Julian Schulz

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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Top performing AEs achieve 4.8x FASTER DEAL VELOCITY. Imagine 1 report & 6 Qs accelerating your Q3/Q4 deals! Every quarter feels like a short quarter. Q3 and Q4 are no exception. Summer getaways, mid-term breaks & the holidays. → Good AE performance is exiting H1 on 40%. → Most AEs need to close 60% + to hit quota. → Speed is everything in Q3 and Q4. If you can add 4.8x deal velocity, then it gives you a great chance to exceed quota! How do top performing AEs achieve 4.8x deal velocity? They prospect the best-performing personas. Here is the rub... You need to check the data first hand. Check the CRM for closed deals. → Run a report for closed deals in H1. → Run a report for closed deals last FY. Get a decent sample size. It can be deals closed in your patch. Deals closed by your team or wider org. It can be deals closed in your vertical globally. Run a report that fits your situation. Then check the Top 5: Q1. Top 5 Largest Deals Q2. Top 5 Shortest Deal Cycles Q3. Most common Personas? (Champions, Economic Buyers) Then take it a step further. Q4. What were the exact pains? Q5. What were the exact use cases? Q6. What were the desired outcomes? tldr: to achieve 4.8x deal velocity... hat tip to Ebsta for the data. → Pipeline Generation: Use this to prospect the right persona so you can find deals with higher velocity. → Progress Pipeline Get all the top personas involved in your deals. Make a concerted effort to have more stakeholders engaged. p.s. If you’re an Account Executive looking to fill your pipeline and exceed quota in 90 days or less, I've space for 5 AEs in August. Send me a DM saying "90" to find out more. 🔥 🍾

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The path to $10MM ARR is about finding your repeatable, scalable sales motion. The formula is simple, but not easy. It looks like this: Effort + Enthusiasm + Messaging + Lead Quality = Results When you are scaling a sales team, your job is to manage the inputs. Those are the things on the left side of this equation. If you can reduce the variability of the inputs, you will have more consistent results. Put another way. Consistent inputs leads to consistent outputs. Let's break it down... 1. Effort is the driver for your sales performance. You cannot scale without consistent effort. Effort includes the velocity of sales activity (phone calls, emails, meetings, etc.). Effort also includes the way that you execute your sales activity. This is your sales process and sales playbook. You can improve the quality of your effort with learning and development. 2. Enthusiasm is an amplifier for your effort. You have to act like you want to earn the business. A little enthusiasm goes a long way in closing more business. I've found that you can't teach enthusiasm. You must hire for it. 3. Messaging is how you get prospects to believe what you believe. Your messaging is your value prop. It's how you approach your ICP. It's the way that you convince customers that their current version of the world is no longer acceptable and they must make a chance. The best messaging illustrates the consequences of inaction. 4. Lead quality drives your conversion rate You have to stay focused on your ICP. The more variable your lead quality, the more inconsistent your sales results. The best effort, enthusiasm, and messaging are helpless if you are focused on the wrong accounts. This is the formula for predictable, repeatable, scalable sales. Manage the consistency of your inputs and you will have consistent outputs. What about you? What's your formula for repeatable results?

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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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Is the role of the Account Executive eroding? 🏜 There is a lot of conviction about BDRs but no one wants to talk about AEs. The BDR picture is becoming clearer and clearer 👇 Starting conversations was always hard, but it's now harder than ever. Clumsy GTM design and the rise of AI-fueled spam tools have created the necessity for elite talent to be running top-of-funnel activity. But what about AEs? ➡ Will the hiring profile become more senior and skew toward full-cycle? ➡ Are the tools supporting them make it possible for a more junior person to take on the role? ➡ Will specialized roles like BDRs, Sales Engineers, and Project Managers absorb the AE responsibilities across the sales funnel? ➡ Will we just need more talented and experienced BDRs and AEs in order to run an effective sales org? Give me your thoughts!

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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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The way most SaaS companies structure sales leadership compensation creates inter-team competition in a *NEGATIVE WAY* that costs millions of $’s in revenue and 100’s of hours of headaches a year. Here’s why (and a simple change you can make to fix it): Typically sales managers are compensated on the performance of their direct reports. For example, if their 8 Account Executives crush their targets, the manager's compensation reflects this. This sounds reasonable, right? But what about the rest of the sellers? What about the other 25 Account Executives who need to succeed for your company to hit its growth goals? Sales Managers have different strengths and need to be incentivized to help the ENTIRE sales organization, not just THEIR team. That’s why every time I started a new sales leader role here’s what I did…. I switched the manager comp plan so 20% of their variable earnings were based on the total sales orgs performance, not just their direct reports. I often got pushback, but this simple change always led to stronger collaboration, teamwork, and unity. And helped us avoid account controversy, resentment and entitlement. Sales leaders aren't coin-operated, but they are human and humans respond to incentives. Make sure you're incentivizing the right behavior. And create one team.

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I've promoted 30+ SDRs to AEs 🥳 (how to do it and hit the ground running) 𝗚𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲: 1. Learn how to do discovery calls and demos. Study calls. Make this the focus in your 1:1s with you AE buddy. Do mock calls with your peers. Prepare ahead of time so you're not scrambling. 2. Focus on performance. Do whatever it takes to get great results in your current role. Easiest way to stand out and get the opportunity to interview. 3. Know your numbers and strategy. Be able to speak in detail about your results to date, where you stack up, why that is and what you're working on to improve. 𝗢𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗲: 1. Commit to working as hard as possible. SDR to AE is the biggest jump in sales in my opinion. Especially if you're selling a complex product with 1, 2 and 3 year commitments. 2. Be super proactive. Ask your manager/team a ton of questions. Loop your manager into calls. Ask them to review calls and give you their harshest feedback. Use every single resource at your disposal. 3. Be ruthless with your calendar. Only go to meetings that are absolutely necessary. This means saying no to things that are great and really blocking time to study, drive revenue and outbound. What tips would you give SDRs looking ot make the jump to AE? - Mike G 👉 Join 5,000+ sellers getting my (free) sales newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gwQVvVBK

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There are two ways to solve gaps in signal-based selling. Only one is guaranteed to work at scale. 1) Revenue Enablement Provide continuous training for (a) every new hire who joins a team and (b) every 6 months to refresh reps on essential information, workflows, and processes. Many factors can impact the effectiveness of enablement activities (from the comprehensiveness of training materials to the trainer’s institutional knowledge, to how closely the individual reps were paying attention that day). Enablement only becomes harder as more people and processes are added to the mix because there are so many moving parts. 2) Revenue Operations Through automation, RevOps can reduce gaps — especially from human error — that cause friction or inaction among reps. Specifically, end-to-end automation. Most common “automations” in signal-based selling usually don’t go far enough. Therefore teams are overly reliant on enablement touchpoints to stay aligned. Ex: A champion moves to a new role and this is automatically updated in Salesforce This automation gets the process from point A to point B, but still relies on multiple human touches from B to Z. End-to-end automation ensures that essential tasks throughout an entire workflow are set up to keep the process moving toward an end goal. It anticipates gaps and opportunities for human error from point A to point Z (meeting booked). Ex: A champion moves to a new role, the CRM record is updated, a rep is notified, and a multi-step persona-specific email sequence is triggered. Would every rep follow this process if it was entirely manual (even with enablement training)? Probably not. That’s why every signal play should be accompanied by clear workflows enabled with end-to-end automation. The play can scale with your team. Signals without action are just noise for reps. Automation guarantees signals get actioned.

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10 RevOps Plays you can run today. Increase revenue and reduce friction for demand gen, sales and CX. 🏃‍♂️ ICP Fast Lanes Setup an inbound tool like Chili Piper, enrich inbound leads and create a Fast Lane router that sends high ICP accounts straight to AEs. Skip the SDR/Qualification call. ✅ Quote PreApprovals Unblock your reps. Use DealHub.io to setup preapproved quotes. Getting deals out faster and easier increases your win rate. 🤝 CQL (Customer Qualified Lead) Get your CX team involved with deal flow. Add SPIFFs and incentives to identify cross sell and upsell opportunities. Create an easy handoff process to move expansion deals from CX to Sales. ✒ Renewal Playbook Who is doing what and when. Map it out, train to it. Create workflows to reduce friction for the team running renewals. Treat renewals with the same science as you do leads. 💚 💛 ❤️ Account health scores: Getting a No at month 11 of an annual contract is too late. Flagging an account as Yellow in month 3 gives you 9 months to win the customer renewal. Create health scores, give exec support to reps when accounts need them. Early and often. 👋 Onboarding and Activation Playbook Customers that don't properly onboard and activate, dont renew. Create playbooks for CX to onboard and activate every customer. Want to know who doesn't renew? Someone who didnt activate after onboarding. Create playbooks for CX so you can take action at the start of the customer journey. ⬆ Usage Driven Upsells Low hanging fruit. Bring in product data to the CRM. Create easy upsell opps based on usage. If a customer has used 90% of their seats, create an expansion opp, and notify the reps that a customer is nearing capacity. 🔻 CRM Field Reduction Moving faster = selling more. Review required fields and process steps quarterly. Create a spreadsheet that requires VP sign off on each field. Its that important. Is it still needed? Can you combine fields? 🔢 Create a pricing calculator in Google Sheets/Excel Drafting pricing live on a call helps reps understand pricing options faster than creating a full quote. ⚖ Scaled CS: Add a 1:Many CX strategy to support your entry level customers with scaled solutions. ie Group onboarding vs 1:1s, automated QBRs vs live 1:1 QBRs, etc. You’ll you spend more time on your key accounts with 1:1 coverage as result Follow if you want to see more tips for RevOps and founders. We offer RevOps services, send me a DM if you want help to implement any of the above!

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An AE on my team closed 25+ deals last month. 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: Some of this stuff sounds easy but I actually find it quite rare to see someone do these things consistently. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘁: 1. Salesforce is up to date. I know this is every seller's worst nightmare but every top AE is highly organized and detailed when it comes to their pipeline. - Stage is correct - Close date is correct - Detailed notes on the account - Next step is future orientated w/ a date 2. Fights for every deal. At Deel we get both small and large customers in SMB and deal sizes can vary significantly. To him, size doesn't matter. He goes after every account with everything he has and gives a world class experience no matter what. Interestingly, a lot of the smaller deals turn out to be bigger than anticipated or make referrals to larger companies. 3. Is a sales professional. Shows up to every call prepared and dressed professionally. I think this is actually an underrated strategy in all-remote selling. Easy to dress casually (sweatshirt and hat) but if you're looking to close 100k+ deals the small things like this matter a lot imo. People can be judge mental and old school so you have to cover all your bases. 4. Differentiates like a pro. He's super well studied on and articulate with how we communicates about: 1. Our customers top priorities 2. How we solve those priorities 3. How our solution is different 4. Why those differences matter Discovery call: He learns their top priority and the associated challenges. Spends time explaining how we would solve it and how our solution is different from others in the market. Teases the solution to build interest for a longer demo. Demo: Starts with a slide deck focused on what he heard. The demo is focused on what solving their priority would look like. Does not show every single feature. Only the ones that matter. 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝗽: He manages up really well. He asks a lot from his manager and myself. And is not afraid to say what he needs in order to get things done. What tips do you have for closing deals? Let me know in the comments! 👉 Check out my 250+ page course for everything I know about outbound prospecting and selling here: https://lnkd.in/gP_-mVXR

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I’ve released 19 episodes of The Sour GTM SaaS Takes Podcast. Check out who I’ve interviewed & 1 of their 5 sour takes👇👇 EP 1 - Jared Robin ⏭, Founder & CEO of RevGenius Sour Take 🍬 Outbounding in a community isn’t the same as showing up and being active EP 2 - Amelia Taylor, Strategic Advisor at Capchase Sour Take 🍬 50% of playbooks created are copies of another creator's playbook — creating your own will take you WAY further EP 3 - 🔶🔸Mason Cosby🔸🔶, Founder and CEO of Scrappy ABM Sour Take 🍬 The current lack of alignment between marketing and sales is largely marketing's fault EP 4 - Melissa Gaglione✨, Head of Sales at Sendspark Sour Take 🍬 Take care of your body before your pipeline EP 5 - Tim Davidson, Founder of B2B Rizz Sour Take 🍬 ABM should be most of B2Bs GTM strategy EP 6 - Christina Brady, CEO & Co-Founder of Luster Sour Take 🍬 AI to replace humans will slow us down, AI to help improve human performance will speed us up EP 7 - Nate Branscome, Founder AE & Sales Leader at HockeyStack Sour Take 🍬 Orgs who claim they are data-backed, are rarely data-backed EP 8 - 👾 Alex Virden, PMM Advisor Sour Take 🍬 Calling PMM misunderstood is a crutch EP 9 - Morgan J Ingram, Founder and CEO of AMP Sour Take 🍬 Connect and blind pitching is the worst thing you can do on LinkedIn EP 10 - Kathleen Booth, SVP of Marketing & Growth at Pavilion Sour Take 🍬 GTM execs are leaving a ton of money on the table if they don't build a personal brand on the social platforms where their customers are active EP 11 - 🎁 Katie Penner, Head of Sender Relations at Sendoso Sour Take 🍬 Traditional influencer marketing is stale EP 12 - Julia Carter, Sales Leader at Kargo Sour Take 🍬 Mass exporting prospect lists is why you aren't hitting your goals EP 13 - Todd Busler, Founder & CEO of Champify Sour Take 🍬 People are overly obsessed with automation EP 14 - Cortney W., Strategic GTM Advisor Sour Take 🍬 Get a mentor that disagrees with you because it will teach you a new perspective and the art of understanding both sides of the conversation EP 15 - Dale Dupree, Founder & CEO of The Sales Rebellion Sour Take 🍬 Don’t trust people at a new company just because they pay you more EP 16 - Daisy Chung, Director of Sales at Orum Sour Take 🍬 Cold calling is the best channel to grow your sales career EP 17 - Brianna Doe, Founder & CEO of Verbatim Sour Take 🍬 You can have a great online brand and still have a terrible personal brand EP 18 - Travis Tyler, Sr. Social Media Manager at Motion (Creative Analytics) Sour Take 🍬 Don't have hiring conversations if you don't have a job description written up EP 19 - Ashley Faus, VP of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian Sour Take 🍬 Stop mapping content to linear funnel stages, use content depths and intents instead #saas #gtm #b2b P.S. Want to know the other sour takes these leaders had? Link to the podcast and my website in the comments 🔗

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Several CFOs of Series B+ startups told me their outbound motion is broken for SMB. If ACVs are $10k or less and deal cycles are 30+ days, the math doesn’t work. On top of this, reps struggle to prioritize between thousands of accounts (territories are much larger in SMB). The margins just aren’t there. In 2018, LinkedIn’s GTM org had a similar realization and transitioned from sales-led to self-serve for the SMB segment. But for many companies, it’s not trivial, or worth it, to build out a self-serve offering just for SMB. A few predictions on how this will unfold: 1) The SMB segment will be the first to move away from outbound sales because of margin pressure. 2) GTM and finance leaders will embrace automation for this channel, because they have no other choice. They’ll use signals and warm outbound to hone in on the 5% of their vast SMB pool of accounts. 3) As foundational models get better, this will be the most compelling use-case of agent-led SDRs. The accuracy bar for full automation with SMB isn’t nearly as high as with Enterprise, where reps closely monitor a handful of accounts and won’t tolerate mistakes. Thoughts?

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Revenue blindness is a condition that a 2/3 people in sales suffer from. When undiagnosed it can lead to... - Constant Peaks and Valleys - Scaling Suck - a 'Just do more' mindset - Hives - Dispair and Misery What is revenue blindess? When all that is looked at in terms of success is the revenue number. If you hit = Things must be good. If you miss = The team/individual/leader suck It's actually far more dangerous on the 'hit' side, and I see it all the time. A rep is hitting their number, but tearing down the culture, but it's allowed because of... Revenue blindess A team of 10 hits the number, but off the back of the manager or or 1 top rep, so the decision is made to scale to 30 even tho they have nothing proven in place... Revenue blindess It works the other way too. A team is hitting their marks, hitting the activity, working the deals, using strong messaging, and yet miss the number, because the number was unhittable. The number doesn't get changed, the people do. Revenue blindess. A rep IS crushing their number, but because of that they don't get the recognition, attention and support they want/need because well.. they are hitting the number Revenue blindess I talk about this with my leaders all the time, we can't fall into revenue blindness. We have to stay below the number to drive results. Behaviors. Issue Diagnosis/Inspection. Process. Skills. You - This is where BIPSY comes in. We have seen some amazing results over the last 6 months. We're talking some 2-3x type results. BUT We stay obsessed over what's causing them, not just the end result. This is the key. Revenue blindness is curable. If you know someone that suffers from revenue blindness ... Send them to the Sales Leadership Accelerator - it will take time.. but we can save them. https://lnkd.in/ejPDhZw4

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We’ve all heard it... "RevOps is just Sales Ops with a shiny new name," right? Well, this data clearly illustrates that statement! Take a look at the chart below. Only 9.44% of current RevOps pros came from Marketing Ops, while a whopping 30.68% transitioned from Sales Ops. Significantly lower, right? And that’s where I think the industry might be getting it wrong. 🚫 A little over a year ago, I shared my thoughts on this very topic (👀 here's that post for a quick refresher: https://lnkd.in/gzQssPYc Back then, I was shouting from the rooftops that RevOps is supposed to be about aligning Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, and CS Ops. It’s Rev for a reason—it’s not just about sales! 🙌 Sure, Sales Ops is crucial, and the complexity within the sales process is undeniable. But so are the handoffs—from Sales to CS, from Marketing to Sales, and the feedback loop that’s driven by Marketing Ops. Marketing Ops teams have a unique advantage—they understand the flow of data through the entire funnel and back again. If they aren’t actively involved in the RevOps conversation, you’re missing a huge opportunity. In my mind, RevOps should be the umbrella that sits over all these teams—Sales Ops, CS Ops, and yes, Marketing Ops too! ☂️ It’s about making sure your entire go-to-market strategy is aligned and functioning at its highest potential. So why aren’t more Marketing Ops pros being tapped for RevOps roles? 🤔 We need to fix that trend, and fast. What do you think? Is this just the start of a shift, or do we need to see more MO Pros stepping into the RevOps spotlight? And don't get me started on "GTM Ops" right now..

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When RevOps is really just SalesOps (And the CRO is really just the VP of Sales) 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗘 - Closing deals should work - Clear pipeline management process - Forecasting is as accurate as possible - But everything before & after is an issue 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Has different goals - Maybe the target is MQLs - Has their definition of MQLs - And their definition of SALs, SQOs - Has systems with different metrics - Their reports don't match sales' reports - Leads routed from one system to the next - With lots of things falling through the cracks - Classic case of marketing/sales misalignment 𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 - Do SDRs report to marketing? - If so, we're misaligned there too - The goal may be meetings booked - So AEs have lots of leads and meetings - But maybe not the ones they really need - The ones that convert to pipeline/revenue - We have more misalignment & finger pointing - Do SDRs report to sales? - What content do they have? - What events and assets do they share? - What visibility do they have into engagement? - How does marketing align with their outreach? 𝗢𝗡𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Sales is paid to close deals - How do they hand off customers? - What is the onboarding process? - Who builds/maintains that process? - What is done if sales drops the ball? - What is done if sales overpromises? - How are incentives and comp aligned? 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 & 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 - Which customers are easiest to retain? - Which customers are most likely to churn? - Which customers are the easiest to expand? - How is this data used to improve sales targeting? - How do we maximize NRR if sales is in their own silo? For me RevOps drives value by getting into the weeds and finding ways to generate more revenue with the resources available. That includes SalesOps and optimizing the sales process to close more deals. However, if we stop there we end up with an expensive and inefficient revenue engine with high CAC, high Churn and low LTV. We end up with different departments chasing different goals in different systems with different reports and different definitions of success. What would you add to this? Anything I missed? ✌️

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I love working with GTM teams during territory allocation season. Soooo much pain for RevOps - but also so much impact. The main things I have learned are: 1) Simplify everything: If you don’t think you need corporate hierarchies, don’t have them. If you don’t think you need to worry about lead-contact relationships in the CRM, don’t do it. Variables compound in complexity. 2) Poor data quality is the root of most problems: Allocating accounts at scale depends almost entirely on the ability to slice and dice a market with accuracy. Poor data makes that impossible. 3) Establish feedback loops with reps: Things are never perfect, so the better the feedback loop the more it will feel like a team effort. — P.S. If you’re a RevOps leader planning your next territory allocation exercise, drop me a DM 🚀

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