Brad Thibeau

Stealing a segment of Greg Portnoy's recent post about partnerships because it's SO worth highlighting. "Partner-attached opportunities have an average of: - 30% higher win rates - 34% higher contract value - 60% lower acquisition costs - 2-3x shorter sales cycles - 18% higher retention rates And these numbers are only going to get better. Why? Because 84% of B2B buyers start their purchasing process with a referral. And 90% of B2B purchases are influenced by recommendations." I still speak with companies DAILY that are not investing resources into their partnerships channel and it makes 0 sense to me. Why would you not invest in a market that will give you the kinds of returns and retention above? #loco #partnerships #b2bpartnerships #b2b

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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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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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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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Some Exit Five business stats from May: → First month over $200k in revenue → Biggest trial month ever (213 new trials) → Added 1,280 new newsletter subscribers (crossing 18k subs) → Best revenue churn month ever → Third month in a row of comment growth in the community → Launched and sold out our first in-person event for September (200 tickets) → Adding two new team members; team will be 5 full-time people in 2 weeks (one offer accepted, one soon to come) → 0 a-holes on the team and counting We're building the best content and community for B2B marketers that want to advance their skills and grow their career. There is so much noise about marketing. Our goal with Exit Five is to be the signal for B2B marketers. We'll help filter through the advice on LinkedIn, the search results on Google, and give you one place to go to improve your skills in B2B marketing and grow your career. We have true product market fit and we're just getting started. Thanks for all of the support here (LinkedIn continues to be our number one source of new business). PS. Maybe now we could order some swag??

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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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Here's a crazy Monday stat...say you're a GTM leader at a startup, looking to implement AI into your process / team. Well, you're in luck because there are 1200+ AI tools built SPECIFICALLY for sales teams right now...🤯 My brain hurts just thinking about what that equates to in time / money on demos, testing, and (in many cases) churn. To save everyone some time, we hosted a roundtable with The GTM Circle last week where we talked about the tools sales teams at early-stage startups are ACTUALLY using today, here are some of them. What did we miss 🤷🏼‍♀️? 🤖 General Anthropic / Claude Google / Gemini Meta / Llama 3 OpenAI / ChatGPT Perplexity 🎨 Content & Personalization at Scale Bardeen Beautiful.ai Copy.ai Clay Octave Omneky TOPO YC 24 Unify 📇 CRM & Customer Engagement Apollo.io Copilot Chatbase HubSpot Copilot ZoomInfo Copilot ⚙️ Automation & Productivity Fathom Grain Momentum.io Read AI Salesroom superwhisper 📈 Analytics & Reporting Roadway Zebra BI 🎥 Video Creation & Editing Loom Midjourney OpusClip Soul Machines Synthesia

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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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I meet and talk with 5-10 of the greatest GTM minds on the planet every week. CRO’s, VPs of Sales, CMO’s. 100% agree that getting outbound right is one of the hardest parts of their business, why? 1. Recruiting is hard again The same voices that sold tech sales as an easy path to 6 figures are now the voices saying the BDR role is dead. They sold a bill of goods to people who didn’t understand how hard this role is, are surprised these people who chose a path because it was sold as “easy” aren’t performing, and now have ulterior motives to pivot to a new message. Hard jobs are hard to recruit for. 2. Lack of Leadership 2020 through mid 2022 we had a bunch of capital bloat and talent bloat enter the market. Just like we have overvalued “zombie” companies we have overvalued “zombie” leaders who don’t know how to coach good habits for this type of market. Outbound was easy from 2014ish to summer 2022. 8 years is a long time, most of the voices we hear only know those times or only know what type of sales motion. 3. Absolute statements muddy the waters I've been around the block enough to click on their profile and see their track record. 99.9% of folks make these statements only sold transactional commodity technology, sold to GTM teams, or in most cases – only both. What works depends on multiple factors: ASP, buyer persona, and complexity of your sales process/customer’s buying process. Depending on what you sell – sometimes you are going to need to pick up the phone or send a note to get someone’s attention. That will NEVER change. 4. Generational consideration for career pathing is key BDR is still hands down the best route to market for future AE’s. You have to learn to prospect and get meetings before you can run a meeting, qualify, and manage a deal. No argument from me on CAC math – thousands of products require veracious qualification, deal management, and creating customer consensus. You can not run those types of deals and prospect. If any Voice had EVER done that type of role or ran a team that did, they wouldn’t say what they are. For BDRs to stick around for more than 14 months, you need steps in the BDR path where comp, responsibility and role grow over time. 5. Results are tanking Point 1&2. You are the equivalent of a fire fighter that starts a fire then takes the glory when you put it out. I absolutely loved the movie Backdraft – but stop it. These are the ideas of “not famous” GTM people. People who spend all day serving their customer and developing their people – not posting on this platform. They don’t care about clicks, followers, or impressions. They care about revenue and earnings. Outbound is hard. It (almost) always has been. Ya’ll need to block the noise and focus on what works for your business and try everything. Even the hard stuff. #AllGasNoBrakes #DialedIn

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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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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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Last week, our growth team booked $520K of pipeline and 31 meetings with Unify 🤯 I am speechless and insanely proud of what Garrett has accomplished in <4 months at Unify. Rhea also joined the growth team in July and has already shipped big wins in warm outbound. Skeptical that warm outbound works? Totally understandable. Success doesn't come overnight and it takes iterating, tweaking and experimentation to build a meaningful channel. But don't let early setbacks stop you from believing in the strategy. It works, and the numbers above are proof. Want to know how Unify uses Unify? DM me, happy to share our approach

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SDRs, you're not fooling prospects with your title. SDRs in the fintech space aren't finance experts SDRs in the insurtech space aren't insurance experts. SDRs in the payments space aren't payments experts. SDRs like to use every title except... SDR. We are experts in other things, like... -Prospecting -Cold Calling -Relationship Building -Uncovering Pain -Portraying Value SDR doesn't have to be a dirty word. Let's embrace it. ❤️

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"Are You Just Chasing Partner Referrals? Stop." The quarter’s almost over. Revenue targets are looming. Partners have customers. But here’s the thing: You’re asking the wrong question. If you’re treating partners as nothing more than a lead-gen source, your partnerships are going to fail. Here’s why. Partnerships are a long-term, scalable strategy for exponential growth—when done right. They drive long-term revenue and customer loyalty by delivering complementary solutions that solve real, strategic problems. It’s not just about getting referrals—it’s about creating value that benefits everyone. When partnerships are done right, they align with your larger growth goals and foster collaboration across teams. To succeed, you need: - Executive buy-in, all the way down to product, sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams. - Strong, multi-threaded relationships across your partner’s organization. - The right resources, processes, and internal alignment to operationalize them. From experience, companies that treat partners as transactional lead sources often see diminishing returns over time. But those that invest in true, strategic partnerships consistently build stronger revenue streams and customer trust. So, instead of asking, “Where are the referrals?” maybe ask this: “How can we operationalize partnerships to better align with our growth strategy and deliver more value to customers?” #SaaS #Partnerships #RevenueGrowth #CustomerSuccess #ExecutiveLeadership

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I've been hitting the pavement hard with cold calls and almost let the day slip by without sharing an insight from this year's BFCM payments dashboard. Better late than never tho, right?! During this year's BFCM weekend, Stripe processed more than 137,000 transactions PER MINUTE at peak volume, while maintaining an uptime greater than 99.9999%. So, if you shopped with retail giants like Amazon, Best Buy, Zara, or any store powered by Shopify, Stripe's industry-leading uptime helped make your checkout experience easy peasy lemon squeezy. 🍋🍋🍋 P.S. I mention Stripe’s 5 9s of reliability often because I'm honestly extremely impressed by it. It's one of my favorite things about Stripe - as a consumer, employee, and possible business owner. #TalkPaymentsWithMe #Stripe #Payments #Fintech #DigitalPayments #PaymentProcessing #BlackFriday #CyberMonday #BFCM

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Would you hire a recently fired VP of Sales to lead the GTM strategy for your $500K start-up, especially if that candidate had absolutely no industry experience? Likely not, right? Well, LinkSquares did. And I bet they were happy with that decision! So, what's the story? How (and why) did Steve Travaglini (Pavilion 2023 CRO of the year) get fired from one VP of Sales role, after scaling sales from $0-$7M, only to lead growth at LinkSquares from $500K to $50M in ARR over the ensuing 5 years? In the clip below he talks about what he learned in the early days of their rapid growth and what he would change going forward. You can hear the entire episode for yourself on today's episode of The GOATS of Growth podcast, but if he were one of my candidates, here is how I would summarize his attributes: --Gritty --Resilient --Adaptable --Resourceful --Optimistic --Humble And, most importantly, a STRONG bias towards action which was, in opinion, the bedrock for their strong sales culture. Steve, I had been looking forward to interviewing you for a long time and I'm happy I finally got the chance. Thanks for being such a great guest! Please follow Steve to watch as he builds his own startup, Winrate, in public. Listen to the full episode here: https://buff.ly/3Cjhr6Q

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Your December pipeline calls are destroying deals. The more you pressure your teams right now, the more deals slip to January. Just spent a week with Series C-F sales teams. Pure anxiety: • Hourly status updates • Constant rep check-ins • Endless pipeline reviews • Midnight forecast revisions All creating exactly what kills deals: Desperate energy. Then I watched a VP flip the script. No daily updates. No pressure cooker. Instead: • Deep strategy sessions with key deals • War room for removing blockers • Focus on customer urgency, not internal pressure • Protecting rep time for actual selling, not just reporting Her December numbers? 2x better than peer teams this month. The reality? Pressure doesn't close deals. Clear thinking does. Great leaders don't amp up the stress at year-end. They dial it down and dive in. Stop running updates. Start removing roadblocks. #SalesLeadership

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Outbound isn't easy, but it's a game-changer if you do it right. Outbound has helped me: 1️⃣ Close 6-figure deals. 2️⃣ Generating significant pipeline in the toughest of industries 3️⃣ Forge Partnerships with some of the country's biggest names, generating significant recurring revenue. 4️⃣ Aided in raising over $100K in funding. 5️⃣ Connect with founders and C-Suite of Billion dollar companies! 6️⃣ Getting featured in some national news outlets 7️⃣ Job opportunities. Here's the no-BS guide to getting started. Now get out there and CRUSH IT! 💪 #OutboundMarketing #B2BSales #GrowthHacking #Sales #Coldemailing

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The cold, hard truth about debt collection models based on outbound calling are simply not fit for purpose.    Here are a few reasons why, based on our team’s own research:   👎 Calls have a 2-3% success rate 👎 90% of calls from unanswered numbers go unanswered 👎 On average, it takes 15 calls from an unknown number before the recipient answers   And even then, after all that energy and cost being incurred by the collections team, and they finally get to speak with the person they’ve been trying to get a hold of, the response they get? ‘Stop calling me’.   Digital works because:   ✅ It’s unobtrusive ✅ The consumer can manage their affairs on their terms ✅ Communication can be tailored at scale   It’s more effective, more efficient, and protects tight margins.   So how do you go about setting yourself up for the transition? This piece from our very own Tim Smith looks at the practical steps organizations need to take as they lean into digital collections: https://lnkd.in/gdntwZgc #Collections #DigitalCollections #ConsumerFinance

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