Tom Rice

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  

13

Your Sales to CS handoff process needs work. Call Comcast and you'll get a full lesson in how not to treat customers. Ask them to go through a bunch of prompts and repeat the issue 20x before speaking to an agent. You are probably thinking: well our process isn't THAT bad. Are you sure? I bet your process looks something like this: 1. Someone submits a lead or responds to an outbound message (information sharing 1) 2. A BDR follows up to qualify them and set a meeting (person 1, information sharing 2) 3. An AE sets up a Discovery meeting (person 2, information sharing 3) 4. 60-90 day sales cycle (information sharing 4-5) 5. Closed won, handed to implementation for 30 days (person 3, information sharing 6) 6. Moved over to CS (person 4, information sharing 7) Imagine the frustration customers have when they have to share the same info (company information, business problems, etc.) 7 times to 4 different people. It sucks! I had a great time talking about the broken handoff processes in SaaS with Cory Pitt on the Wiser AI podcast.

11

6 Comments

How much retention would go up? If... - The Customer Success org starts with Solutions - There's a Chief Solutions Officer on the board - AEs consult with SEs on all ongoing deals - Customers talk 80% in conversations - Focus is on adoption, not renewals I'm guessing by A LOT. That's the GTM SaaS world I envision. P.S: True customer adoption nearly guarantees renewals. #presalesevolution #customersuccess #saas

67

9 Comments

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

105

10 Comments

Want to learn how to close deals in today's market? Rebby John and I discuss what it takes — from refining your discovery, to boosting pre-sales skills, and creating a compelling perspective on how you can help your customer achieve their most impactful business goals. The CFO isn’t going to sign off on a deal just because of a strong demo and a personal connection anymore. Check out their insights in episode 2 of RevTalks presented by Salesloft. Watch it here: https://lnkd.in/er5viYBw

15

Looking to expand your territory and crush your quota? 👊 In this episode of In Your Corner, our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck, shows how enterprise account executives can identify new accounts to target in just a few clicks. Using ZoomInfo's Advanced Search, sellers can easily find accounts within their territory that aren't existing customers and connect with contacts who are most likely to engage. Watch below to see how it works. ⬇️

6

1 Comment

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/d4VJcfXG

62

2 Comments

The more realistic enablement initiatives are, the better equipped reps are to do real-world selling. The less realistic they are, the more their confidence and productivity suffer. So how can you truly connect enablement with reality? It’s all about getting great data, modeling an ideal, and running realistic role-playing sessions with leaders involved. With these three essential strategies, you can ground your enablement initiatives in real-world scenarios that allow you to validate, iterate, and rehash based on how customers actually respond. To learn more, check out my latest piece for The Edge here:

62

It doesn't matter who you are or what you do, agreements are everywhere in your organisation and you literally cannot do anything without them. Read this report from Deloitte to discover how you can unlock the value of your agreements and drive massive ROI with Docusign IAM. This is that aha moment where you think, why didn't I ever think about this before! #Discover #Docusign #Deloitte #Savings #ROI #Agreements #AI #Intelligent #CLM #eSignature #IDV #DocGen #Integrated #Workflows #Insight #2Trillion

14

According to Gartner, 85% of deals are won by the seller to engage first. That’s why we’re so excited to report that over half of ZoomInfo Copilot customers say they’re the first to engage with accounts. In a noisy, crowded competitive landscape, ZoomInfo Copilot is making a real difference for our customers. In the four months since launch, customers have reported: ✅ 25% pipeline growth ✅ 58% increase in booked meetings ✅ 60% increase in productivity ✅ 8.1 hours saved per week, on average ZoomInfo Copilot's AI-driven insights surface the most relevant buying signals and automatically prioritize accounts, letting our sellers connect at exactly the right time with the right message. Want to give it a try? Shoot me a DM. For more info on ZoomInfo Copilot’s impact for sellers, head to our blog 👉 https://lnkd.in/eaYS6xAW #ZoomInfoCopilot

15

To all the Founders, VPs, and Senior Managers who are NOT from sales. Be nice to Sales Folks, especially AEs and CSMs. WHY? AEs and CSMs can offer a lot of things for free or at a cheaper price. They can even help you expedite Implementation and give you more features and modules at a nominal fee. Let's face the fact that today NO company can run without Softwares like CRM, HRMS, Emailing tools, Calling tools, etc. Many non-Sales, non-SaaS buyers often underestimate the influence AEs and CSMs have in shaping deals—both in tailoring features and optimizing pricing. So to all the Buyers: Being nice will not cost you anything, it will benefit both you as well as your organization. To all the AEs and CSMs: If you come across a good buyer who is being respectful and nice to you and helping you move the deal faster, help such individuals by giving them whatever best you can without thinking too much about your commission and incentive. Remember being nice and respectful is a two-way thing. #sales #purchase #b2b #ae #csm #benice

77

5 Comments

Have you ever heard of an Enterprise prospecting strategy that takes one hour to complete and actual sales reps say helps them gain access to their decision makers 79% of the time? Years of customer feedback from Emissary's customers identify one: talking to a former company exec from the target account who is willing to coach your strategy. Enterprise prospecting can feel like using a dial up modem. Just so you know — we've got broadband over here. #enterprise

16

Is manual call scoring with Gong slowing you down? For years, sales managers have been stuck in a repetitive cycle—manually filling out scorecards after reviewing individual calls. Tools like Gong still operate like this, requiring managers to painstakingly assess each call and input scores manually. There are two main problems with this: - Manual filling: The need to manually capture insights from every call, deal, and interaction is time-consuming and prone to errors. - Shooting in the dark: Feedback to reps has often been vague, open-ended, and lacking specificity, leaving managers to hope their generic strategies would somehow stick. The game has changed. AI now automates the entire process, capturing key insights from every call, deal, and interaction without requiring human intervention. And with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), sales managers no longer have to rely on gut instinct or generalized feedback. These AI systems allow you to dig deeper into the data and uncover statistically significant insights that truly move the needle. You can see this change across: - Precision Coaching: LLMs can identify the one action that will have the biggest impact on each deal. Rather than generic insights, AI pinpoints specific steps that reps can take to drive progress. - Deeper Analysis: AI unlocks the potential of every deal by analyzing interactions at their core. It digs into the reasoning behind buyer decisions and offers actionable insights that help reps understand not just what to do but why they need to do it. - Scalable Feedback: No longer confined to individual call reviews, AI-powered feedback is scalable across the entire sales organization. This ensures that every rep, regardless of experience level, can benefit from data-driven coaching that hones in on the most effective strategies. This isn’t just the future of sales management—it’s the new standard.  By leveraging AI and LLMs, sales managers can focus on high-impact coaching that drives results, eliminates manual tasks, and takes the guesswork out of decision-making. Oliv's AI agents help you do just that, if you're interested in learning more, DM me and I'd love to share more.

21

3 Comments

Sales Folks especially SDRs and AEs We live in a virtual world now; most calls happen virtually, especially if you are in SaaS. In such setups, your presentibility over video calls matters a lot. Make sure your lighting is on point and if you feel you are in a bad place where the lighting is not that great there are gadgets available for your laptops to enhance the lights Imagine you go on a call and the other person is barely able to see you, it won't make the other side feel that comfortable talking to you. These small things matter and create differences so if you are reading this post and your lighting sucks get it fixed immediately. Have a Bright Wednesday!!! #smallthingsmatters #lighting #saas #sales #sdr #ae

80

4 Comments

Thank you so much for this great writeup of the PMM role in SMB/MM and Enterprise! Out of curiosity, how do you know if you've accomplished the metrics for success in Enterprise you set out in (3)? Do PMMs in developer/infra focused companies need to be technical to get beyond 'the core?' I'll use an example relative to me. I've used CloudFormation and have some very specific opinions on that product. As such I can semi-credibly outline a customer value prop and highlight use cases for an IaaC solution from Pulumi or HashiCorp. But that clearly can't be what proficiency means to you because then I (or anyone else) would need how to deploy and manage containers to work at Docker, Inc or any company using Kubernetes. So how do you think of what it means to be proficient and how have you gone about getting there throughout your career? Thanks again for the post and for any thoughts you can offer.

Buyers got 99 problems, but your PITCH ain't one. 🛑 There's a reckoning happening in SaaS sales. Sales reps who "crushed their quotas" 🤑 and went to President's Club in the golden age of SaaS are now struggling to build a pipeline in 2024. Memorizing scripts and sending generic templated emails is not the craft of selling. Most salespeople are never taught business acumen. Yet, aligning your products/services to prospect's company goals and initiatives is required for success in this market.   Must-dos in 2024 if you are selling to Enterprise customers (publicly traded, large corporations)  - Google ("Company name + Investor Relations" )  - Read recent investor presentations, earnings calls, and quarterly reports Earnings calls in particular, offer a wealth of information for sellers because it is the C-Suite being grilled by the professional investor community. 🤓 In these publicly available documents, you will find: - the company goals - strategic initiatives - strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities - information about their growth and revenue strategies 📈 📉 📊 The earnings call transcript also includes questions the analysts are asking, often containing nuggets of gold regarding business outcomes you can help them with. Word of caution - publicly available Gen AI tools can't currently summarize these documents correctly. They "hallucinate" and provide false information, which will kill your credibility as a seller. You can buy AlphaSense https://lnkd.in/eFip3gTD or use free services like the SEC's site https://lnkd.in/ekEQ7yCk or use the company's investor relations page. You don't need an MBA to be a successful seller in 2024, but you must understand how your customers' business works and their key priorities. Happy Selling! 🤗  

42

5 Comments

Conversations are fleeting so you need to make every one count. According to Gartner, buyers only spend 5% of their journey with sales reps. Your team has such a small window to make an impact, which is why Conversation Intelligence has become essential for sales teams. Conversation Intelligence can turn your sales calls into revenue insights that help you build scalable workflows. To help you understand the basics, Salesloft put together a crash course: Conversation Intelligence 101. Get the guide: https://lnkd.in/gfi_-Duu

4

Missing sales quotas? Despite best efforts, a lot of sales teams are set up to struggle. Many sellers miss their targets due to poor prospecting, spending too much time on low-value accounts instead of effectively reaching the right contacts, which costs them valuable deal-closing opportunities. Shift focus from boosting lead counts to enhancing value. Prioritizing quality over quantity helps sales reps perform better and achieve consistent results TLDR | Work smarter, not harder See how better data and AI can help: https://okt.to/vf1MaR

4

It should not be so hard to empower your sales teams. But, in 2023: 📉 53% of CROs struggled to increase sales velocity and rep productivity 📉 72% of salespeople spent time not selling 📉 28% of sales reps expected to attain quota This year, learn how to leverage the power of sales enablement 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gZ7qQftm #salesenablement #change #saas

9

2 Comments