Dan Hixson

Some excellent insights to consider if you are trying to determine your optimal GTM revenue team structure. Given the technology-based saturation of the market with both Inbound & SDR/BDR based Outbound GTM motions leading to declining effectiveness and results, many seem to be pulling back from Specialization and putting more on the plate of a full-cycle AE again. In some ways it feels like we are moving back to how things were done earlier in my career...

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Have you ever heard of an Enterprise prospecting strategy that takes one hour to complete and actual sales reps say helps them gain access to their decision makers 79% of the time? Years of customer feedback from Emissary's customers identify one: talking to a former company exec from the target account who is willing to coach your strategy. Enterprise prospecting can feel like using a dial up modem. Just so you know — we've got broadband over here. #enterprise

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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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I was asked what is the fasted way to win new business for sales - get warm introductions in your target accounts. Here are 7 steps that I think will help you get radically more pipeline fast:🔥📈 Inboxes are overflowing, cold outreach is losing its punch. Warm introductions are the key to breaking through the noise and accelerating your sales pipeline. 1. Define Target Accounts 🎯 Zero in on accounts that align with your ideal customer profile. Know their challenges, and understand how your solution uniquely solves them. Focus on a subset you’re confident about – don’t let analysis paralysis slow you down. Key: Don’t get stuck on the first step; just go for it! 2. Identify Connectors in Your Network 🕸️ Expand your network (or automate this with platforms like https://lnkd.in/e-XsFVmR) to match up with contacts who have trusted relationships with key players in your target accounts. Look for people with deep industry and solution experience- they’ll help boost your credibility.  3. Engage with Value First 💬 When requesting an intro, lead with value. Show why the intro matters to their connection and how it benefits them. Remember, your Trusted Advisor isn’t your sales rep – they’re a facilitator of value for their network. Offer insights, unique perspectives, and collaborate in a knowledge exchange. This will set you apart as more than “just another sales rep.” 4. Personalize Your Outreach to the New Contact 🧑‍💼 After a warm into, skip the canned pitch. Reference your mutual connection, then tailor your message to your target accounts needs. Tap into your advisor’s inside knowledge on what truly matters, from active projects to key priorities. This approach makes you relevant, aware, and genuinely interesting. 5. Nurture the Relationship, Not Just the Opportunity 🤝 Warm intros open doors, but it’s the relationships that close deals. Focus on building trust, actively listening, and providing value. Even if there’s no immediate sale. 6. Don’t Forget Your Sales Process 🚀 Whether it’s Solution Selling, MEDDICC, or MEDDPICC, stick to your process to stay on track. Use your advisor’s insights to set you apart, but also to qualify out quickly – if it’s not a fit, pivot to protect your credibility and the trust of your connection. 7. Reward Your Trusted Advisor 🏆 Recognize your advisor’s role in your success! A thoughtful gesture, creative reward, or a few percentage points on the deal can make a significant impact. It shows appreciation, strengthens the partnership, and sets the stage for future collaboration. Warm introductions are your ticket to stronger connections, faster cycles, and higher close rates. Are you tapping into them? 🔑 And if you want to make this easy, check out https://lnkd.in/e-XsFVmR – the first platform designed to automate and scale your ability to find and leverage warm introductions into all of your target accounts. 🔗 #SalesTips #Sales #SDR #SalesPipeline #WarmIntroductions #ForceEquals

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Every sales leader I know has a goal to "be more data driven." Those same sales leaders work constantly in ungoverned, stale spreadsheets and manual edits. Why do they do this? 1. Salesforce is never 100% up to date or accurate 2. Leaders have their own context to add 3. Aggregate views for forecasting require more tempering than a deal by deal roll up Sigma saves our sales leadership team tens of hours per week in forecasting alone. See how my boss Mike Gerardi had a hand in building our process here:

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Sellers, are you happy with your CPQ experience? RevOps leads, is your CPQ implementation easy? PandaDoc has always been known for its ease of use as an agreement and workflow platform. We launched a CPQ because we heard from customers that their current CPQ platforms were challenging to implement, but even worse, a pain to change once installed. Let’s be honest, you expect some level of effort in installing a platform, but with how fast businesses change today, you have to be able to adapt quickly. Taking 2-3 months to make changes to your pricing and configuration rules is not acceptable. We designed PandaDoc CPQ to solve this problem. Not only do we think we’re faster to implement than most of the other CPQ tools, but we make it so you can adjust your pricing and approval workflows without talking to our support. Our belief is that companies of all sizes should be able to have a powerful CPQ tool that they can adjust on the fly, and that’s exactly what we’ve built. If you are interested in how PandaDoc can help make your CPQ process better, schedule a demo with the link below. https://lnkd.in/gVifRUJM #cpq #salesops #sales #revops #proposals

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An enterprise sales kickoff (SKO) is critical for aligning the sales team with the company’s strategic objectives, energizing the team, and setting the stage for a successful sales year. Beyond alignment of company goals, product and service education, motivation and morale boost, skills development, networking and team building, marketing and competitive insights, goal setting and accountability, inspiration and vision, strategic planning, and a feedback loop from the field, there are also several consistent mistakes/NOT-to-do many organizations ignore before, during, and after their SKOs! Here is my latest post on Ten Sales Kickoff Insights shared by GTMnow - https://lnkd.in/eQxQrKuJ GTMfund Sales Community #SKO #SalesKickoff #GlobalKickoff #KeynoteSpeaker #RelationshipEconomics #CoCreate #CurveBenders #ConsequenceOfAI

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Many sales organizations spend days or weeks on account prioritization and territory planning exercises. There's got to be a better way... If you're heading to Gartner CSO next week, don't miss Ami Arad's presentation on May 21 at 2:05pm! He'll contrast the traditional ways sellers prioritize their accounts and the new way made possible through buyer intent and predictive models. Get the details here: https://okt.to/GhFXdQ

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This is a must attend webinar to see how MaxAI can help supercharge your account planning process to help you get to revenue growth faster!

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Sales guru Dave Kellogg nailed this in 2017. Here's a great article on how Sales VPs should think about forecasts. It dovetails nicely with my point yesterday about why forecast distributions are so much more useful than averages. And how looking at averages can get you in trouble. https://lnkd.in/eKv6xm8j #salesmanagement #salesleadership #salesenablement #salesoperations #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #analytics #datascience #forecasting #sales

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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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How do we scale aggressive sales growth consistently? The answer lies in Sandler's very own Dave Mattson’s latest article in Top Sales Magazine. Discover the insights in “The Paradox of Sales Leadership: Your Product is Not Your Product” and learn how to drive sustainable growth. Download your free copy here: https://hubs.la/Q02Q9sfF0 #SalesLeadership #SalesGrowth #Sandler #SalesSuccess

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Leading a sales organization isn’t just about hitting quotas—it’s about developing reps with strong business acumen who truly understand the businesses they’re selling to. Too often sales reps aren't learning the basics of business. Here’s what I emphasize: Financial Literacy – Great sales reps know how to connect solutions to ROI, showing customers the measurable value of their investment. Market Awareness – Staying informed on industry trends allows reps to position solutions as relevant and forward-thinking. Customer Focus – The best salespeople prioritize the customer’s goals, ensuring every solution drives meaningful impact for their business. A great sales rep doesn’t just sell a product—they help their champion or contact grow and succeed within their organization. By delivering meaningful solutions, they build trust, create advocates, and make a lasting impact.

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If you run a small B2B service business recruiting a new sales rep... Beware of hiring a "closer" unless they can also prospect and develop new business. Skilled closers can succeed in large SaaS companies, for example, that take an assembly-line approach to sales with SDRs, BDRs, etc., who generate leads and schedule appointments for them. But resource-constrained small businesses don't have that luxury. You need a skilled full-cycle rep. Someone who can: → Find new leads → Nurture the relationship → Schedule Discovery meetings → Lead consistently successful Discoveries → Present winning proposals → Oversee the projects → Get you paid. The last thing you want is to hire someone to expand your customer base who isn't equipped to live up to that expectation. It wouldn't be fair to either of you. #SystematicSelling #Sales #SalesTraining

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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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Frontline sales management is the toughest job in the company. The most successful frontline leaders have a disciplined approach and consistent operating cadence. In the latest Building Elite Sales Teams episode, Dana Smith,Sr. shares why consistency is critical as a sales leader: Dana also discusses the importance of hiring well, being a genuine leader who can admit when you're wrong, and not 'watering the weeds' by moving on quickly from reps who aren't working out. Check out the full episode for more of Dana's advice on developing as a leader and building high-performing sales teams.

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People don’t realize what “closing skills” are in sales, and they’re not “is persuasive.” Reps with closing skills CONSISTENTLY know, can choreograph and advise on how the deal gets signed and returned. And their forecast accuracy reflects those skills.

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The sales profession continues to experience a transformation. The latest 2024 Salesforce State of Sales reports 79% of sales teams reporting a sales increase over the past year. Some findings of interest On one hand this surge has fueled optimism, with 82% of sales professionals expressing confidence in their company's future growth. However, this optimistic outlook is tempered by emerging challenges with a reshaping of the sales landscape: Which are they? 1.     The Rise of Partner Selling A significant shift has been observed with 89% of sales teams now utilizing partner sales channels. This approach enables companies to broaden to scale without a proportional increase in direct sales resources 2. Focus on Recurring Revenue   Sales strategies continue the move away from traditional one-time sales towards recurring revenue models (subscriptions and usage-based pricing). This change underscores the importance of cultivating long-term client relationships with their revenue streams. 3.     Evolving Customer Expectations Despite revenue growth, sales teams are still grappling with rapidly evolving client expectations. Modern buyers demand greater value, a deeper understanding of their needs, and more competitive pricing. Sales professionals are then compelled to act with agility and offer more tailored, value-centric experiences. 4.     The Quota Conundrum The disparity between rising company revenues and individual sales performance is stark. Why? A considerable 67% of sellers anticipate falling short of their quotas this year, following an 84% shortfall last year. This gap indicates a pressing need for more realistic quota setting and better sales enablement. The focus on partner selling, recurring revenue, and evolving customer expectations, along with addressing the quota challenges, will define the future of sales. #sales #b2bsales #saletips #salescoaching #salesprocess

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In today's edition of using Juro at Juro... The journey of our sales order form and MSA. 1. Sales rep creates a contract in Salesforce from a template 2. Sales rep reviews it in Salesforce. 3. Sales rep sends it for internal approval from Salesforce. 4. Legal is notified in Slack of a new redline coming in. 5. Legal marks up the document with AI Assistant. 6. Changes to metadata are pushed back into Salesforce. 7. Sales rep sends it for signing from Salesforce. 8. Signed MSA is automatically stored in both Juro and Salesforce. Routine contracts on autopilot, with legal in the cockpit. #legalcounsel

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