Matt Zipse

ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts.  With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds.  Ready to give Copilot a try? Request a demo: bit.ly/3Kj4myP #ZoomInfoCopilot

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Top H1 takeaway from QBR's about our Rev Org: "We're an ecosystem, not a hierarchy." (h/t Alexandra B.) We collaborate, everyone's voice matters, and we strive to put people in roles they love so they can be madly successful. Hearing this statement was validation that what we are building in the Revenue Org at LibraryPass is unique, and scalable, and contagious. And we have roles coming soon! So if you're interested in being part of an ecosystem, let's chat. Here's to an even better H2!

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Are you building an SDR/BDR function? Stop what you are doing and read this. Megan Hardy is some you need to learn from - I’m stoke I get to learn from her EVERYDAY She’s really brilliant. She’s freaking cool. She’s got a fire to win like no other. She’s a builder. She’s a wife and mother with an awesomely cool family……..ask Chester Hardy….he’ll agree 😁 She cares about her people……..but doesn’t put up with nonsense. She done this multiple times….. She’s been an SDR (multiple times), AE (multiple times), run enablement (multiple times)…… Built a kickbutt SDR/BDR organization multiple times……… Read the dang thing….. She knows her stuff……. https://lnkd.in/gFG7qSem. #sdr #bdr #sales #saas #enablement #rockstar #leadership #restauranttech #wfm #leader

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CSM, here are 28 reasons to be thankful for in 2024: 1- AI tools are reducing administrative grunt work 🤖 2- CEOs understanding the importance of retention 💡 3- Predictive analytics are getting much more robust 🔮 4- Remote work expanding global CS opportunities 🌐 5- Retention metrics at board-level conversations 📉 6- The flywheel is overtaking the funnel as a GTM engine 🤲 7- Measuring Customer Outcomes is a top priority for CS 📊 8- Automation is handling repetitive customer interactions 🤖 9- Salary ranges for CSMs are becoming more competitive 💰 10- Customer health scoring is more sophisticated than ever ❤️ 11- There are so many learning programs for CS professionals 🎓 12- More companies budget for professional CS development 🏆 13- Customer feedback loops are faster and more transparent 🔄 14- More start-ups are tackling CS challenges and opportunities 🚀 15- Diversity and inclusion are improving in CS leadership roles 🌈 16- Tech stacks are becoming more integrated and user-friendly 💻 17- Executive leadership values emotional intelligence more now 🤝 18- CSM burnout prevention is getting more leadership attention 🧘‍♀️ 19- Technology is making personalization easier and more effective 🎯 20- The first CRM that supports the CSM work launched (HubSpot) 🧡 21- The skills learned in CS are highly transferable across industries 🌍 22- We're finally unifying the data to tailor the customer experience 🏅 23- The job market for CS professionals is showing genuine recovery 📈 24- The CS community is more supportive and collaborative than ever 🤙 25- Customer success is recognized as a revenue-generating function 💸 26- Networking opportunities have expanded through digital platforms 💻 27- Learning resources for CS professionals are abundant and accessible 📚 28- The stigma around customer success as a "nice to have" is disappearing 🔥 Customer Success is growing and it's becoming better. Despite the hurdles, there’s nowhere else I'd rather be. Who's ready for another revolution around the sun, making a real impact? Let’s go! - 📧 Join thousands of others learning to ace their CS roles by subscribing to my newsletter. (link below) #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #CustomerExperience #CSM #revops

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I am very excited to host a speaking panel at RevOpsAF in San Diego on May 30th. If you're a RevOps leader charged with moving your GTM execution faster -- this thought-leadership session is for you. In "Blood, Sweat & Sales People: Confessions from the Rev Ops Frontline", we dive deep into the trenches with RevOps experts Ayelet Germanski (PlexTrac) and Amie Weizer (Zensai), revealing their battle-tested strategies for success. Gain 3 crucial insights: 1. Scale with Speed: Master the art of GTM scaling – launching AND maintaining growth momentum. Discover how to thrive in a resource-constrained market through smart process streamlining and efficient workflows. 2. Adapt to Conquer: Learn how to react quickly to market shifts and build resilience for the unexpected. Uncover expert tactics for achieving growth even with limited resources. 3. RevOps Revolution: Optimize your RevOps journey. Identify the signs that you need a reboot, foster seamless collaboration across departments, and ensure your entire RevOps process aligns perfectly with your organization's goals. Big thanks to Matthew Volm, Camela Thompson and the RevOps Co-op team for organizing this wonderful event and inviting me to speak. Let's meet in person if you are attending - secure a time to chat here >>> https://lnkd.in/dmU7JY6K Use the discount code 'RAFDealHub10' to get 10% off your event ticket!

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"We keep losing deals where the rep is single-threaded." Easy to critique reps for this, but what if they've actually tried dozens of times to reach new contacts? Is it "all on them" to solve this? We've seen enablement teams stepping it up in a big way the last quarter to eliminate that risk and improve win rates in $1M+ deals, and I'm learning a ton from their efforts The slide below is from a workshop our CS team recently led with SE teams who want to head off the problem early. The workflow: 1. CRM rule triggers flags an opportunity that reaches a critical stage in without Champion or Economic Buyer qualified 2. Sales manager prioritizes that deal in the next 1:1 with the rep, and if they're blocked, assigns them an Emissary call 3. Emissary call yields (on average) 7-9 new contacts in the buying group and strategies to engage each, which rep documents 4. Sales manager reviews, approves plan Simple right? And it has a success rate: >80-90% 🤯 🎉

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WHY GONG? Just ask Damien Swendsen, SVP of Revenue at Verse.ai. He says choosing Gong as his org’s Revenue AI Platform boiled down to two things: 1. Functionality 2. Ease of use Check out how Verse.ai achieved a 76% boost in revenue and 25% more accurate forecasting with Gong here: https://lnkd.in/g7kHqxfH

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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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🏄‍♂️ Scott Leese has a great take on this. Too often I’m seeing RevOps people tout proudly complex comp plans and thinking that it’s ok. Where are we on this? Are there truly products that are too complicated or sales cycles that are so complex that having a quant wizard workbook is warranted to pay your salespeople? When I was interviewing, many members even in Pavilion within the RevOps community, had an air of accomplishment in their structure being so complex that it would take a full onboarding to even understand why the structure was the way it was. I’m open to being called wrong, but I’m 100% in agreement that if the comp plan is too complicated, it sucks, and it’s broken. Having been under many comp plans myself, you easily build distrust if transparency isn’t available and plans designed by people who have never been on a variable comp structure often reflect this. It’s not chutes and ladders, or cones of dunshire, or “who was the best mathlete”, it’s how people pay their mortgage, feed their kids, and live their lives. #revenue #operations #sales #revops #enablement #compensation

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With quota attainment at 42.7% in Q2-24 (RepVue data), your comp plans matter more than ever. We hosted Gabe Rothman on #RevOps Lab to chat about about comp planning for complex scenarios. CONTEXT Background on Rescale: - Consumption pricing - Margin on deals fluctuate - Customer buy credits over time - Spend fluctuate The context above can create very complicated comp plans. Instead, Gabe and his team choose to what he refers to 1st principles: - Limit complexity - Be outcome oriented - Don’t overcommit - Bend reality to your will The outcome 1. Comp on bookings (new logo, expansion, renewals) - Easy to understand - Transparent 2. Hedge P&L risk for company - Compensation isn't a contract - Opt-out clause for deals where margin creates business risks 3. Excellence in Ops & Finance - Finance & Ops predict margin via Deal Desk - Commission is based on key business fundamentals - Reduces complexity for AEs Any tips on comp plans worth sharing? Comment 👇 -- 🔊 Listen to the full episode - link to RevOps Lab in my profile ♻ Share with your friends Thanks for sharing those invaluable lessons w/ our audience, Gabe! #revops #saas

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Analyzing Churn- do you know what metrics to look at? How often are you looking at this and being proactive to prevent it? What metrics should you be looking at if you do not have CS Ops? The Infinite Renewals team recommends looking at these first: % Churn # of accounts $$ churned % calculated churn (12 MONTH) $$ renewed # accounts renewed $$ upsold # accounts upsold $$ booked # account booked The above monthly and quarterly It would be best if you also had the ability to drill down on the numbers above to be able to see which accounts made up the $$, #, %

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RevOps leaders are building their tech stacks around tools they are confident can scale alongside their growing teams (and complexities). Today QuotaPath has released a series of features that position us as the most adaptable commission software for high growth teams with complex compensation problems. I use QuotaPath constantly (a fun perk of the job), and we are constantly listening to our customers and evolving QuotaPath to address their biggest pain points. Features like a first-of-its-kind Mapping Manager that allows users to build data logic once in a template, save it, and re-use it anytime they need to add a new comp plan and connect to its data source. (A massive time saver.) Our Manager Plans and Dynamic Team Assignments are designed to seamlessly support the shifts that occur when reps transition between teams. These features ensure that your compensation plans stay aligned with your evolving team structure. And a new multi-level approval process promises that by the time Finance gives its final sign-off on commission earnings, reps and sales leadership have already seen and approved their earnings, streamlining the payout process while giving reps more ownership over their commissions. Congrats to our team and thank to every customer who has contributed to QuotaPath’s evolution. 

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Want to elevate your sales game and win over C-suite executives? 📈 Learn from the best with ZoomInfo's top sales tips, including insights from our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck!  Discover the definitive guide to selling to the C-suite in 2024: bit.ly/4aSCL3i

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Rev Ops / Sales Ops - I believe the toughest part of your job has more in common with parenting than it does with anything else. Follow my metaphor for a moment. The sales operations job is: - making sure the CRM is in order and connected to other sales tools - sales compensation - territory - ensuring sales process adherence - data hygiene - forecasting - sales analytics and many other things. As you look at that list it definitely lines up with somebody who is analytical and a systems thinker. Where it breaks down is once you have everything set up. Once you have the right processes and systems, the weak link is the people. And when the people are sales reps, that's a very weak link. Yes I know some of you hate that statement, but it's true. And that's coming from someone who prides himself on being a salesperson. I don't always do the stuff I'm supposed to do in the systems that revenue operations set up either. My colleague James Hemberg does a great job with tactful reminders. Here's one from last week: Hey team - If you are receiving this email, you are the owner of a non-flat renewal opportunity set to close this fiscal quarter. At this point, if it's not on the cusp of closing it should get pushed out to next quarter or moved to closed/lost. ------ I like the wording of his note. Way better than, "Update your opps you morons." That inspired me to ask the question: Got any bulletpoints on lessons learned from revops on how to get surly sales reps to actually do stuff? His reply: It’s like parenting and what I do to stop having to constantly remind my boys to do stuff: - create routines: be consistent with your expectations on when you ask them to do things and how you want it done. - keep the asks small: makes it manageable and shows you respect their time - lead with empathy and understanding: I know they don’t see personal value in every ask so I explain why the first time. - provide a means to avoid the ask: give them a dashboard or report they have access to at all times so they can proactively avoid having to do the asks. Gives them the ability to do it on their time. ___________ Great advice from someone who is technically and analytically competent, while at the same time understands the human element as a father of two boys. Sales operations people how do you handle sales reps when it's difficult to get them to do stuff? #revenueoperations #salesoperations #salesteam #routine #habit

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

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Quick thoughts on AI in Sales... I'm here at a sales enablement conference where so many folks are talking about the power of AI to scale. I'm talking to vendors showcasing their tools. But as a Sales Leader - I see 2 massive holes leading to one conclusion. 1) Using AI to draft emails pulling from you content focuses every email about your product - NOT THE CUSTOMER. No connection to the persona, the customer market, the customer's objectives. Yes, it pulls from what works based upon data, but an email or message shouldn't work "at scale" - it should work once. 2) AI Call Coaching. A very slick demo of an AI bot pretending to be a customer. But fails the human connection. The responses are robotic, simplified, cold. The best reps intuitively MIRROR their customers. If we have a young sales person training with this program, we are training them to either a) mirror a robot, or b) training them to avoid mirroring. The conclusion - we are homogenizing our teams... It'll work for a while as the AI follows the data, but then customers will recognize it and reject it. Just like all the other automated emails inboxes everywere. But this time, the customer will see it in the calls, too. My two cents... Give me thoughts - does AI improve the craft? or are we turning sales reps into robots?

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Today is a big day for Product Marketers who use Gong. Because today, Klue is launching our new Gong Integration. Here’s the scoop: ⬅️ Before: It was a challenge to track how often competitors come up over time ➡️ After: Gong tracker data is visualized within Klue so you can track competitor mentions ⬅️ Before: Deal support was reactive based on individual requests ➡️ After: Sort your calls by # of competitor mentions and prioritize deal that need support ⬅️ Before: The sales team was responsible for updating the competitive fields in the CRM ➡️ After: Automatically update these fields in your CRM based on competitor mentions ⬅️ Before: Klue content couldn’t be accessed in Gong ➡️ After: Sales can experience any Klue battlecard from Gong Engage Check out our landing page to learn more and test drive the product. Link will be in the comments.

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Everyone in your revenue org has a different view of what's going on. Learn how to leverage it: VPs: “We’re tracking behind on our Q3 revenue target. We need to increase our ACV by doubling down on Enterprise opportunities.” Sales Managers: “We’re tracking behind our Q3 revenue target. We don’t have enough opportunities to double down on. We need to increase our outbound activity to drive pipeline.” Account Executives: “I’m behind on my Q3 target. Building more pipeline isn’t going to help me this quarter. I need to close at least 50% of my open opportunities to get back on track (even though my average is 25%).” Same Problem. 3 Completely Different Approaches. If you work in revenue enablement, you have the unique opportunity to be a bridge between team members at every level. Here’s what that sounds like… To VP’s: “If we want to increase our team’s ACV by moving up market, we’ll need to audit how we qualify opportunities and make sure we’re getting the right stakeholders involved in discovery. Do you have time to collaborate on a new rubric for our SDR’s and AE’s to qualify champions? I’d expect this to take about 3 months before we start seeing consistent results. Is there any opportunity to focus on mid-market win rate in the meantime?” [Once approved, go to your sales managers] To Sales Managers: “I understand we need more activity, but until our reps are identifying the right people to get on a call, it’s going to be wasted effort. Leadership is working on a new qualification framework for next quarter, but in the meantime, you can still hit your target by focusing on moving more of your existing pipeline in S2 & S3 into later stages in the sales cycle. What are some high-value deals that you feel are stuck right now?” [Then, go to your reps] To Sellers: “Your managers have identified some deals that are stuck in the early stages of the sales cycle. In the past, I’ve noticed you tend to use discounts as a lever to push deals through faster. How would you go about advancing these deals if you weren’t able to discount them at all?” By taking the time to listen to different perspectives from across the org, Enablement becomes a force multiplier that get’s everyone moving towards the same goal.

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Great post (...and I need that knife) on the topic of quota attainment and the impact it has on sales. While in this post it's about sales interviewees asking about it, it is important to realize that this is #SalesOps / #Revops as well as sales leaders' role to make them fair and achievable. But why do you rarely hear about any companies that really do this right? More often than not, the miss is that the incentive compensation plan is great, an awesome plan, opportunity to make great money, but....the quota makes hitting it unachievable. #SalesPlanning is the connective tissue between your #ICM solution and finance, and too often it is still managed in EXCEL! Quick Fact: If sales turnover averages 35%, many orgs have reps leaving and joining every day so when doing the annual sales planning, it can't even be completed before it needs to change and this process goes on daily throughout the year, a big reason why it is so often a miss. Oh and did I mention no data to inform the decisions the front line sales managers have to make? #TakeFinanceFurther #CFO #CRO

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