Kyle Coleman

SDR Dashboards - what do you want to see? Gimme your top 3 stats/charts/reports you like to see on YOUR dashboard for pipeline gen. There's the obvious activity levels and SQL/SAL volumes but what else do you like to see.....

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If you are an SDR manager, you can help your team get meetings by responding to the outbound you're receiving from other vendors. Ask the SDR who is emailing you if they use anything for revenue intelligence [obviously insert your category] and go from there. Find out the information, and then give it to the lowest performing rep on your team for an easy win. Here's the email you can draft for your SDR: "Hey VP of Sales, I spoke with my manager who mentioned you were using XYZ already, she talked to John (one of your SDRs) who gave us the tip. Would you be willing to have someone on your team evaluate us as an alternative?" ^^ It sets. Try it! #sdrlife #sales

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If something in your sales process isn't working, you need to look 1-2 stages back for root cause. If we aren't converting initial meetings into next steps> are we targeting right personas and is our messaging aligned with our buyers priorities and problems? If we are getting stuck in proposal > did we do the right discovery? If we are getting slammed for discounts at the end > did we build a compelling value discussion before we got into commercials? If something isn't working, the answer is almost always 1-2 stages back.

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AE: "Can you demo to this super warm prospect?" SE: "Sure, what top outcomes are they looking for?" AE: "Umm, here's the e-mail thread. Figure it out." SE: "We might need more information than this..." AE: "But we NEED the demo to sell it to them." SE: "Okay, when's the call scheduled for?" AE: "At 3pm. Today." SE: 😭😭😭 Can anyone relate? Let's change the narrative. #presalesevolution #solutions #sales

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At every org I've been a part of, one common theme remains the same: 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 & 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬. Whether they're SDRs or AEs. Even founders. Everyone wants to talk about the shiny cool widgets, and streamlined workflows, and insurmountable capabilities. Why? Because that's the product we're offering. It's the product they're ultimately buying. And as consumers, that's how WE buy products. Think about when you purchase something on Amazon or when you're buying a new car. You look at all the features that it has, all the capabilities it possesses, all the advantages that they provide... 𝐖𝐞'𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 "𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 = 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫". So we end up dumping all our features on our prospects. Because "More = Better". But subconsciously, you're not buying "more". You're filling a need and solving an (unrealized) problem. 🚗 Maybe you wanted leather seats in your car because 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭. ⚡️ Maybe you wanted an EV because 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 & 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐚𝐬. 🍦 Maybe you wanted an ice-cream maker because 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐮𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞-𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐜𝐞-𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐫 (yes, I just bought one). Whatever it is, the underlying reasons are all the same: 1. Maintain & improve upon status quo 2. Fill a gap, pain, challenge, need 3. Improve quality of life Understanding & talking about your product is easy. Deeply understanding your prospect's challenges, business needs, and objectives is hard. And most folks aren't willing to do the hard work. Which is why I always prioritize industry training first before ever looking at the product with my new reps. 💡 Remember: 𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭'𝐬 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅𝒔. 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒔𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓. ✌️ #sales #salestips #b2bsaas

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Why Fractional Work is a Perfect Fit for Many B2B SaaS Sales Executives 🚀 Ever wondered what it feels like to have total control over your career? After years in B2B SaaS sales, I’ve found that fractional work is one of the best ways to transition into working for yourself—or even starting your own business. Here’s why: I get to choose WHAT I work on: No more projects that don’t align with my strengths or interests. I focus only on what I do best. I get to choose WHEN I work: Whether it's busy or slow, I have the flexibility to align work with my life and homeschool. I make my own schedule. I get to choose WHO I work with: I collaborate with clients and teams that align with my values and goals—no more mismatches. I get to choose WHY I work: I know I'm blessed to have a spouse providing benefits and I also know I'm working to make something for my family. I get to choose HOW I work: Every process is designed around my style, allowing me to deliver the best results efficiently. I get to choose WHERE I work: Who cares my location so long as I crush it. I have a car and a zoom too lol I get to say NO: Turning down work that doesn’t fit my goals or priorities has been empowering. No pressure to compromise ethics to keep a job. I get to say YES: The freedom to take on opportunities that excite me means I’m always engaged in work that I’m passionate about. It's truly fun! It all comes down to QUALITY and FREEDOM. If you’re in B2B SaaS and thinking about transitioning, fractional work lets you design a career on your own terms. 💡 Who’s ready to make the shift? 🏃‍♂️ DM me and let's talk. #FractionalWork #B2BSaaS #CareerFreedom #PreCallAI #EngineerMasterSolutions

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Our revops “team” at Chili Piper does A LOT OF automations. If you’d see our list, you’d think we have a full train of rev ops folks working here at Chili Piper (spoiler alert, we have 1 and a half). Here’s an example of an “unconventional” automation We assign churned accounts to SDRs. Yep, we automate outreach to churned accounts Here’s why and how First, let me tell you, it breaks my heart to see any customer churn. I feel like my heart is asking but always aim to learn from it and make everything better for them if they were to come back. Hence, we want to learn what made them leave, fix the problem, and win them back And the good news is that we win many of them back . Here are the nitty gritty on how we do this : We setup these rules for assigning churned accounts to our SDRs: – Account Status = updated to Churned – Transaction End Date = 91 days – Round Robin across SDRs and update SDR Owner – SLA: after 12 working hours, check if there was activity yesterday AND ROE phase ≠ unfit to work, send Slack notification – SLA: after 12 working hours, check if there was activity yesterday AND ROE phase ≠ unfit to work, reassign – Provide a Slack notification to the AM (80 days post-contract end date) – Provide a Slack notification to the SDR once the Account has been assigned (91 days post-contract end date) – Provide SDRs with information on why the account is churning in SFDC to give them the context to sell into the account effectively. If you are curious about more details on this, let me know!  

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Outbound Sequences can do more harm than good for SDRs. (I think when used appropriately, they can be a massive help, but most teams use & abuse them -- completely missing the point of them & wonder why they can't land in the primary inbox & get no responses) I think the days of the traditional 27 day sequence are over. We need change. Most tasks get long overdue anyway and end up not being completed. Here's the issue with them: Often, SDRs are reactive to their sequences/cadences... When in reality, you should be pro-active. Let me explain: Imagine you send your first initial email and it gets opened 5+ times. Or you send a LI connect request and they accept it + look at your profile. Most SDRs will move onto their next task and ignore the intent signal. Instead, use prospect engagement as a way to be more pro-active. IE: do not wait 3 days from the day you sent your first email if there's a ton of engagement. Try calling them same day, bumping your email the next day and throwing a connect request on LI. You should try and switch your messaging up based on prospect engagement, too. IE: your cold call opener should be different for someone who has accepted your LI request + looked at your profile / opened your email a bunch vs someone who hasn't engaged at all. Be the quarterback of your sequences.. Don't let them control you! Second issue: most sequences end up piling up overdue tasks.. This is because sequences have way too many steps. If you liked this, I share 1 free outbound prospecting tip that 4200+ SDRs and AEs read every week. https://lnkd.in/e2cJkJqr

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Hey #RevOps I have 2️⃣ questions for you First = what IS RevOps in your organization? 🤔 Second = what SHOULD RevOps be in your organization? 🤨 We're getting 25+ RevOps leaders together in San Francisco in a few weeks to help answer this question, and a whole lot more. Intrigued? Of course you are. 😏 This is part of a broader event series for us called 👇 RevOpsAF Executive Think Tank 🧠 Where we are getting RevOps leaders together in a variety of cities across the US for a roundtable discussion on: What RevOps should look like in every organization 🪞 What's standing in the way of a truly unified RevOps function 🚧 How to convince CEOs to respond and adapt to evolving market conditions by adopting a comprehensive RevOps charter 🗺️ A RevOps path to the C-suite 🧑‍⚕️ Current problems and issues faced by RevOps teams today and how to solve them 🛠️ This event will have two parts: 🧠 Part 1 is a 90-minute roundtable session on the above topics 🥂 Part 2 is a networking and cocktail reception Event details: 📌 Proper Hotel in San Francisco ⏰ Starts at 2pm PT ✅ Register here → https://hubs.ly/Q02Hvfj40 If you're a RevOps leader in #SanFrancisco and want to help shape the future of RevOps, join us in August. PS - in addition to San Francisco, we'll be holding these think tank events in #Chicago and #NewYorkCity ...registration for those will be open soon PPS - shout out to our friends at Subskribe for sponsoring this event. 🫶 #revops #revenueoperations #salesops #salesoperations #marketingops #marketingoperations #sops #mops #csops #cxops #gtmops #alltheops

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It's not uncommon in fractional sales to come across orgs that are asking for 10-15x pipeline coverage. Sales is hard. Sales isn't THAT hard. Reality check: about 6% of sellers account for 92% of ARR, and they all run processes that look a lot alike. If you haven't cracked sales yet, you're not alone. In fact, you are the 94%. BUT you can use the same process as the 6% and dramatically increase your revenue for a hell of a lot less than it will cost you to 10x your pipeline.

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The value of an SDR team is not just booking meetings. 🤩 It’s creating positive brand impressions with buyers. 🤝 It’s providing critical connective tissue between sales & marketing. 💪 It’s cultivating an internal talent bench. This is what the best-in-class teams do. This is what great leaders strive to create. This is not replicable with AI SDRs. ——— I’m (obviously) a proponent of leveraging AI – the right way. I believe in AI-powered SDRs who incorporate AI into their day-to-day to increase their span of control and pipeline productivity. I believe human buyers want to interact with human sellers. As long as those human sellers truly understand them and have something valuable to offer. Sadly, this approach seems to be getting rarer and rarer. Our goal with Copy.ai is to reverse this trend and pull people and companies toward a different future. Let me know if you want to chat about creating this future for your org. #gtmai #sales #sdr

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People that care about UX and productivity for sales people: SDR Managers (god bless you wonderful folks). I do find that most direct managers in Sales aren't polling their employees--especially AE's to find out what's not working, what they are putting up with and not complaining about. There are tons of tools that sales folks are buying on their own dime like Scratchpad, Superhuman, etc. We all care about "giving developers the right tools to stay in flow".. but your revenue team? Sure, leaders need our forecasting tools and enablement systems (maybe)--but ask your team "what sucks about this CRM layout, how does thing work on your mobile device, what things are getting in your way, how much time do you spend clicking around poorly designed tooling interfaces---and what would move the needle for you". As an AE-centric leader, i'm working to put things in place that sure--make folks more productive--but that they don't hate using. What say you? whats sucks in your world? what tools do you buy on your own to deal with your day? or even how should the world work for a day-to-day SDR/AE/Account Manager, etc

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Matthew Volm is a repeat startup founder—his latest being RevOps Co-op, a community for RevOps pros with over 13,000 members. (They also have a ton of great educational resources, well worth checking out.) RevOps Co-op actually started as a community in support of Matt’s software company, but when he saw the need for more education and resources for the RevOps field, he pivoted and hasn't looked back. During our chat we discuss: 🤓 the crucial interplay between finance and RevOps 📈  how RevOps pros can build their finance acumen 💥 living through the tech bubble 🥊 the hot debate on unified vs. split RevOps functions 🤗 the community-led business model 🔮 what the future holds for RevOps Some key takeaways: 1. Successful RevOps has to be more than sales operations. It needs to encompass the entire revenue engine, including marketing and post-sales. This shift is driven by the increasing complexity of go-to-market strategies and the need for seamless handoffs between teams. Great RevOps teams should drive efficiency across the end-to-end customer journey, with particular emphasis on post-sale activities like customer success, renewals, and expansion revenue. 2. Financial literacy—e.g., understanding financial outcomes, metrics, and how RevOps activities translate to business results—is crucial. This knowledge allows RevOps professionals to make data-driven decisions, build stronger business cases, and communicate more effectively with leadership. If you don’t have an FP&A background (perhaps you’re an English major like me), you may want to improve your financial acumen through on-the-job learning, collaboration with finance teams, and supplementary courses or training. 3. Failure is part of the founder’s journey. 90% of what you’ll do when creating a startup is not going to work. You need to have the stubbornness and tenacity to face this failure, get whacked in the face, and keep pushing forward. Failure is OK. 4.  RevOps is increasingly involved in high-level business strategy, particularly in go-to-market planning. This trend reflects RevOps' unique position in overseeing the entire revenue process and its ability to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. By focusing on critical handoff points and conversion rates throughout the customer journey, RevOps can drive significant business impact.

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I see posts about "sales funnels" several times a day by RevOps and sales "leaders." It drives me insane. 🤬 Rant below. Almost every single piece of report, audit, or market study will tell you that buyers do not buy in a funnel. Sales funnels have been debunked at least 6,000 times, yet it's ultimately what sales and RevOps leaders implement to "track" revenue. It feels a bit like the '50s when advertisers were promoting the health benefits of cigarettes, like stress relief, weight control, and even better lung function: "More doctors smoke Camels" and "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." Sales funnels don't kill people, but they certainly kill careers.

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If you’re a struggling AE and need a boost of confidence, here’s what I recommend you do: get a demo from another company. You’ll likely be AMAZED at how poor the demo was. They likely: -Don’t do any discovery -Don’t tailor the solution to you -Don’t really dig into your buying process Instead they will go through the motions and try to show you every part of the solution. It’s quite shocking how most sales reps are not very strong. And you’ll realize that you’re better than you think you are. And in the rare case you do get a great rep, you’ll see what good looks like. When I was a VP of sales I wish I made everyone get a demo of another solution once a quarter and share back their findings. And for good sales karma, I’d truly evaluate the best one.

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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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Who's your favorite CMO / VP Marketing in Austin? We (the Exit Five team) are traveling to Austin in November for a team offsite, and we're going to host a meetup (happy hour, networking, etc.) I'd love to do a fireside chat with a B2B CMO for this event, but I'm not plugged in down in Texas. So: who's your favorite CMO in Austin? Who should be on my list to reach out to interview for a live podcast / Q&A with 100 B2B marketers in November?

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3️⃣ reasons why retention must be more emphasized in vSaaS. 1️⃣ Winning the Control Point This is foundational table stakes to the vertical SaaS playbook. There’s no expansion opportunity if you churn customers here. Winning the Control Point is your anchor that opens up the multi-product play that will eventually grow your ARPA. 2️⃣Setting Up Multi-Product In order to deepen the anchor, and become the operating system of your accounts, both in workflow and data, product education and customer marketing are a must. Marketing has to be able to convey brand narrative and messaging that shows a roadmap to a seamless workflow and operation if surrounded by your ecosystem of products. 3️⃣ Extending the Value Chain The pinnacle of the vSaaS business model, according to David Yuan, is being able to sell to different stakeholders both forward and backward. You can never achieve this pinnacle if retention is not one of, if not, the top metric for marketing post-acquisition. Marketing no longer stops at pipeline generation, but now will be integral in shaping a future narrative that builds demand for your product ecosystem. Shoot me a DM if you want to go deeper into the topic and see what this looks like in practice! #RevenueEngineering #GTM #VerticalSaaS #DemandGeneration #Evron #vSaaS

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Top 5 key metrics I recommend CROs use for inside sales professionals: 1. Speed of response 2. Efficiency of progression through the process 3. Number of calls per day 4. Number of positive outcomes 5. Demo sets As a CRO leader, these are five metrics that I live by. 

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