Robb Finkelstein

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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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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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Normalizing to meet market demand isn’t the same as dying… Rightsizing to meet market demand is what happens when companies need to earn a profit vs inflate valuations. If the growth projections aren’t based in reality nothing you do based on it will be either

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I’ve never set an org-wide call target. Here’s why: Some reps have high connect rates, some are lower. Some reps set meetings with 20% of prospects they talk to, some are lower. Some reps convert most of their meetings to opportunities, some convert fewer. So how would I set a call target relevant to everyone? Set it too low, and the low-converting reps have no chance to find success while they work on improving conversion. Set it too high, and the high-converting reps are annoyed AND their conversion likely decreases, making them less efficient. So I don’t set org-wide call targets. Instead, we set org-wide outcome targets (e.g., opportunities created), and then use data to inform individual input goals to reach out those outcomes. p.s. One target I have set before is 8 points a day using my “Good Day Framework.” It’s become my most popular framework for improving pipeline generation, and you can use it today here: https://lnkd.in/gQaxbEXm

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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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SDRs and AEs are sending way too many emails these days. All you need is 4. 𝟭. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 Jill, looks like your team’s growing quickly. How’re you planning SKO for all your new AEs? We help sales leaders pick everything from destination, flights, meals and events. Simply put in your team size and budget and we’ll give you all your options in seconds. Curious to learn how? 𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗘𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹 Here's a quick video showing how you can plan SKO (flights, meals and events) in less than a minute: [insert video] ♻️ And then repeat that (a week later) with a new pain point That's it. 𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆: Don't send break up emails. Those get marked as SPAM. What cold email tips do you have? - Mike G 👉 Join 7,000+ sellers getting my (free) sales newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/gwQVvVBK

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You're thinking about renewals wrong. 66% of your renewals will be decided when you’re not in the room. Want higher NRR? Here’s the non-obvious CS strategy that's key to SaaS renewal: Hold customers accountable! In our current economy, customer acquisition is harder than ever. Every board of directors is obsessed with net recurring revenue (NRR). And they should be. After all, close rates are down (18%) and so are deal values (21%). There is no easier source of revenue than an existing customer. And nothing more painful than losing a customer, when all of the time, effort, and expense of building the relationship goes to waste. So of course we invest in the process. We hold our weekly meetings. We educate our champions. We have quarterly QBRs. We find success stories. But too often, we’re talking to one part of the organization. And we lose visibility to what happens when we aren’t in the room, when our champion needs to roll out or deliver using our stuff. It’s hard to see around corners in companies. A simple question suddenly gets hard to answer: Did they train the users they said they would? Did they share out the data or results? Did they get the feedback needed to tune the offering? When I worked at Ariba, which went from $0 to a $4B IPO in 4 years, we had a saying: Success has 3 ingredients: your people, your process, and our software. In other words, 66% of success depends on the customer. If they don’t do their part, they won’t get the value they bought from you. That’s a problem for them. But also a problem for you, because that’s a customer who won’t renew. Why should they, when the value didn’t happen, whoever’s “fault” it was? You need to flip the script. Accountability means asking the hard questions. Was the data delivered? Was it understood? When is the feedback coming? If the answers weren’t there, escalate to the economic buyer. They are at risk of not getting the value they bought. That should be a red flag for them and us. Are they still committed to the project? How do we get back on track? With all of our weekly tactics, we often lose sight of the most important question of all. Why did the customer buy in the first place? If the customer didn’t do what they said they would, that's bad news. And it’s 100% our fault. Want the renewal? Hold customers accountable.

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I still can’t believe how many companies are making their sales team jump through hoops to get contracts out. This week at INBOUND, I talked with a ton of AEs on the booth floor and asked them about their sales processes, yeah I geek out on that. Several folks from big-name tech companies told me that they are held back from getting contracts out at end-of-quarter by their deal desk, since proposals that have custom pricing have to be double checked. Sales teams should be selling, closing, and prospecting, not managing internal approval processes. Other AEs shared that they have to deal with navigating a horrible CPQ system, and having to manage proposals separately from quotes. RevOps and Sales leaders, why are you not removing these roadblocks for your AEs? Your sellers are way too valuable to be burdened by bad processes and tools. If you are interested in how PandaDoc can help, or just want to chat through different solutions to your problem, please DM me, check out our new CPQ page, or schedule a demo. https://lnkd.in/gVifRUJM #cpq #proposals #sales #revops

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it's so important to know your numbers as an AE Here's what I used to do to make sure I was working backwards from my rev number 👇 (using example data) Rev target is $150k a Quarter Opp source: BDR 15 (take their target and use historical attainment, flip rate to derisk) Marketing 5 = 20 qualified per Q With a 25% close rate, you can expect 5 of those to close. On an ACV of $25,000 that gets you to $125,000. This leaves you $25k short of coverage and on a 25% close rate, means you need to generate 4 of your own opps at the start of the Q to hit goal. 24 opps in total 12 weeks in a Q 2 qualified opps per week By tracking this each week and the pacing across sources, you can figure out how much time you need to spend on prospecting 🔥

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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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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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Building Weflow, I've spoken to 200+ #RevOps folks the last 12 months about common Salesforce data capture challenges. Here are things that come up: 1) Poor Salesforce adoption - Shadow tooling - Reps avoid Salesforce - 42% forecast in sheets 2) Poor activity capture - EAC not reportable, nor stored - Missing activities on opportunities - Limited insights based on activities 3) Missing contact data - No contact roles - Buying committees unclear - Multi-threading happening? 4) Process in-compliance - Missing stage entry/ exit criteria - MEDDIC (etc.) not populated - Close date pushed/ overdue 5) CRM bloat - Ops-debt (fields, integrations) - Over customization - Consolidation nightmares after acquisitions 6) Historical data - Opportunity snapshots missing - Process change, data worthless - No unlimited field history tracking Takeaway: Poor Salesforce data quality > missing insights > poor visibility > ineffective deal execution > low predictability > broken revenue engine. What would you add? Comment 👇 -- ➕ Follow me for RevOps content 🔊 Listen to the "RevOps Lab" podcast - link in profile 👀 Visit my free RevOps content library - link in profile ♻️ Share with your friends #RevOps #GTM #Sales

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As an AE is a high win rate good? Not always. In Q1 my win rate from demo at Nooks was 55%, But my win rate was hurting me Let me explain... -Running too many deals -Discounting and lowering my ACV -Letting large deals slip through the cracks because i was spending too much time on smaller ones Since Q I've cut my win rate in half, but 3x's my ACV What do you think is a healthy win rate? Let me know in the comments

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How can RevOps be more strategic? How can we drive more revenue with less resources? Right now, coming off "Growth at All Costs" we're all strained for budget and resources. Meanwhile, it's harder than ever to land and expand customers. What can we do as revenue and operations leaders to better utilize what we have, to build more efficient Revenue Engines? My team and I have spent years thinking about this. Here's a preview. 𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱 2. 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝟯. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲: 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Where do we start? On 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝘀𝘁, I'm joining Ben Murray to dive into this. In this webinar, we’ll introduce the: -> 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗣𝘆𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗱, a proprietary model designed to measure your company’s operational maturity and identify the most critical bottlenecks hindering growth. We’ll also show you how to: -> Prioritize projects and align your teams towards large strategic goals using a 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽. And we'll dive even deeper into a tangible example: -> How to conduct 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀, a process used to spot issues in the sales process and reinforce optimal pipeline management. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e3qqMEaf ✌️

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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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Multi-threading... A skill that's fast becoming the most critical in a sales reps arsenal. Why? 🤔 The market is tough at the moment. 🤔 Buyers are more budget conscious. 🤔 CFOs are asking teams to reduce spend and cut back on investment. 🤔 Prospects that once had buying power and sign off capability now have to get approval from C-Suite. It sounds like an uphill battle 🏃‍♂️‍➡️⛰️ but the truth is, multi-threading is not as daunting as you might think. ⭐️ Here's some tips that have worked well for me in the last 6 months ⭐️ 🗺 Map out your accounts. Org charts are critical for multi-threading. You need to understand who your prospects are, who they report to, and who holds decision making power. Tip - LinkedIn SalesNav let's you build drag and drop org charts! 🗣️ Check with your your champion. Confirm your org chart is correct. Ask them what the process is for bringing on a new vendor. If they don't know, 🆘 they are not a true champion. 📧 Share content early. Begin introducing yourself to key stakeholders quickly. Tip - Connect on LinkedIn with a short and sweet connection request, something like "Wanted to put a face to a name following some great conversations I've been having with (champion name) re (challenge). I'll send over some content via email shortly. I look forward to hearing your thoughts." 🎺 Make sure your content is personalised, engaging, and stands out. TOP TIP - Using a tool like trumpet 🎺 (digital sales room) is a sure fire way to encourage stakeholder engagement. Upload clear and concise value props, how you can solve their businesses challenges, client case studies and more. Ask these contacts to bookmark the page as you will regular update it with content as the deal progresses. And, track their engagement, so you can meet them in the moment. So far, my prospects have been LOVING it! 📞 Pick up the phone. Once you've connected on LinkedIn and sent content, call prospects to ensure that they have seen it. Ask what questions they have and tell them about next steps. By doing the above, when it comes to negotiation these stakeholders will be informed and aware of the entire process to date, and you and your product will be top of mind 🧠 Tenured AE's in my network (I know there are a lot of you), what do you do to successfully multi-thread? P.S. You can guess what I'll be doing in the office today :😉 #multithreading #sales #digitalsalesrooms #dsr #aestrategies

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The most common AE complaint is "My territory sucks." Most of the time, these same AEs have great accounts in their territory they've never touched. The reason for this discrepancy is simple: Most AEs rely too much on data provided by sales ops to prioritize their accounts (revenue, employee count, account score, etc.) This doesn't work, because data quality is often poor. Also, sales ops scoring is intended to balance territories at scale - not dictate where individuals spend their time. It's your job to determine where you spend your time. And you should spend your time where you are most likely to make money. Want to learn how? Take two minutes and read this: https://lnkd.in/gyAm3k4S

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Converting your AEs to start sourcing a majority of their own pipeline might not be such a good idea and here’s why: Typically this transition fails for three main reasons: 1) The pipe gen goal that’s assigned is completely made up and is based on the financial model and not relevant sales data 2) You don’t have the right resources in place including an airtight ICP, deep understanding of your persona, the right messaging or tech stack  3) Typically exec or senior level leaders are disconnected from the realities of how difficult cold outreach really is and don’t give the campaign enough time to be successful Here’s what you can do to give yourself a better chance at success: 1) Pick a few key data points to track (such as number of accounts worked, positive contacts, opportunities created, pipeline generated, closed won $$$s) and benchmark these over a period of time that makes sense for your sales cycle. Use this data set to understand what is or isn’t working and make adjustments from there. 2) Start with a small campaign to select accounts within your ICP using targeted messaging and an intriguing offer 3) Cold outreach is a team sport, get your execs and senior leaders involved by having them look through your target account list and see if there are any doors they can open from their network 4) Have some fun while doing it, celebrate the wins along the way! What do you think?

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