Richard Klein

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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Whew. The last few years in SaaS sales have been turbulent. Longer deal cycles, disappearing budgets, HUGE buying committees, and so much "consolidation." Strategic sell betweens and ROI proof are now critical to every deal, no matter the size. Two-thirds of sellers (67%) said a deal of theirs has suffered or been slowed down because they couldn’t produce relevant, specific customer evidence in a timely manner. I'm THRILLED to announce that UserEvidence has launched UserEvidence ROI Studies to help folks get quantifiable proof, backed by real customer outcomes and third-party verification, without the hefty analyst price tag or long wait. Details in comments below.

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🎯 The Evolution of Call Transcripts: Insights on the Rapid Shift It’s fascinating how quickly recording every conversation has become standard practice. Here’s a quick overview of how some major players are carving out their niches in the space: * Sales-focused solutions: Gong and ZoomInfo (Chorus) are optimized for capturing individual sales calls. * Meeting assistants: Platforms like Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai focus on supporting various types of meetings, making every interaction accessible. * General record-it-all platforms: Google Meet and Zoom are widely used to capture almost any type of meeting. This is just a snapshot—each platform has unique strengths, and there’s a wealth of potential value companies can unlock. Here are a few trends shaping the way companies are capturing and using these insights: 🚗 Driving Actionable Follow-Up Winning customers requires more touchpoints than ever. These follow-ups aren't just about regurgitating what was said on a call—it’s about ensuring follow-through across multiple, timely interactions. This is where true sequence and funnel management shines. Do you have the insights you need to guide each rep on the right next steps? Can you identify who on your team is most effective at engaging the right persona at the right time in the right way, across multiple contact points? Current transcription solutions are great at summarizing the action items but don't do as well on bridging to the next touch point. 🥅 Capturing Opportunity through Playbooks Playbooks are powerful, but only if they’re leveraged effectively. Is your team consistently applying them? Better yet, who might be succeeding by adapting or going beyond the playbook? Current transcription solutions require a lot of manual effort to dig through calls and understand what is working and what is not. There is also no good way to discover little tricks others might have uncovered which help them succeed. 📊 Revolutionizing Data Capture “I love filling out CRMs,” said no one ever. While today’s AI tools are making CRM data entry easier, the future is all about bypassing manual data capture. Imagine drawing insights directly from your pool of transcripts, emails, calls, and documents—without the tedious data entry. What gaps are still in your CRM? And do they even matter? Being able to ground your insights into specific calls is nearly impossible. And keeping fields up to date is still labor intensive. Extracting insights across multiple calls and contact points is purely manual if done at all, but it doesn't have to be. Any others that stand out to you? Any of these you've seen done well?

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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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WE DON’T WANT TO REPLACE SDRS Agent Frank was never meant to replace your sales team. Sure, it can help you reduce some costs - for example, instead of hiring 2 new reps, you can just hire one and onboard Agent Frank - https://lnkd.in/e69mGgBG But the goal was always for Agent Frank to work WITH your team and enable them to focus on the best part of being an SDR: Closing deals 🚀

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There is no more valuable skill as an AE to master than finding and building pipeline. Which is why, as a frontline sales leader, there is no more valuable use of time than teaching the "how" around helping your AEs find and build pipeline But where I see most get it wrong is there is no real plan to execute on pipe gen activities consistently You may learn a tactic or two in an enablement and then sporadically try it one or two times in your territory with varying levels of success but Nothing really sticks and you are consistently going back looking for different ways, different tactics to try out You first have to start with a pipe gen plan I call it the Weekly Execution Plan Here's what the process looks like from a frontline leader's perspective: Step 1: AE builds Weekly Execution Plan (see template attached)- This is all focused around proactive, AE driven pipeline generation activities. This is not to be delegated to your BDR Step 2: Revise Plan & Discuss with AE - I have my AEs send me their Weekly Execution Plans Monday morning before 10a. I make tweaks, comments, adjustments, additional thoughts, etc. right in their 1:1 docs and we discuss together during our 1:1 time. We use the time to agree on what the final weekly execution plan looks like Step 3: Divide & Conquer - We discuss what is reasonable to accomplish during the week in terms of metrics and activity. We discuss what help they need to drive execution in their plans. I get in the game as well. 🙋🏾‍♂️ How can I help? What can I own? Then we go execute! My role in the Weekly Execution Plan differs from AE to AE Sometimes Im there to help craft the plan Sometimes Im needed to tweak the plan Sometimes Im needed to help execute the plan Sometimes Im needed to simply cheer on and encourage my AEs as they implement and execute their plan Sometimes Im needed for all of the above The Weekly Execution Plan has been a gamechanger for me as a leader, my teams, our pipe gen, consistent monthly execution, and our mentality around creating pipeline everyday

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Gong's GTM teams love DealHub! We're geeking out over how Gong, the Revenue Intelligence leaders, are using DealHub.io to, well, rock their sales world! Their Deal Desk, RevOps, and Sales teams are all raving about the platform. Here's why DealHub is a hit at Gong: * Less Busywork, More High Fives: DealHub slashed manual work by 50%, freeing up time for what matters – closing those deals. * Crystal Clear Visibility: Say goodbye to pipeline mysteries! Everyone at Gong has a bird's eye view of the sales process. * Faster Sales Cycles: DealHub helped Gong accelerate their deal cycles, meaning quicker wins and happier customers. * Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Collaboration is key! DealHub fosters seamless communication between all of Gong's awesome teams. Curious how DealHub can boost your RevOps magic? Check out the full story! https://okt.to/S0b1WB #RevOpsLife #SalesTeamWins #DealHubLove #CustomerSpotlight

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The first version of the SaaS GTM playbook was written twenty years ago. Salesforce championed it. Mark Roberge published The Sales Acceleration Formula about Hubspot’s journey. Over the next two decades, we analyzed, quantified, instrumented, & optimized many aspects of the SaaS GTM. Account executive to SDR ratios, sales cycle lengths, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime values, net dollar retention. The new software GTM playbook has yet to be written. But the companies who figure it out will become the next wave of massive businesses. On Tuesday, Theory held an event with [Dave Morse] formerly at Hebbia & Scale AI, Flo Crivello from Lindy, Paul Yacoubian from Copy.AI, & Chris Changfrom Gradient to discuss how AI changes these practices. These were my take aways : - Selling AI is being discovered because the technology is new. Buyers don’t know how to use it or how to buy it. - Because the sales motions are new, we can’t apply the previous playbook to the new sales process. The CEO/founder should hire a sales leader that they fully trust who focuses on ultimate success. The sales process is a part of the product : using both the customer’s language & the ultimate use of the product through success efforts - Between PLG vs sales led, more companies were sales-led. If starting with PLG, the template sells the product. Fight the empty box problem with great concrete templates that demonstrate how to use AI. If selling top-down, most of the conversations today are at the C-suite rather than the mid-market predominantly because the buying process is new. - Figuring out how to consistently produce wow moments with non-deterministic software is essential. - The room was split on pricing model : seats, usage, or some hybrid. Ultimately, pricing captures 15-30% of the value the software/AI creates. Developing a strong case for this with buyers will be key because the ROI question from buyers is real especially as the broader software market feels pressure. - Only VCs care about the word agents / agentic : for most enterprises, agents mean a customer support agent. Many teams don’t care about the underlying technology, they seek a solution to their problem. Tomorrow, we’ll be publish the results of the 2024 GTM Survey which we’ll reveal at Saastr in which we dig into the use of AI on sales processes & the impact to efficiency. Thanks to the panelists & attendees for a great discussion.

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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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Thank you so much for this great writeup of the PMM role in SMB/MM and Enterprise! Out of curiosity, how do you know if you've accomplished the metrics for success in Enterprise you set out in (3)? Do PMMs in developer/infra focused companies need to be technical to get beyond 'the core?' I'll use an example relative to me. I've used CloudFormation and have some very specific opinions on that product. As such I can semi-credibly outline a customer value prop and highlight use cases for an IaaC solution from Pulumi or HashiCorp. But that clearly can't be what proficiency means to you because then I (or anyone else) would need how to deploy and manage containers to work at Docker, Inc or any company using Kubernetes. So how do you think of what it means to be proficient and how have you gone about getting there throughout your career? Thanks again for the post and for any thoughts you can offer.

Guillaume Jacquet's points are valid. The category is new and growing, and the opportunity is already impressive, but a second part of the same story exists. Not many realize how much your organization gains while investing in your RevOps organization. Studies from many consulting firms have shown that companies implementing successful RevOps frameworks see significant efficiency and revenue gains. Key figures include: 1️⃣ Companies often experience a 5-10% revenue boost as RevOps aligns marketing, sales, and customer success functions, improving customer experience and sales cycle efficiency. 2️⃣ RevOps can reduce costs by 15-20% by optimizing resources and reducing inefficiencies in the GTM process. 3️⃣ By holistically focusing on the customer journey, RevOps implementations often improve customer retention and increase upsell potential, adding to long-term ROI. Most importantly, the same team can prevent you from making a disastrous decision. #gtm #revops #startups #venturecapital

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A Pipeline Council can be one of the best ways to get alignment between sales and marketing and drive real pipeline growth and closed won revenue. But when Mallory, our SVP of RevOps Strategy, first introduced the concept to me, I didn’t understand how this was different from any normal sales and marketing meeting. Then she explained how to run one and how much deeper it goes. Here’s an outline: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗲𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹 𝟭. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮. It is shared the day before and attendees must review it before the meeting 𝟮. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘂𝗽. The meeting has to be a priority. 𝟯. 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲) 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀. You might have to remind each other about that frequently. 𝟰. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘃𝘂𝗹𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀. People have to open up and admit where they need help. There’s no room for ego – it slows down progress. 𝟱. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱. Keep action items and review them at the start and end of each call. The group will be FUN when people are executing and seeing an impact. 𝟲. 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰. Regularly revisit the agenda to incorporate fresh data/insights and tackle strategic topics to ensure the council stays relevant and impactful (and not boring). 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀? Look for results! A thriving council will see pipeline gaps closing, deals progressing smoothly, and most importantly, revenue targets being achieved. Everyone involved will have a clear understanding of the data and feel invested in the collective success of the revenue engine. For anyone doing these today, anything you’d add? 🤔 More on this in yesterday’s 📰 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙊𝙥𝙨 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙡𝙮 📰 Get it here: https://bit.ly/4cxQn4V ✌️

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Why are B2B companies STILL running BDR/LDRs the same ‘out dated’ way?? The mass manufacturing approach of chasing more leads, increasing headcount, and spamming prospects 🤷‍♀️ The traditional BDR/SDR strategy is failing. I couldn’t agree more with the below 👇- The future of Business Development will return to basics: 🔼 Experienced, respected professionals handling high-value accounts 🙌Seeing Marketing as a true partner to focus on strategic and relevant conversations to relationship-build 🤖AI automating value-creating tasks (like researching and tailoring custom insights) 💰With compensation based on revenue creation… not manipulated meaningless interactions. Nucleus Selling #winning formula ‘in the making’ for those organisations who want and need to get out of this spiral of instanity. #b2b #BusinessDevelopment #B2BSales #SalesStrategy #Marketing #CRO #RevenueGrowth #AIinSales #SalesTransformation #SaaS #LeadGeneration #SalesInnovation

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What does 'Execution Excellence' actually mean? And why are Marc Benioff + Amit Bendov obsessed with it right now? Killer insights from Charlie Moss on how category leaders like Salesforce & Gong are resetting expectations to win despite headwinds!! 💥 “More rigor, more discipline, focused enablement, and a refined GTM strategy are a major part of their approach.” Specifically, Gong is investing in the following: - Greater accountability for the sales team + sales management - Weekly KPIs, weekly results, + monitoring key activities - Tracking every single deal with MEDDIC Achieving 'execution excellence' when it comes to running revenue teams is the WHY behind founding Accord... Ensure rigorous execution across each deal, and translating the winning strategy to the field in a way that actually works for sellers! Including tracking MEDDIC without feeling like homework, automatically updated in your CRM. Sales + CS Leaders using Accord to drive execution excellence understand what it takes for their sellers to win in 2024. Eg, we pulled data across 500+ Opps for a customers at their QBR, and saw: - 28% Win Rate across opportunities without Accord - 56% Win Rate across opportunities with Accord .... 100% increase in Win Rate when using Accord. This market isn’t about doing more with less. Its about doing the right things – consistently.

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Top Sellers aren't begging for specific features to beat competitors Or more training... what do they think will help drive more revenue?? 👀 See the report below for the real data 👀 Met with killer revenue leaders at Gong's annual conference last week and read their report on the "State of Sales Productivity" Similar to what we saw re: GTM Execution being a top priority for Founders / CEOs, this report shed light on top challenges impacting reps and hindering productivity... And it resonated. The least motivating thing when I was a seller? Wasting time OFF THE FIELD updating fields + busywork that didn't help my customers / prospects. I've yet to meet a successful seller who'd rather focus on internal tasks vs spending time moving deals forward... No surprised the top 3 areas that negatively impact rep productivity: 61% - Admin Tasks 47% - Inneficient processes 37% - Time management *Spending time on non-selling activities is de-motivating *BS internal processes slows down deals *Time is the most valuable asset to sellers / Opps (time does kill all deals) From spending time obsessed with making customers successful and being at the top of the leaderboard, I can tell you firsthand most GTM tools don't help with what frustrates the field the most. And is why I felt passionate enough to quit an amazing gig at Stripe to build Accord. To win in 2024's market, every moment counts. Revenue leaders can’t expect their team to be hit targets if they are not setting them up for success. Take the admin work out of it, and have fields populated automatically IN the flow of work. Build a repeatable playbook that is foolproof and can help leaders identify slipped deals, before they slip Make sure you team isn’t spinning their wheels on pipeline or activities that don’t move the needle. Are you making sure your team is motivated, focused on their customers, and setting them up for success going into the final weeks of the year and into 2025?? 📈

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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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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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Check out the latest GTM Secrets podcast by Identity Matrix with Saad Shaikh at CAST AI! He's a RevOps guru for both enterprise and mid-market orgs. Learn what he thinks we should be doing to accelerate the sales cycle, how to structure revops, and what it takes to rock in your gtm operations. Get the full episode on YouTube, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, and more! Link in the first comment. #gtm #revenueoperations #martech

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You can hire 1 new SDR at $100k+ all-in (benefits, OTE, etc.) or invest less than half of that in a new tool for AEs that can deliver 5x the results (verified with no risk) what this 1 SDR can deliver in new, top-of-funnel opportunities. Which choice do you make and why? What evidence do you need to invest in the new tool vs. another person? What risks does opting for the tool present that hiring an FTE does not?

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