Sam Edmondson

Best demo at #dreamforce24 delivered by Clara Shih. Clear, inspiring and extremely relevant for the organisation that I lead. Learn how you can raise productivity of your reps, get faster at engaging with your customers and automate ripetitive tasks 👇

10

The same page… AEs, SDRs, CSMs & renewal managers How are you tracking to your goal achievements 🎯? Some mid-year reminders for the team. - Re-align to find out what has changed in your shared account(s) - Stay connected on a regular cadence - Build report and trust - you want to rely on each other - Meet in person if possible - see previous bullet - Enable tough feedback sessions - so important - Share current customer status and revisit top priorities - Strive for a unified front & strategy - Known when to engage leadership - target this as a step - Share your success metrics, KPIs, and percent to goal Success is a #team sport Have a great day!

6

SDRs can be taught to be AEs SDRs can be taught to be CSMs [shoutout to Eric Partaker for the post inspo] Also... SDRs can be taught to be Managers SDRs can be taught to be Marketeers SDRs can be taught to do almost any role Fact: It's better to hire someone who is 60% ready with the right behaviours. Than 100% ready with the wrong ones. SDRs deserve a chance. Do you agree? PS. Share ♻️ with others in your network. And follow Chris Ritson for more sales content like this.

205

14 Comments

Everyone is asking whether CS should own renewals and upsell.  Here is what happens if it doesn't. 👇 It’s not good.  I spoke to an Enterprise CSM yesterday about some changes happening in her company. → Renewals and upsells are moving out of CS and back into Sales. → Account Managers will now handle the commercial part of CS’ role. This move is interesting, as it runs counter to what most CRO’s are doing. → Renewals and upsells are increasingly owned by CS, which in some cases means they own a quota for the first time. → Sales continues to own new business and cross-sell to new business units in existing customers. ________________ My friend wanted to know what I thought of this.. First, I don’t have nearly enough information to comment on whether this is a good move or not. I assume they have capable leaders and they have their reasons. There is no right answer. That said, I told her what I would tell my son or daughter if they found themselves in this situation. Get out. I’ve been a part of two companies that did this and this is what I saw… → CS becomes the dumping ground for everything AMs don’t want to do. → CS becomes the scapegoat for every customer that down-sells or leaves. → CS becomes a cost center that will do nothing but shrink. But perhaps the most interesting question behind this move is…why? Because in my experience, if you ask why enough times to understand the rationale behind the move, you eventually end up at… → Leadership does not trust CS. → Leadership does not understand CS. → Leadership does not respect CS. And if those things are true, things are about to get a lot worse before they get better. CS stepping up with more commercial responsibility is not a trend or a nice-to-have. It’s the only way to survive. 📩 Want more? Try my free newsletter. Click the link in my profile. 🔔 Follow me, Bob Mathers, for more. 🎙 Listen to the Growth Mixtape Podcast with Bob Mathers.

136

40 Comments

Sales leaders - looking to boost win rates in 2025? Here's the top skill to train your AEs on in 2025 ⬇️ Uncovering The 'Need Behind the Need.' Top salespeople just get to the "heart of the problem" FASTER. Speed to uncovering the 'real' business problem matters. Here's why: Avg salespeople don't uncover even the tip of the ice berg until late in the discovery process (if at all). So they never get beyond the surface. They run out of time. Great salespeople get to the heart of the matter (without jumping in "too" quick) fast. That gives them TIME. Time to explore negative impact. Time to shape the root cause. Here are four questions (in order) that get to 'the heart of the deal' fast: 1. Tell me about the biggest challenges in X-area you'd regret not solving six months from now? Easy enough. This question is a filter. Buyers talk about 'must solve' problems only. But you still have work to do. 2. What's going on in the business that's driving [what they shared] to be a priority? Ask this, and your customers will CHUCKLE half the time. Why? Because you are striking a CHORD when you ask that. You're getting to the 'need behind the need.' That's where big money lives. Getting closer. 3. What metric is suffering most as a result of that? Avg sellers struggle to quantify pain. You walk into a different world when you go from expressed pain to quantified pain. Your customer's urgency ramps up. And spending money to solve the problem begins to look REAL good. 4. What's driving you to solve all this now rather than later? Ask this too early? And the answers will be weak. BUT... If you ask this AFTER those first three questions... Your customer now has the FULL CONTEXT of the problem top-of-mind. And now... their answers to THIS question will be far, FAR richer. Give those 4 questions (in order) a try. P.S. Upskill your SaaS AE team on virtually any topic or skill gap with the top 1% of revenue experts as instructors here: https://www.pclub.io/

148

13 Comments

What is the number 1 thing the top sales rep at Gong focuses on in demos? 🛑 Its not building rapport 🛑 Its not showing off the coolest features ✅ Its Aligning to a strategic priority. People don't make budgets for new priorities. But there is always budget for existing ones. Especially ones that are driven from the top down. My last quarter at Chili Piper I jumped back into sales and carried a quota. I knew I had to knock off some rust quick and my first stop for quality sales content was none other than the 30MPC podcast. Listening to Brian LaManna's episode I was able to grab 4 key takeaways from this 4x President's Club winner: 1 - Come with a point of view on what their top priorities might be. It might sound something like "Hey Nick, I was doing some research and noticed you were rolling out MEDDIC methodology to the sales team. Is that the #1 priority for you all or does anything else trump that?" 2 - Never ask "any questions?" Instead => reframe it to "what has stood out the most so far?" Put someone on the spot to think of a question creates a ton of friction. Asking them to share their experience so far lets them speak to what they are feeling and opens up the conversation. 3 - For any secondary calls start with a "What I've learned Slide" Bullet out points that share where they are at today And begin to map out the desired future state that you uncovered in the first call It creates a great baseline to pick up the conversation and see if anything has changed in terms of priorities. 4 - End call with “On a scale of 1-10, how compelling is what you saw today?” Understand where they sit after your demo. And follow up by asking "what would make it a 10 in terms of priority?" This episode was littered with sales nuggets that I was able to implement right away (and helped me hit 280% of my quarterly number) It's also a full circle moment now that we have become partners with 30MPC and helps our mission of levelling up the b2b sales community! #sales #b2bsales #30MPCxAligned

35

11 Comments

"Should we outsource SDRs?" No, with rare exceptions. There's a reason why customer churn is high at most of the outsourced SDR shops. Outbound isn't as easy as paying $3-5k / month for a part-time SDR. And then expecting to see high-quality opportunities in 30-60 days. I've NEVER worked with a client that was happy with their SDR agency. - Poor show rates to meetings - Terrible expectation setting with handoff - Low-quality meetings with non-decision makers - Few, if any, closed/won deals But to be fair—it isn't always the SDR agency's fault. Many of their clients expect them to be miracle workers. An outbound-led sales motion is very different from an inbound-led sales motion. If your AEs are used to meeting with inbound leads, they must be taught how to close outbound leads. Prospects will likely not be problem-aware, there isn't a budget in place, and they probably won't have brand awareness. Do not hire an SDR agency if: ⛔️ You've never done outbound before as an org. ⛔️ You sell enterprise ⛔️ You're breaking into new industries ⛔️ You haven't figured out your messaging or value drivers ⛔️ Your AEs aren't self-sourcing and doing their own outbound No outsider will ever understand your customers as well as you do. And it's only a bandaid to build a sales culture that doesn't understand how to excel at outbound. It might make sense to work with an agency if: ✅ You know outbound works, but need help scaling it ✅ You've mastered messaging and value drivers ✅ Your AEs know how to close outbound deals ~~~ Agree or disagree? #sales

97

46 Comments

Half the outbound prospecting tips I see on LI are RevOps tips in disguise. Things salespeople had to do to hit quota that RevOps should have, but didn't, do for them. Here are just two examples. 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 There's no bigger waste of time than calling suboptimal prospects outside of your ICP and Personas. The first step here is a data science exercise. You take your ICP and Personas definition and run it against all available internal and external data. Then you map out the capacity of each rep to determine how many accounts they can handle. How long does it take to complete each step in the sales process? How many accounts can they do that with before they run out of time and skip steps? Then you take that number of accounts and use your data to identify the absolute best accounts for each rep. Does any of this sound like a "sales activity?" Is this really what you hired expensive salespeople to do? To fumble through something RevOps could do 10X better and 10X faster? 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 What salespeople should be doing is research on that carefully curated list of accounts and contacts. RevOps can give them a BIG headstart by aggregating data into a single place so that they can quickly see things like: - Contact Info - Website URL - LinkedIn URL - Firmographic Metrics - Technographic Metrics - Marketing Engagement - External Intent Signals As an AE, I spent 30% - 70% of my time on all this stuff. As AE #1 in a small startup this took up most of my time, as I had to start from zero. But even at Salesforce, working inside their well-oiled machine, I still had to do a lot of this on my own. Most companies will give reps thousands of accounts when they can only handle a couple hundred or so and expect them to do the data science instead of spending their time actually selling. Don't waste money on AEs. Set them up to use their time more effectively. If you want to read more, we wrote up an article on this a while back in 📰 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙊𝙥𝙨 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙡𝙮 📰 https://bit.ly/43lFOxQ ✌️

36

4 Comments

“SDRs are lazy.” “SDRs don’t care about revenue.”  “SDRs don’t take ownership.” If any of these sound familiar, I’ve got news for you: the problem is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 your SDRs—it’s how they’re being managed. Here’s how we approach this at SpotDraft and empower our SDRs to take true ownership: 𝟭. 𝗦𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝘀: We’ve designed a replicable process that allows anyone on the team to hit around 80% of their target. But getting to 100%? That takes extra effort. The stretch keeps things challenging and motivating. 𝟮. 𝗚𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀: We don’t just hand out targets. We give our SDRs full visibility into the company’s broader goals, so they know exactly how their work ties into the bigger picture and what’s at stake if we miss targets. 𝟯. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘀: My SDRs are closely involved in 2-3 deals every quarter, right through to closure. This helps them understand the entire sales cycle, customer pain points, and the AE’s perspective on things. We also offer additional incentives for closed-won deals, helping shift their focus from just SQLs to overall revenue impact and see the bigger picture. 𝟰. 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: Whether it’s processes, tech stack updates, or new initiatives that directly impact them, our SDRs are part of the conversation. This involvement creates a sense of ownership and significantly boosts their engagement. 𝟱. 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀: Too many orgs treat SDRs like second-class citizens while relying on them to build the entire pipeline. It’s time we change this mindset as an industry. SDRs are just as critical to a company’s success as any other role, and they should be treated that way. 𝟲. 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Enablement isn’t just about skills—it’s about motivation. Writing personalized emails that get left unopened or facing constant rejection on cold calls, can drop morale. We focus on recognizing small wins and giving the team opportunities to recharge, like team dinners or virtual hangouts. 𝟳. 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳𝗳: Once SDRs are trained to hit targets and understand what conversion rates look like, let them plan their outreach. A manager’s role is to advise, not develop every strategy for them. Step in when they’re stuck but encourage them to try things on their own first. 𝟴. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗸𝗮𝘆: As Akshay Doshi always says, “𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵-𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴.” It's only a problem if you make the same mistake again. When SDRs aren’t afraid to make mistakes, they feel empowered, take higher ownership, and have faith in management to back them up. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽? #sdr #sales #leadership #growth #spotdraft

114

10 Comments

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.....

1

5 Comments

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. 

16

🤯 “Ramping up SDRs, AEs and CS people  takes us no less than 6 months.” 💣 🙈 This is what I heard on a recent demo from  a CRO of a rapidly scaling tech business. 📈 Time to efficiency is a struggle Heads of Sales Enablement and Customer Success are going through across their commercially-driven teams… 📖 At the moment, they expect internal  sales and CS decks, call recordings,  business pitches, etc. should do the job. 🙄 But it doesn’t! 🗓️ They're wasting too much time for people to start performing, closing deals, effectively onboarding customers, reducing churn & upselling… ❌ Sometimes, they still don’t perform... And then guess what? Off leaders go through to recruiting mode again starting from ground 0. 🎯 Hence the need for action-based learning.  Not just passively reading through PDFs  and listening to call recordings. 👨‍💻 Below are some use cases we see our customers here at UJJI AI ✨ leveraging our tech for: 🔸 Business-specific lead gen and outbound 🔸 Pitching quick and easy over the phone 🔸 Delivering demos and answering queries 🔸 Effectively onboarding new customers 🔸 Efficiently implementing product features 🔸 Practising great customer support 🔸 Guiding customers to upselling 🚀 Ultimately, growing tech businesses comes down to predictable new business development, high customer retention and low churn. 💬 So, DM me if you want to see examples  of AI-powered. easy to build and consume knowledge equipping experiences. 👇 Anything to add to this, Sales and CS leaders? Gautam Rishi Rohan Dickinson George Heron Russell Mitchell Callum Hartley Jon Teale James Dixon Seán Colfer Caroline L. Guy Rubin Jake Carter David Muscat Arun Raveendran Steve Eveleigh Ayo Kukoyi,

29

7 Comments

It’s the start of a new quarter! For many SDRs, you may be approaching the role like any other day or week… but here’s what I’d do to ensure you get a 🔥start to the quarter: 1.) 🗺️ Map out your plan to quota (look at your email/call/LinkedIn execution rates and set your daily/weekly activity goals to hit your number) — knowing these like the back of your hand allows you to know where to focus 2.) 🔎 Identify your “lowest hanging fruit” accounts and target those early and often (look at accounts you’ve spoke to recently, your pipeline plays who asked to follow up, then work with your AE if you’re paired and prioritize the best accounts) — BONUS if you can identify some accounts with critical events like mutual connections to your ELT for a warm intro, job changers, hiring, funding, etc) 3.) 🏃‍♀️🏃SPRINT — as an SDR I used to start every quarter out with what I’d call a “Sprint week.” This is where I’d do double the activity I was expected as a means to really fill my pipeline and get as many conversations started as possible. Now the whole double activity double your output isn’t always advised but if you can put the extra time in early to double your prospects and push yourself for more, you can see some major return. 4.) 📈 Create consistency — I always coached my team that if you can come into the following month with 33% of your quota already set to run, it affords you the flexibility, freedom, and lack of pressure to get really creative and smart with your outreach. If you’re not there for July just yet, start building for a big July and hot start to August. Hope this is helpful to at least one SDR!

20

2 Comments

Sales can be an emotional roller coaster. Up and down and round and round. But after observing 13 years of sellers from $1000 deals to $1,000,000 deals, the best sellers ride the most boring emotional roller coaster. It only goes in a straight line.

12

2 Comments

Same s***, different day… We all know the drill: SDRs think AEs are slow to close, and AEs think SDRs are passing weak non qualified leads. But the truth is, when both sides align, most companies will see a 30% increase in account penetration! Its simple: -Communicate regularly – Don’t wait for weekly meetings. Share quick feedback throughout the day to stay in sync. - Define lead criteria together – Align on what makes a qualified lead. It saves time and eliminates finger-pointing. - Quick deal huddles – Hold short, tactical check-ins to discuss hot accounts. - Debrief wins & losses – Celebrate what worked and break down what didn’t to improve for next time. - Support the hand-off– SDRs should warm up intros, they after all have that initial relationship with the prospect. Collaboration is key!

57

4 Comments

Every AE should use "the menu of pain" on their discovery calls. Huge shoutout to 👩🏻‍🏫 Krysten Conner for the best sales strategy and name of all time. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: Simply give your prospect options based on your experience helping other customers. Here are some examples: 𝗧𝗼 𝗸𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹: Hey Jill - typically when Sales Directors join these calls they're facing a couple of issues: - Issue 1 - Issue 2 But I don’t know how much any of that sounds like your world and what did I miss that you’re focused on? 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀: Hey Jill - Thank you for sharing. I work with other Sales Directors in a similar situation and they were each facing a couple of issues: - Issue 1 - Issue 2 But I don’t know how much any of that sounds like your world and what did I miss that you’re focused on? 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴'𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: 1. You establish credibility and build trust because you know the issues and they don’t have to educate you. 2. You take control. Open ended questions like “what brought you to ABC Company” are ok but it’s a lot of work for the prospect and nobody likes essay questions. 3. Customer experience: It gives prospects room to correct you and people love correcting people. So there's no real downside. You game for trying The Menu of Pain in your discovery calls? - Mike G 👉 For this week only get The Best Sales Course at 35% off with coupon code 𝗖𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗘: https://lnkd.in/gP_-mVXR

301

56 Comments

SDRs - Struggling with your ramp? Here are 5 tips to immediately improve your results and beat your ramp 1. Meet with 3 top performing BDRs, pick their brains on everything from Prospecting, Research, Sequences, calls, emails, Linkedin DM's etc. Once you have a good pool of knowledge on strategies that are working in the current market you can adapt it and make it your own. 2. Problem enablement: The most important thing to know is WHO you help and HOW you help them. Speak to your AE's who've closed business, CSMs and your own internal personas. The goal is to be able to crisply articulate how you can help a target persona in a target account get to their desired state. No one cares about WHAT you do, they care about how you can help them. 3. Volume: Practice makes perfect, you're not going to get good without the reps so get out there and prepare to fail. 4. Double down: If you find one medium is yielding more meetings then double down on that one, e.g if you're booking 5 meetings a month through call and 1 via email, try changing to a call only sequence for a while to see if it ups your results. 5. Feedback loops: Regularly ask your top-performing peers, AEs and your manager in your 121 for SPECIFIC advice. This means you'll always be growing your skillset. Make sure you're not getting advice from everyone though as this will dilute your focus P.S I'll do a part 2 of this next week but anything you'd add? For now, enjoy a picture of Emre Ceyhan and me at our recent Spike Week!

60

15 Comments

There’s zero silver bullet in outbound sales in 2024. I promise. No single product, Sales leader, Data cleaning tool, Messaging iteration, Consultant (myself included), Customer, Cold call script, Advisor, Agency... Blah blah blah That’s going to solve all your outbound problems. But you CAN find leverage in each of these. Shoot for 2-5% across a few. Some might move the needle 20%, some might not move it at all. Find the right ones and double down.

39

11 Comments

Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

17

4 Comments