Eric Gonzalez

A bad sales comp plan will kill your sales team productivity. A good sales comp plan motivates your team to hustle through the end of each month. As we scaled the Levelset sales team to 60+ front-line sales reps, we learned a TON about how to build great comp plans. Here are my principles for good sales compensation: 1. Salespeople don’t do sales and other things well. Let the salespeople sell, don’t saddle them with additional responsibility. For example: Sales and Customer Success are separate functions. 2. The compensation structure should be so simple that you can do the math on the back of a napkin. 3. No commission-only roles. Sales reps should get base salary + variable compensation. 4. At least 40% of sales reps On-Target Earnings should be in the form of variable compensation. 5. No “draw on commission” for ramping reps. New reps should have some mix of guaranteed variable compensation during their ramp period. 6. Sales reps should be paid “straight-line” up to 100% of quota. There should be compensation accelerators above 100%. There will be no compensation hurdles or decelerators for producing below 100%. 7. Annual quota for Account Executives should be 5x On-Target Earnings. For example: $500k annual quota, $100k OTE. This keeps your cost of sales to between 20 - 25% of gross revenue. ‍ 8. Did I mention accelerators? You need to include accelerators for over-performance. This isn’t a comprehensive list of principles. But if you follow these principles, your comp plan will motivate the team to hit their number. Read the full list of principles here: https://lnkd.in/gmwXkRE9

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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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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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🎯 Love an #enablement endorsement from Sales Leadership! "It has elevated the pedigree of our sellers within the business. Not only making their lives easier, but making their selling better." 🤩 🏆 Check out the customer story that OneSource Virtual did with Seismic in San Diego last month. Big thanks to my team and Brian Levey for always being an executive champion of enablement programs in the field. 🎬 Watch the video and read the full #OSV story here: https://lnkd.in/giRnnDG5

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To all the Founders, VPs, and Senior Managers who are NOT from sales. Be nice to Sales Folks, especially AEs and CSMs. WHY? AEs and CSMs can offer a lot of things for free or at a cheaper price. They can even help you expedite Implementation and give you more features and modules at a nominal fee. Let's face the fact that today NO company can run without Softwares like CRM, HRMS, Emailing tools, Calling tools, etc. Many non-Sales, non-SaaS buyers often underestimate the influence AEs and CSMs have in shaping deals—both in tailoring features and optimizing pricing. So to all the Buyers: Being nice will not cost you anything, it will benefit both you as well as your organization. To all the AEs and CSMs: If you come across a good buyer who is being respectful and nice to you and helping you move the deal faster, help such individuals by giving them whatever best you can without thinking too much about your commission and incentive. Remember being nice and respectful is a two-way thing. #sales #purchase #b2b #ae #csm #benice

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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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There’s a conundrum when it comes to measuring sales training impact… I’ve worked with a lot of enablement teams that use leading indicators to measure training impact: Workshop Attendance Gong Recordings SFDC Hygiene Rep Surveys The problem: There’s no clear way to connect these metrics to business outcomes. Then, on the other side, you have teams that focus mainly on lagging indicators: Win Rate Pipeline Creation Sales Cycle Length Average Contract Value The problem: It takes a minimum of 3 months to see any results, and even if you do, no one believes that the changes can be attributed to sales training. Basically, if you focus too far down the funnel, no one believes you, but if you focus too far up the funnel, no one cares. Here are the only 3 questions you need to be able to answer to know if your training worked: 1/ Did reps use the training? Did they show up and engage during the session? Are they practicing the skills covered? Are their skills improving as a result of practice? 2/ Is there a clear change in outputs as a result of the new behavior? This is where you can think about leading indicators like (talk ratio, buyer engagement, and business case creation) 3/ Did the the new behavior lead to a change in key outcomes. This is where you tie a thread from the leading indicator to the lagging indicator. (Eg. What’s our win-rate on opportunities that include a business case?) The team over at Replicate Labs are taking what used to be a long drawn out process of measuring impact (that involved lots of help from RevOps), and turning it into a few simple steps. They’ve built one of the only training adoption platforms I’ve seen that allows you to see how practice produces outputs that lead to outcomes. If you’re tired of relying on surveys or waiting 3+ months to see results that no one believes your team influenced, reach out to James Pursey, and see for yourself.

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Sellers, if Sales feels really hard right now, here's what to do: Go back to the basics. Mark Niemiec, Salesloft's CRO, gives great advice here... "It's all about the fundamentals. Build good business cases. Understand your customers' outcomes. Truly care about your customers." Simple yet profound. More on RevTalks here: https://lnkd.in/dTr8AunK

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For those billing hourly, this is work that you are already doing that is lost to manual timekeeping. For those that work in a fixed fee model, this is work that is being missed to manual timekeeping. Stop trying to recreate your day, AI can and should do this for you. Get credit for the work you are doing using AI to automate your timesheet.

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Seismic leads the way in G2's Spring 2024 Grid® Report for Sales Enablement for Enterprise Businesses — for the ninth year in a row! 🏆 The best part? Rankings are based solely on real reviews from real customers. If you're curious about how we stack up against the competition, check out the G2 Enterprise Spring 2024 Grid® Report at the link below.

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💜 Gainsight + Champion 💜 We just released a killer new eBook together on how to drive growth through your hidden customer champions. With many of us in the midst of 2025 planning, this book dives into the incredible growth engine right in front of us: our customers. The ebook has practical insights on empowering champions and learnings from top brands using Gainsight and Champion. I just re-read it myself, and it's giving me all sorts of light bulb moments (yes my phone just happened to take a 100% organic photo right when I finished reading it. And yes that is my thinking pose.) Check it out 👇

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Revenue pros need to get ahead of the renewal conversation. Don’t take your renewals for granted. Instead: (1) Understand what’s going on with the business. Where are they winning and where are they struggling? (2) Demonstrate the impact you’ve had on their business. Make the case for renewal plain and simple. (3) Bring a point of view to the renewal conversation. This may mean restructuring to find an agreement that works for everyone. How are you getting ahead of renewals?

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Stop Selling and start solving problems. Are you doing this? We want to but we fall into selling more than solving issues. Excellent video from John B.

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Something that I see new SDRs and AEs missing is "Nurturing the prospect" It's completely different from follow-ups In follow-up, you generally ASK the prospect for something or there is a CTA involved in it. BUT When you are Nurturing the prospect there is NO ASK or there is no CTA involved in it You simply GIVE them something that's relevant to them or something that helps them to make a better decision in future like 1. Case Studies 2. Success Stories 3. Ebooks / Informational Videos etc The idea is to stay on top of the mind of the prospect during the non-buying seasons or to stay connected with them when they have already told you that buying will take time. Try making a nurturing sequence just like a follow-up sequence, you will see a good difference in your sales and sale cycle. #b2b #saas #sales #nurturinglead

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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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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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Struggling with churn? Validate the value your customer receives. This is not a static metric/KPI - it needs to be nurtured, revisited, redefined, and reinforced throughout the customer lifecycle ♻ #customersuccess #sales #customervalue #value

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🚀 Exciting Panel Discussion Alert! 🚀 #Sacramento #CustomerSuccess professionals, what are you doing tomorrow night? If the answer isn't joining SuccessHACKER's Meetup, you're missing out! 🌐 SuccessHACKER is getting a Greater Sacramento Customer Success Meetup going, and I'm thrilled to be joining Jeff Beaumont and Amber Costello for an intriguing panel hosted by Andrew Marks: "The Balancing Act: Evolving Human and Digital Elements into Customer Journeys" sponsored by SuccessHACKER, Growth Factory, and The Roseville Venture Lab. Join us as we explore the critical balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the personal touch that makes customer relationships thrive. This is an essential discussion for anyone in customer-facing roles, from individual contributors to senior executives. There will be time for networking before and after the discussion and food and beverages because everyone in CS loves breaking bread with new people! 📅 May 30, 2024 ⏰ 6 PM - 9 PM 📍 The Roseville Venture Lab - 316 Vernon Street, Suite 110, Roseville, CA 🔗 in the comments below! Don’t miss out on this opportunity to gain insights from top industry leaders and network with peers facing the same challenges. You KNOW it's going to be exciting if Andrew convinced me to come up to Sac from the Bay Area for it. Seats are limited, and you won't want to miss out on this engaging discussion that could transform your customer-facing communication. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow! #TechInnovation #HumanTouch #PanelDiscussion #DigitalCS

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Every AE ever - "I cannot find the information I need, and I need it now!" Sales Leaders, is it a common complaint from your teams that they cannot find the answers? They cannot find competitor information, that latest deck, or that marketing snippet. Do they lose time searching Salesforce, Sharepoint or name your company's resource of choice to find the information? We have the Answer! #Qlik Answers is a stand-alone GenAI (RAG) solution sitting over your unstructured data, every PowerPoint, PDF, email, and text field in your CRM, and so on. Allowing your team to ask a question and get the answer immediately. Demand your teams get the one tool they need!

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