figure all of this out? It can be especially if your execs haven't established a solid business strategy but it deserves the right due diligence if you care about long-term growth. There are a lot of implications, and leaders shouldn't be flippant about it or leave it to sales and CS to duke it out on their own. #sales #customersuccess #gotomarket

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The #1 habit salespeople use to keep deals moving to close? Maintaining deal momentum is tricky—especially with long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders. While follow-ups via email, text, or LinkedIn are the baseline, they often aren’t enough. The key is to have a personal pipeline review and ask: What can I do today to add value and move this deal to close? Some examples: 1. One rep I know sent a fun Amazon gift—a drink holder shaped like the brand’s name. This playful gesture sparked laughter, strengthened rapport, and ultimately helped him close the deal. 2. Another rep revived a fading conversation by sending a thoughtful DoorDash gift card, which re-engaged the buyer and led to a successful close. 3. One focused on building personal relationships across all stakeholders (by sending personalized emails and texts to each stakeholder individually). Inevitably, when one of the stakeholders hesitated, the other stepped in to support the deal. 4. A different rep engaged with his buyers personal social media accounts (specifically Instagram and Facebook), expanding to a multi-channel relationship, helping him close the deal. 5. More recently, I had a rep who leveraged below the line champions to (1) get connected with the economic buyer, and (2) to justify why now with stunning testimonials, helping move the deal to close. Each of these creative solutions stemmed from asking "how can I move this deal forward and add value?" during a personal pipeline review. I recommend reps do this daily, weekly, or somewhere in between. Depending the size of your pipe, you may start with less while you're focused on pipe creation. Mornings work best—spend 30-60 minutes thinking creatively about how to move deals forward. Go through every single deal, starting with the ones furthest along in the pipe. Riff with your manager or colleague if needed. Be consistent. What other creative things have you seen/tried to help move deals forward? #sales #pipelinereview #dealmomentum

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11 things world-class sales development teams DO—and what the worst teams DON’T Insights from... → Outbound Squad's experience working with world-class teams at Gong, Shopify, Rippling, and more → Orum's 2024 State of Sales Development report Commentary on how the best sales development teams... ✅ Use AI responsibly ✅ Retain top talent SDRs ✅ Align with AEs ✅ Deal with low-pick up rates ✅ And plenty more 👇 P.S. Watch this video for our full commentary: https://lnkd.in/eBFYfnU3

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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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"Our BDRs have Outreach licenses, but our AEs don't. And we expect our AEs to self-source 30-50% of their pipeline." ☝️ This is more common than you'd imagine. Are you evaluating new sales tech & renewals for H2 2024 and 2025? Don't make these mistakes. ⛔️ 1) Not investing in sales engagement tools for AEs If you want your AEs to self-source more pipeline, don't make it harder than it needs to be. If your BDRs have Outreach seats, every AE should have them. If outbound is hard and manual—don't expect your AEs to do it. ⛔️ 2) Unnecessary consolidation The big 5 (ZoomInfo, Clari, Outreach, Gong, Salesloft) are now playing in sales engagement, revenue intelligence, conversational intelligence, deal management, etc. You'll be tempted to consolidate into a single vendor. This MIGHT be a good decision, but don't do it to save money. Example: The sales engagement platforms across these vendors are not created equal. Some are better than others, depending on your team's unique needs. Don't sacrifice productivity by consolidating into an inferior tool to save money. ⛔️ 3) Neglecting basic sales needs For an outbound-focused org, these are the basics: - CRM - Sales Engagement Platform (Sequencing, etc.) - Data (phone numbers, emails, etc.) Everything beyond this is a luxury. Don't make the mistake of investing in the latest and greatest AI deal management solution—and cutting your data spend. Your reps can't outbound without emails and phone numbers. ⛔️ 4) Using tech to fix a people or process problem Your org might be better off investing in more Rev/Sales ops support vs. more tech. You likely have enough tools but lack proper workflows and rep enablement to utilize them. Example: Do your reps have a good workflow for reaching out to past customers who are now working at companies that are not customers yet? I've encountered one sales org with a great workflow that didn't require reps to hop between 5 different tools to pull this play off. Tech is only as good as the workflows and the people executing them. Invest in your ops or enablement teams to help with this. ~~ What would you add to this list? #sales

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While I loved selling in the 90's, B2B sales methodologies have to evolve. Personally I prefer a blend of SPIN Selling (as it focuses on the customer's problems), Customer-centric selling (as it focuses on the customer's needs), and Challenger Selling (as if forces the salespeople to think about focusing on the customer). As far as methodologies are concerned, I think the SPICED methodology from Winning By Design is the closest I have found to a more agile, customer-first approach. I am often asked what is wrong with the dated approaches with BANT and MEDDIC the two I come across the most, often with people with religious levels of zeal. My summary of why we should put these two to bed once and for all follows. BANT is easy to leave behind, with 70% of a buying process being complete before engaging with sales, and 60%+ of buyers not having a budget allocated before talking to sales, then there is no Budget (yet), there is no one decision-maker in a modern B2B buying process (and even if there is, they are not going to tell a salesperson who it is), and if you don't have Budget and Authority, you cann't have a Timeframe. That leaves you with Needs which equate to SPIN Selling problems. The MEDDIC framework, while once effective, struggles to adapt to the digital, dynamic, and complex, nature of modern B2B buyer-centric selling. Shift in buyer behaviour: The traditional linear sales process MEDDIC outlines no longer aligns with the buyer's journey. Buyers are more informed, conducting extensive research online before engaging with sales. This means the sales cycle is longer and more complex, requiring a deeper understanding of the buyer's needs and challenges. Complex decision-making: MEDDIC primarily focuses on identifying a single economic buyer. B2B buying decisions involve multiple stakeholders with varying priorities and influence. This necessitates a broader approach to understanding the decision-making unit. Digital transformation: The rise of digital channels dramatically changed how buyers interact with businesses. MEDDIC doesn't adequately account for the importance of digital engagement, content marketing, and social selling in building relationships and generating leads. Customer experience: Modern buyers prioritize experience over everything else. MEDDIC is primarily focused on the sales process, not the overall customer journey. A holistic view of the customer experience is crucial for long-term success. Speed and Agility: The pace of business has accelerated significantly. MEDDIC's rigid structure hinders sales teams' ability to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs. A more agile approach is required to win in today's competitive landscape. To effectively navigate the complexities of the modern B2B sales environment, sales organizations must adopt more customer-centric and data-driven methodologies that account for the digital transformation of the buyer's journey.

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B2B Sales Leader: Multi-threading is really important. But also: → Doesn't train reps on mapping accounts → Doesn't give reps talk tracks → Doesn't give reps budget to get external help Then they wonder why → Reps only have 1 person involved in their deals → Deals stall and land in Closed Lost → Deals slip to next quarter Stop wasting money on buying more sales tools. Reps don't have a tool problem. They have a skill problem. Give them the skills they need to go wide and deep. If you're a rep reading this, this image is something I call Multi-Threading Compass Concept 📌 Me and Andy Aveyard, Head of MM Sales at Zoom discussed it Watch the interview here: https://lnkd.in/e-Cp4M7Q Most reps are in a rush to get to power [North] → But they're not ready → They don't have a clear business case Instead, focus on going East and West → To find and build more Champions → Gain wider consensus Then go South → To win over power users → Create raving fans Then, take your business case to the Economic Buyer. It might take longer. But you'll win more deals. Let me know what you think about the interview above!

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Two discovery scenarios: 1. Eager rep: Rushes to pitch in 5 mins 2. Patient rep: Researches, asks pointed questions Guess which one closes more deals? Slow down to speed up your sales! Rush = risk for salespeople Why? Rushing through your pitch ignores the prospect's needs and wants. This creates bad buying experience. It reduces trust in the relationship. Makes prospect feel like 'just another customer' Instead: Take time in discovery. Build trust. Be patient. Dig deep into WIFM (“what’s in it for me/them”) This is how you earn more business and close deals faster. Read the full post here: https://lnkd.in/gFVx_XX8

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The top 5 mistakes I see life science sales leaders make: 1️⃣ They are always "too busy" The most impactful thing a manager can do is spend time coaching their reps. But too often, managers are caught up in other meetings that are irrelevant to their most important and impactful tasks. As a leader, you need to give your managers air cover from superfluous meetings. A manager should never be "too busy" to proactively coach their reps 1:1. 2️⃣ No playbook It's rare to find a company that has a documented system of what good looks like. It's your job as a leader to document everything so there are clear examples how each rep should perform in different scenarios. Ex: have a discovery playbook that outlines how to prep for a call, what questions should be asked, what are the ideal next steps, how to handle your top 10 objections, etc... 3️⃣ Reactive coaching Most managers and leaders spend their time giving feedback on calls or meetings. While this is a great way to coach, the best way to coach is to focus on the preparation. Help them prepare for the big call they have and role-play different scenarios. This way they're prepared for the call and can implement coaching immediately. 4️⃣ "One-size fits all" training Most sales training is organized where you bring the whole team together to get taught the exact same concepts. While it's an "easy" way to train, it's not effective. Each rep has unique skills and experiences. Training programs should be built for the individual vs the team as a whole. 5️⃣ Don't invest in tools and technology I've seen 500-person companies that don't have a CRM. I've seen 50-person sales teams that don't have a sales engagement platform and send emails manually out of Gmail or Outlook. There's no excuse to not invest in the tools and tech to make your team the most efficient. What else would you add to the list?

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The #SAAS revolution of ever growth of sales & market cap is not working for most users The impact of unspent licenses and unused tools are becoming an eye sore The use it or lose it philosophy with users are being used for many IT tools by business focussed IT departments I see decommissioning of SAAS tools becoming a trend as many companies see taking out systems that are just protecting old ways of doing work a value driver Those providers that try to arm twist customers into staying may succeed in the very short term, but are well served to remember that SAAS was sold on " pay per drink", rip and replace and their ilk #Salesforce #Microsoft

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