Suzanna Stevens

Tired of losing hard-earned deals? Solve for Revenue Leak. In Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report, RevOps leaders said leak happens at every stage of the funnel. - Creating: Poor and slow upsell pipeline tracking - Converting: Unsure where pipeline is dropping off - Closing: Slipped deals Don’t let Revenue Leak drag down another quarter – or another year. Download the Revenue Leak Report for more: https://lnkd.in/g9gnGrdz  

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Ashi from Gong is fast (😮‍💨10k) But not as fast as Gong Engage users when they use Lavender. Access to your Gong calls in our personalization assistant ✅ Access to our coach & "Ashi fast" personalization in Gong ✅ Better 🤝 Faster 3.0 (and so much more) coming soon

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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...!

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The role of the BDR Team needs to change pretty dramatically to support a successful, account-based GTM strategy. What was once a more transactional prospecting role 🤖 dialing-for-dollars ☎ , a grueling numbers-game of luck 🍀 and tenacity, is now about building quality relationships 👫 , intelligence gathering 🧠 , and using sales signals, social media interaction, and intent signals 🎯 to drive more meetings and SQLs. This article is a must-read in that it proposes all of the ABM metrics and goals that BDRs need to be measured....spoiler alert, it isn't just # of meetings! This is a pretty big paradigm shift. Let me know your thoughts! #bdr #sdr #gtmstrategy #revenuegrowth

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As CS is getting increasingly aligned with the revenue function, this conversation is happening a lot... CRO: "I just took over customer success, can someone explain to me what our CSMs do?" VP CS: "We make sure that our customers are getting value from the product..." CRO: "OK, what does that mean?" VP CS: "We answer all of their questions and log support cases." CRO: "Isn't that support?" VP CS: "Well no, because we have QBRs" CRO: "OK, well what do we talk about in the QBRs?" VP CS: "All the tickets we fixed and the features that we rolled out" CRO: "Ok, what other things do our CSMs do?" VP CS: "We help with implementations and continuous improvement!" CRO: "Isn't that professional services?" VP CS: "Well we read an article that says that we shouldn't charge for services, so our CSMs just do it." CRO: " 🤯 " VP CS: " 🤯 "

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Sales reps today are overwhelmed — large books of business leave little time for prospecting, making it tough to drive growth. But with ZoomInfo Copilot, five minutes is all you need to check in with existing accounts, start an expansion conversation, and engage with a new, likely-to-buy prospect. Watch our own Jake Lehman demo ZoomInfo Copilot’s prioritized accounts, signals, and buying groups features. Coupled with the AI emailer, Jake crafts high-quality personalized outreach to three companies in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. #ZoomInfoCopilot

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What we were promised: a unified ops function for all GTM teams. 😎 What we got: a new name for sales ops. 😔 The labels aren’t really the issue here. It’s the fact that alignment across functional ops teams still seems elusive in many companies. These are some common objections to creating a unified RevOps function: 😰 Functional leaders are worried about their ops teams becoming less responsive 😰 MOPS and CS Ops worry about getting swallowed up by Sales Ops and losing autonomy  😰 Marketing and CS worry their needs won’t be prioritized if RevOps reports to a sales leader These concerns are legitimate and need to be addressed. But they don’t change one simple reality: a lack of alignment among operational teams is usually just a mirror of the lack of alignment among the GTM functions. And these silos harm business performance. Instead of focusing on the challenges, let’s look at what a business can GAIN when ops teams are strongly aligned or unified: 🗺️ A holistic view across the entire revenue process ⚖️ Initiatives prioritized by business impact rather than executive fiat 🥰  A more unified and seamless customer experience 💰 More efficient tech spend with fewer redundant tools 🤝 All revenue teams rowing in the same direction 🤗 Pooled ops resources and mutual support 💪 A stronger ops function that can manage performance rather than just close tickets These teams DO exist, and this week on RevOps FM, I spoke with Julia Kim, who leads one of them at Electric. Julia leads a very mature RevOps function that supports marketing, sales, CS, and partnerships. Not only does this org structure work—her team is a driving force behind the business, which wasn’t at all the case when ops teams were embedded in their functions. In this episode, Julia shares: • The scope and structure of her team • How they plan and prioritize • How they balance running the business as usual with innovation and strategy • How RevOps can have different objectives at different stages of maturity • How she finds efficiencies across the tech stack • And much more Episode link in the comments 👇 —--- P.S. a unified function is one way to achieve alignment, but I don’t suggest it’s the only way. At my company, for example, my team supports marketing and BDR Ops and reports into marketing, while all other ops teams are centralized. This still works very well because a) The marketing leader also reports to the COO, ensuring consistent priorities b) Marketing ops still works closely with other ops teams, has regular cadences, shared OKRs, etc. So the key factors here are a centralized reporting structure and close collaboration. P.P.S. I feel like I've seen the meme I used before somewhere. If you created it first please raise your hand and I'll gladly give credit 😊

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In B2B sales, it’s not just about who you know—it’s about who THEY know. Relationships are more powerful than ever in prospecting. How are you leveraging your team’s relationship capital today to find your next big customer? I’ve used over 20 different revenue intelligence tools in my sales career: ✅Gong, Chorus ✅ZoomInfo, Apollo ✅Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics ✅6sense, Bombora ✅Salesloft, Outreach, Groove ✅Zoom, Calendly you name it, I’ve used it or tested it. There’s only one tool that has been a constant in every sales role I’ve had and I wouldn’t take a job at a company that doesn’t have it. 🧐Can you guess which one?🧐 Clue: they call me the “TeamLink” queen at work 😉 Ps: I’m always happy to chat about my experience with these tools and recommend which one is best for your type of business and use case as one size does not fit all, and most importantly not all of them integrate with your CRM! #Prospecting #DeepSales #SalesTips #dataquality #techstack

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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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Should CRO’s even exist? Not if they’re going to be: - Super expensive glorified head of sales - With no marketing or CS experience - Compensated like an account executive  - No focus on ICP or aligning the entire GTM motion - No coordination with peers in cross-functions - No P&L fluency or ability to read a P&L  - Only focused on new business with no understanding of recurring impact - No knowledge of the bowtie or systems designed to deliver ongoing customer value - Have a short term view and only care about the quarter CROs should absolutely exist if they: - Can come from Marketing, CS, or RevOps not just Sales - Have foundational understanding and respect for other functions - Are compensated like all other executives - Are focused on driving tight alignment across the GTM motion - Are focused on collaborating across Sales, Marketing, CS leveraging data generated from RevOps - Are focused on a customer journey that begins when the prospect lands on the website and continues through at least 3 annual renewals - Have a deep knowledge of the bowtie  - Have built expertise as revenue architects - Have a long term view that balances short term urgency with long term enterprise value Revenue generation is a team sport. Recurring revenue is driven by recurring impact. If you’re leading the revenue function, you have to understand that and you have to be an expert at driving tight alignment across the customer journey to deliver that impact. This is the way.

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Speed to lead might sound simple, but the architecture behind it is anything but. ZoomInfo's demo routing is powered by Zoominfo Enrich, which we used to create a system of models and workflows for SDRs to connect prospects with closers (AEs). As always, our goal is to optimize outcomes while maintaining equitability for reps. Let's break it down: ⚖️ Balancing Model: Designed within Salesforce, this system prioritizes demo allocation by evaluating the number of eligible events over their event quota over a rolling period to ensure a fair distribution of leads among AE cohorts. 📏 5 Tier Prospect Scoring Model: Dynamically assesses and assigns prospects to a tier based on channel, segment, win rate model, and title department rating collected and enriched at the time a prospect fills out a form via ZI form complete.. 🏆 Win Rate Model: Leveraging ZI enriched data points, this model refines demo allocation by categorizing prospects and accounts into win rate cohorts based on thousands of ZoomInfo’s industry-specific and title data points, such as # of sales employees and recent funding activity all help pinpoint the best meeting. ✅ AE Tiering Eligibility: Based on segment and ACV quota, AEs are eligible from anywhere from 1 to 4 tiers of demos. The demo router matches eligible AEs to a prospect tier to determine whether or not an AE is best suited for this particular meeting. 🗓️ Availability Integration: Through direct integration with Google Free/Busy API, we prioritize speed to lead by matching AE availability with the time the SDR coordinated with the prospect. This way we can book more same-day and next day meetings. The magic is that an SDR simply has to hit a button to initiate this process and schedule a meeting, making the handoff and tracking practically seamless We're continuously refining our model to adapt to nuances like PTO, market changes, and shifting demands to keep our leads flowing as quickly and smoothly as possible. See what Steven Bryerton, our SVP of New Sales has to say about Speed to Lead 👉 https://lnkd.in/gSQ5JyrD 

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At the Gainsight conference last week, I had several folks ask me some version of "everyone used to talk about adoption....now everyone says that it's just about outcomes and ROI. What's your take?" It is and has always been about both. Can you get ROI without adoption? No. Is adoption by itself sufficient to guarantee value realization? Also no. You have to have adoption of the right capabilities that tie to customer business priorities with attached measurable outcomes. That is and has always been the formula. This is easy to say, really hard to implement and manage at scale. Which is why very few companies do it.

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The results are in! Gong has been named a leader in the new report, The Forrester Wave™: Revenue Orchestration Platforms, Q3 2024. In this report, Forrester analyzed and scored 12 top vendors in the market. Gong received the highest scores possible for more criteria than any other vendor, including:   ⭐ Innovation ⭐ AI and automation differentiators ⭐ Range of analytics insights ⭐ Platform UX and integration “Gong’s AI reveals unique buyer and seller insights to improve deal outcomes. One of the few companies founded with AI at its core, Gong has used its nine-year AI résumé to create transformative insights for revenue organization." Check out the full report here: https://lnkd.in/dzmzU62Y

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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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The #Salesblazer community is launching NEW biweekly coffee chats and would love for you to join! 🎉 💙 Up first on June 18: How to make outbound sales work for you in 2024. Jason Bay, CEO of Outbound Squad with 15+ years of sales experience, will be taking the mic, so make sure you attend! 🙌 Here’s how to participate: 1. Join the #june-18-coffee-chat channel in the Salesblazer Community on Slack. Not a member of the Community yet? Fix that here: https://sforce.co/June18CC 2. Ask your outbound prospecting questions in the channel above before the coffee chat starts. 3. You’ll be notified to join the huddle when it kicks off June 18 @ 1pm ET. 4. Grab your coffee and join as soon as you’re notified — capacity is limited to 200, and it’s first come, first served.

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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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There is a murder scene happening in your GTM org right now. 🎃 But not with people (phew). But with FY2025 budgets getting dished out, many GTM leaders are slashing and redlining their current expenses to adapt to the change in budget or getting rid of things that didn’t work. 🔪 Now, if you are a new CMO/CRO, be careful not to just slash for slashing sake. Especially on operations support. Take the time to dig into what is useful for the team and better yet, lean on your operational support to give you the insights to make these “cost-saving” slashes. And on that topic of “cost-saving” here are places I would look into “slashing” first to save money instead of reducing on brand programs, operations, and consultants that provide value. 😊 • The full GTM tech stack  This is the very first place I would look to find tech bloat. It’s likely you might have tools that do similar things, tools no one has touched in ages, and tools that you could easily replace by building functionality within existing tools. • “Lead acquisition” data vendors Buying lists of “verified buyers” or buying “meetings” is not the way to go. Trust me. • Syndicated Content Maybe you don’t need to completely get rid of this channel (although I would think about it based on all the data I have seen). But the better thing is to invest in building your own content program that your team can consistently stick to and that resonates with buyers. • “Silver-bullet” reporting tools This kinda relates to point #1 but just letting you know - there isn’t one. • Any channel that you have invested a lot of time into but see little pipeline $ Use your data to the best of your ability when making cost changes. But know that marketing takes time and pipeline attribution is a lagging indicator. But if a certain channel or program is just not working - then make the case to stop and invest in an experiment instead. Any others you would add? Would love to hear it!

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Visibility is everything for revenue leaders. Here’s one of my favorite examples: Four years ago, Joe was stepping into a global CRO role at one of Clari’s great customers. This was his first time having access to Clari. I reached out as part of our onboarding process. Immediately, Joe sent back this note. “Kevin,” he said. “I don’t know how I would have stepped into this job so quickly if I hadn’t had the level of visibility your solution has provided.” Visibility enabled Joe to:  - Learn his team’s pipeline at record pace - Identify revenue strengths and weaknesses - Feel confident implementing new strategies and tactics Before Clari, it would have taken Joe months to reach this point. However, he was up-and-running at lightning speed. That’s the power of visibility.

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Hot take: most weekly AE forecast calls are a waste of time 🙄 While i see the value around deal reviews in general, doing it in a team setting makes no sense. 🛑 Ask any AE how much value they get from these meetings… 😢 A team of 8 AEs spend 50 mins listening to their teammates rush through their late stage deals with superficial updates coupled with a few basic questions from the manager. 🤷🏽‍♀️ If the goal is to drive accountability of your sales process and help the rep with blindspots, do it in a 1:1 setting with proper preparation before the meeting. 🔑 If the goal is to share best practices across the group of AEs — pick 2-3 deals, standardize the discussion and go deep on specific stages, whats worked, what didn’t and what we should try next (brainstorm) 🔑 Some ideas: 1️⃣ use technology to help you set up a scalable deal machine that highlights gaps and allows you to easily spot opps for acceleration before it’s too late (identify hot deals in early stages, have key activity inputs for late stages) 2️⃣ as a manager, use equal amount of time to prep vs host a meeting. 30 mins prep time for a 30 mins 1:1. Listen to call recordings, check activity, identify gaps to discuss on specific opps across the funnel (not only late stage) 3️⃣ create a pipeline format that works for your business today. Don’t blindly follow what you have done in the past. Things like ACV, competitors, sales cycle length, AE experience levels etc. are all part of this decision. Ideally every meeting is insightful, engaging and fun. ✅ If it’s a bunch of repetitive updates on opps across a large group that could have been shared on an email, you are doing it wrong. 😑 Happy leading friends! #salesops #pipeline #forecasting #dealreviews

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