Jordan Kennedy

The most common thing I'm hearing from companies right now is low 'early stage' deal conversion. TOFU stagnation. If you are speaking to companies within your ICP and struggling to translate demand into pipeline, there's one thing I'm seeing more than anything else that is the root cause of why. You're finding pain.... but you're not building on it. Certainly not quantifying it. It's not enough to just find it. It'll end up with no action.

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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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As CS is getting increasingly aligned with the revenue function, this conversation is happening a lot... CRO: "I just took over customer success, can someone explain to me what our CSMs do?" VP CS: "We make sure that our customers are getting value from the product..." CRO: "OK, what does that mean?" VP CS: "We answer all of their questions and log support cases." CRO: "Isn't that support?" VP CS: "Well no, because we have QBRs" CRO: "OK, well what do we talk about in the QBRs?" VP CS: "All the tickets we fixed and the features that we rolled out" CRO: "Ok, what other things do our CSMs do?" VP CS: "We help with implementations and continuous improvement!" CRO: "Isn't that professional services?" VP CS: "Well we read an article that says that we shouldn't charge for services, so our CSMs just do it." CRO: " 🤯 " VP CS: " 🤯 "

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Churn rates in SaaS are often taken for granted. A 5% churn rate? Sounds manageable until you unpack the numbers. If you're losing customers at that rate every month, you're left with less than half of your original users by the end of the year. The average B2B churn rate might be lower due to the methodical decision-making process, but there's no getting around the fact that B2C companies are more susceptible to quicker exits. Voluntary churn is where the real battle lies, as buyers pull the trigger on cancellations for reasons ranging from budget cuts to outright dissatisfaction. So, what's the play? You need to visualize your churn as a strategic battleground. Whether it's by tightening your onboarding processes, identifying churn indicators early, or even tailoring your cancellation offers, the aim is simple: keep the customers you’ve worked hard to acquire. Churn isn’t just a metric—it's a mindset. Let's debate: Is it smarter to accept a higher churn as a given in a rapidly changing market, or is the focus on reducing churn at all costs a more sustainable strategy? Keep it civil, folks. https://lnkd.in/ehMpvWed

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If you are responsible for enablement at your company, your #1 job beyond all others is to get a strong executive sponsor. It might be the CRO, it might be the COO, it might be the CEO, maybe by some miracle it is the CFO. Maybe it's a strong SVP. Title doesn't matter - organizational respect and resource gathering does. Trying to do ANYTHING in enablement without a strong exec sponsor to: 1. Get resources (people, money, attention) 2. Align teams (sales, success, marketing, product....not necessarily in that order) 3. Create priority (over the zillion other things that a company could do) Is a huge waste of time and energy. If you don't have it, create it. If you can't create it, find somewhere you can or accept that your results will be greatly diminished and your work will be generally uninteresting/frustrating.

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Stealing a segment of Greg Portnoy's recent post about partnerships because it's SO worth highlighting. "Partner-attached opportunities have an average of: - 30% higher win rates - 34% higher contract value - 60% lower acquisition costs - 2-3x shorter sales cycles - 18% higher retention rates And these numbers are only going to get better. Why? Because 84% of B2B buyers start their purchasing process with a referral. And 90% of B2B purchases are influenced by recommendations." I still speak with companies DAILY that are not investing resources into their partnerships channel and it makes 0 sense to me. Why would you not invest in a market that will give you the kinds of returns and retention above? #loco #partnerships #b2bpartnerships #b2b

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5 Steps to 10X your appointments set by increasing your cold call pick up rate! (🧊📞) Step 1) Scrape leads at volume using software like: - Apollo.io - D7 Lead Finder - Lead Rocks Step 2) Focus on cell phone numbers (Much higher answer rates.) using software like: - ClearoutPhone Step 3) Sort by area code and time zone. Step 4) Dial Time: - 8AM-10AM and 4PM-6PM tend to work best. Step 5) Leverage a Power Dialer or if possible, a Predictive Dialer like: - Close - JustCall - PhoneBurner Bonus Tip 1: Go High Level tends to end up in spam. Bonus Tip2: Use targeted area codes per state. Bonus Tip 3: I've heard there is easily accessible cheap underground software that hacks the Apollo API. #entrepreneurship #sales #revenue #coldcalling #business #leadership #worksmarter

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Discovery Process at Blueprint Tax: 1. Prospect reaches out, gets link to New Client Questionnaire via cognito forms. 2. Ten questions plus prompt to upload PY returns. Acknowledge minimum fees. 3. Once complete gets link to schedule discovery call via calendly. 4. Discovery call is 20-30 minutes 5. Proposal sent via Ignition. #smb #tax Sunset at Lake Michigan

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I meet and talk with 5-10 of the greatest GTM minds on the planet every week. CRO’s, VPs of Sales, CMO’s. 100% agree that getting outbound right is one of the hardest parts of their business, why? 1. Recruiting is hard again The same voices that sold tech sales as an easy path to 6 figures are now the voices saying the BDR role is dead. They sold a bill of goods to people who didn’t understand how hard this role is, are surprised these people who chose a path because it was sold as “easy” aren’t performing, and now have ulterior motives to pivot to a new message. Hard jobs are hard to recruit for. 2. Lack of Leadership 2020 through mid 2022 we had a bunch of capital bloat and talent bloat enter the market. Just like we have overvalued “zombie” companies we have overvalued “zombie” leaders who don’t know how to coach good habits for this type of market. Outbound was easy from 2014ish to summer 2022. 8 years is a long time, most of the voices we hear only know those times or only know what type of sales motion. 3. Absolute statements muddy the waters I've been around the block enough to click on their profile and see their track record. 99.9% of folks make these statements only sold transactional commodity technology, sold to GTM teams, or in most cases – only both. What works depends on multiple factors: ASP, buyer persona, and complexity of your sales process/customer’s buying process. Depending on what you sell – sometimes you are going to need to pick up the phone or send a note to get someone’s attention. That will NEVER change. 4. Generational consideration for career pathing is key BDR is still hands down the best route to market for future AE’s. You have to learn to prospect and get meetings before you can run a meeting, qualify, and manage a deal. No argument from me on CAC math – thousands of products require veracious qualification, deal management, and creating customer consensus. You can not run those types of deals and prospect. If any Voice had EVER done that type of role or ran a team that did, they wouldn’t say what they are. For BDRs to stick around for more than 14 months, you need steps in the BDR path where comp, responsibility and role grow over time. 5. Results are tanking Point 1&2. You are the equivalent of a fire fighter that starts a fire then takes the glory when you put it out. I absolutely loved the movie Backdraft – but stop it. These are the ideas of “not famous” GTM people. People who spend all day serving their customer and developing their people – not posting on this platform. They don’t care about clicks, followers, or impressions. They care about revenue and earnings. Outbound is hard. It (almost) always has been. Ya’ll need to block the noise and focus on what works for your business and try everything. Even the hard stuff. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

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Maybe the most important skill for enterprise sales and CS is the ability to quickly connect the dots. The very best can hear or read disparate pieces of information and construct them into a coherent value narrative then make this relevant to different stakeholders. Often on the fly.

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The SaaS experts are coming! Sales comp design? The relationship between Sales and Finance? You asked, so I'm bringing in the experts for these exclusive events. June 25 – Building a Scalable Sales Comp Plan: Fundamentals & Best Practices This is a top question, so I brought in the experts from QuotaPath. You won't find this exclusive training elsewhere unless you hire a Sales coach. June 26 – The Relationship Between Sales and Finance – How Should This Really Work & Subskribe Overview I'm joined by Prakash Raina, Co-founder @ Subskribe and John Medeiros, Group Product Manager @ Subskribe. Save your seat here: https://lnkd.in/g-hGh3r5 #SaaS

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A few highlights from our discussion on next-gen pipeline building with Lauren Schwartz (VP Enterprise Sales, Fivetran) & Kim Graves (Head of Sales, Notion) from 20SALES: (1) Cold outbound is rough. Seek W.A.R.M outbound: "W" is for 'within your ICP'.  It’s important to be very targeted, know your buyer, and the tech stack they're using. "A" stands for 'authority or credibility'. Do you have credibility in the space? Have you talked to other companies like them and have insight to share? "R" is for 'relevance'. Why is it relevant to have the conversation now? "M" is for ‘make it personal.’ It can't feel like AI. (2) Next-gen pipeline building requires a holistic approach: Pipeline coverage should be 4-5x in this market (rather than 3x) and requires rigor around the right channel mix  (3) AI is enabling, not replacing outbound: AI can help automate away many parts of your workflow, particularly non-customer facing ones. The most useful tools today provide data aggregation/enrichment and intent-based signaling. (4) Partnerships can be an accelerant: Find power in collaborating with complimentary tech (“It’s called a tech stack for a reason”).  Consider other players who could act as an extension of your sales team to help you generate pipeline. If you have prospects with these companies already in their stack, the quality of that pipeline is usually higher. (5) You are the CEO of your territory: Good sellers know that they are in control of their own destiny. Never assume that the pipeline is going to come from other channels or become overly reliant on marketing or partners.  (6) Find your “Renaissance rep”: Your first sales hires should be very adaptable, great communicators, problem solvers, and process builders. Reps should also be very collaborative and constantly bringing feedback from customers back to the team. We all benefited from your wisdom - thanks for joining our community of founders & GTM execs at Menlo Ventures! CC: Kandace Elam

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Plenty of GTM math is getting more and more complicated, but one metric has always served me well by keeping it dead simple. Shoot for 3X pipeline coverage, 4X if you want to err on the conservative side. That's it. Anything under that means you're likely leaving too much good pipeline on the shelf. Anything over that implies either a qualification problem or a conversion problem. And that is NOT a sales problem, because you all own that together as part of a unified go-to-market team. The problem(s) could be any of a number of things - lead quality, imprecise buying journey mapping, sales process management, buying committee multi-threading, etc. I imagine even this simple math will stir up some debate for you internally. Better to have that conversation now in pre-fiscal year planning than mid-year when it's harder to course-correct.

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Newspaper gains adoption: we won’t need sales people anymore. People can just reply to ads. Telephone gains adoption: we won’t need sales people anymore, we can just have telemarketing. Email gains adoption: we won’t need sales people anymore, we can just send mass emails. AI gains adoption: we won’t need sales people anymore, we can just have AI agents. Sales people have been remarkably resilient through every technological shift. I’ll be really surprised if AI is the one that gets us.

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"Are You Just Chasing Partner Referrals? Stop." The quarter’s almost over. Revenue targets are looming. Partners have customers. But here’s the thing: You’re asking the wrong question. If you’re treating partners as nothing more than a lead-gen source, your partnerships are going to fail. Here’s why. Partnerships are a long-term, scalable strategy for exponential growth—when done right. They drive long-term revenue and customer loyalty by delivering complementary solutions that solve real, strategic problems. It’s not just about getting referrals—it’s about creating value that benefits everyone. When partnerships are done right, they align with your larger growth goals and foster collaboration across teams. To succeed, you need: - Executive buy-in, all the way down to product, sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams. - Strong, multi-threaded relationships across your partner’s organization. - The right resources, processes, and internal alignment to operationalize them. From experience, companies that treat partners as transactional lead sources often see diminishing returns over time. But those that invest in true, strategic partnerships consistently build stronger revenue streams and customer trust. So, instead of asking, “Where are the referrals?” maybe ask this: “How can we operationalize partnerships to better align with our growth strategy and deliver more value to customers?” #SaaS #Partnerships #RevenueGrowth #CustomerSuccess #ExecutiveLeadership

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The future of sales isn't just about automating as much as we can—it's about augmentation and balance between tech and human capabilities. 🤖🤝 In the latest post on the Clarify‎ blog, my co-founder Austin Hay‎ dives into the why and how behind this need for balance. ⚖️  As our tools have become more advanced, they've also become less effective. Why? Because everyone's using the same AI-powered playbook.  Our customers are more aware of–and more burnt out by–over-used AI strategies than ever. This means more outreach ends up in spam every day. 😬 So, what's the solution? It's not about abandoning technology, but about using it more intelligently.  Here are some of the key insights Austin shares: 🧠 Context is king: We need AI that understands deep patterns in customer behavior, not just surface-level personalization. 🔄 Rethink CRMs: Imagine systems that actively provide insights without manual input, freeing us to focus on relationship-building. 💡 Quality over quantity: Use AI to identify the most promising leads and craft genuinely valuable interactions. 🤝 Enhance, don't replace: The goal is to use tech to amplify our human skills, not substitute them. 📊 Redefine success metrics: It's not just about volume anymore—focus on engagement quality and long-term relationship building. This shift presents both challenges and opportunities for founders and product builders. How do we create solutions that leverage AI while preserving that crucial human element? How do we build tools that enhance, rather than replace, genuine human connection? 🤔 The answer: Use AI not as a replacement for human interaction, but as a powerful tool to augment our capabilities. It should handle routine tasks and provide deeper insights, freeing up our teams to do what humans do best: Understand nuanced needs, provide strategic value, and build lasting relationships. ❤️ I’ll link Austin’s blog in the comments for folks who want to learn more. 🔗 I’d also love to hear your thoughts: How are you navigating the balance between automation and human touch in your business?

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If you're a seller you've felt it over the past 3 years - longer sales cycles, bigger and more risk-averse buying committees, tougher budget scrutiny on deals, more competition, and lower win rates. But why? In a new UserEvidence research study of 200+ B2B buyers, 200+ sellers, and 200+ marketers (600+ total respondents) - we examined the disconnect between the 3 groups - and dug into the details on one of the primary culprits: Vendors aren't providing today's skeptical and conservative buyers with enough quality and relevant customer evidence and proof and content to make buyers feel confident in their purchasing decision and path to strong ROI. There are huge implications for sellers and marketers. Transactions aren't smooth - it's not working. There is a lot of room to improve. Some topics that stood out in the report: 🔍 - where buyers START their search - it was a bit of a surprise to me that analysts firms like Gartner and Forrester have eclipsed peer review sites 🏁 - where buyers FINISH their search - is NOT analyst reports or even review sites. While great starting points for building a short list - technology is getting more complex, so buyers need more relevant information about how a solution will work in their unique environment 🎯 - Relevance one of the most important (and often missed/poorly executed) factors for whether or not content was effective. Matching on Industry was the biggest proxy for relevance, but use-case, role, company size, were all important as well 💵 - vendors STRUGGLE to produce any credible statistical evidence that would help a buyer make a concrete business case for strong ROI (e.g. cost savings, time savings, productivity gains, etc). And this financial business case is needed more than ever as CFOs get involved in more deals. ⚔ - the #1 type of customer evidence missing for sellers was COMPETITIVE EVIDENCE - ie why customers switched from incumbents, whats better/different about their product. There has been an explosion of vendors, and buyers are lost in the noise, and can't differentiate well between solutions. Kyle Lacy said it well, “The holy grail of marketing is customer evidence. Marketing teams must prioritize the creation of quantifiable ROI and validations to regain the buyer’s trust. Elevating customer stories is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ thing; it’s essential for winning.” Download the full report w/link in the comments. Some great wisdom included from Emily Kramer, Emma Stratton, Mark Kosoglow, Devin Reed, Mac Reddin 🦕, Adam Schoenfeld, Jason Oakley, Kyle Asay, Adam Goyette, Chris Orlob, Natalie Marcotullio, Amanda Natividad, Morgan J Ingram, Kaylee Edmondson #productmarketing #customermarketing #salesenablement

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How do you create alignment between buyer and seller? Build a Mutual Action Plan (MAP). Strong sellers know how to move a deal forward. But many customers don’t have the same experience with dealflow. - Maybe they’ve never purchased before - Maybe they’re working to build internal support - Maybe they don’t know how to buy within their company When buyer and seller put together a Mutual Action Plan, they create instant alignment. Everyone knows which milestones we need to hit. That’s how you create a true partnership. 

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So many people over complicate prospecting tech stacks. A few years ago, budgets were big and teams purchased every cool tool without ever thinking about what problem you’re trying to solve. If I was building out a stack today, I would start simple and focus on giving your reps the best chance of doing their job effectively. No distractions. What will let them complete activity easily and effectively. My non-negotiables stack: ✅ CRM ✅ Sales engagement tool Salesloft Outreach ✅ Communication Slack Zoom ✅ Scheduling Calendly ✅ Data Kaspr Cognism ✅ Conversation intelligence Gong ✅ Dialler - use it in your sales engagement tool or standalone like Aircall Anything I’m missing here? What would be in your non-negotiable list?

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