Trey Miles

The #SAAS revolution of ever growth of sales & market cap is not working for most users The impact of unspent licenses and unused tools are becoming an eye sore The use it or lose it philosophy with users are being used for many IT tools by business focussed IT departments I see decommissioning of SAAS tools becoming a trend as many companies see taking out systems that are just protecting old ways of doing work a value driver Those providers that try to arm twist customers into staying may succeed in the very short term, but are well served to remember that SAAS was sold on " pay per drink", rip and replace and their ilk #Salesforce #Microsoft

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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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“What do they do again?” is the kiss of death! “What do they do again?” is intellectually lazy! “What do they do again?” screams I didn't care enough to spend an ounce of time looking them up! “What do they do again?” is disrespectful to relationships who believe in you, recommend you, or advocate on your behalf. Read this post and then watch the podcast interview by Jason M. Lemkin and commit to yourself to never stop growing, learning, or losing your edge. https://lnkd.in/exuuntYg? #GreatSalesLeaders #LeadersWhoWantToSell #SaaStr #NeverStopGrowing

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Public SaaS sales efficiency metrics continued to UNINSPIRE in Q1 Our focal point as always: How much Sales & Marketing dollars are spent to acquire $1 of Net New ARR This figure has exploded from ~$1.50 two years ago… to ~$2.30 last year. As for Q1?  More of the same!  Barely moved.. (The chart also shows the same metric removing Stock-Based Compensation from S&M – a better benchmark for privates, since SBC is ~0 for them.) Stay tuned for more Q1 benchmarks and a tally of winners and losers. #SaaS #Metrics #Benchmarks #GTM

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Large enterprises are now finally realizing they may be paying more for what they really need on their large-scale SaaS platforms.

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Interesting insights on the GTM side. Some of the key insights what i see for Saesforce is untapped market is like APAC, the pentration is low due to higher price of subscription premium. This is where they need to think different for these markets. tailered business centric experience from the salesforce offerings. Going beyond tools and methods, salesforce has to demostrate how its purely increasing revenue for every business partner they dealt with. Helping business models like b2c, b2c enaling the transparaency in revenue growth and market share. Salesforce was built by following he concept of Blue Ocean Strategy, they continued to look forward a way to sailing fast by outsmarting their competition with new simplified offerings. With a click of button Salesforce should able to build & deploy a omni channel experiene (like an app) from the lead generation to customer support. The configuration can decide what should add and drop. I think salesforce is more innovative company, Hope they have a product map for next 5 to 10 years already and working on the details of whats coming and how its growing their business. :)

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One reason RevOps isn’t strategic 𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽 Let me break this down. 𝟭. 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 RevOps defaults to a reactive whack-a-mole, fielding a flood of inbound requests. This leaves no time to work on strategic priorities. A RevOps Roadmap starts with top priorities or OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). - What does the Revenue Team want to accomplish this year? - This quarter? - What’s our sales target? - What do we need to do to get there? - Improve Close Rates? - Sell larger deals? - Generate more pipeline from outbound? - From inbound? - From renewals and expansion? What are our priorities as a team? 𝟮. 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 The next step is to align priorities with specific initiatives in RevOps. Say we want to improve our close rates. - What will we do? - Define our sales cycle? - Set clearer qualification and stage entry criteria? - Build reports and dashboards to track this? - Improve our pipeline review and/or forecasting process? - Provide more enablement? What are the most important initiatives to help achieve our objectives? 𝟯. 𝗚𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 Now we get feedback, revisions and sponsorship from leadership. At the end of the day, are they in full support of RevOps prioritizing these initiatives and trying to help the Revenue Team achieve these Objectives and Key Results? If not, what are we doing here? If everything is a priority, nothing is. 𝟰. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 We have specific Key Results for the revenue team to achieve. - Are we tracking metrics related to this? - Are we reporting this to leadership on a regular basis? - Are we updating leadership as to whether or not we’re on track? - And if we need to make adjustments to get there? To me, RevOps isn't RevOps without Insights. It's just systems admin. 𝟱. 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 The Roadmap comes to life in sprint planning. Over the next two weeks... - Which items on the Roadmap will we tackle? - Which fire-drills and inbound requests do we have? - Does leadership want to delay items on the roadmap? Things change in growth-stage companies quickly. It’s okay to pivot and tackle emergencies if they are truly more urgent than what’s on the roadmap, so long as everyone is aligned. 𝟲. 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 The Roadmap needs reviewed and updated quarterly. We show what was done and not done, what OKRs the revenue team achieved and didn’t achieve. We then leverage this to set OKRs and Initiatives for the next quarter. We want to maintain alignment here. What would you add? What’s working with your Roadmap? 🤔 More on this here: https://bit.ly/3W8fhCq ✌️

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2.8k SFCC stores do $1m+/yr. 1.4k do $5m+/yr 1k do $10m+/yr 704 do $50m+/yr 281 do $100m+/yr There are huge brands on Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Definitely a higher concentration of public brands than on Shopify. But the Shopify market is so much larger in the $1m - $100m segment. It’s still the greatest opportunity in eCom. #Shopify

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This is absolute creative gold! Calling on ALL Sales Leaders, BDR Leaders, and sales reps to take a look at this video. 6sense can help you. #Salesintelligence #accountdata #salesai #predictive #accountprioritization #outboundsales https://lnkd.in/gEc_cv5Q

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Many sales organizations spend days or weeks on account prioritization and territory planning exercises. There's got to be a better way... If you're heading to Gartner CSO next week, don't miss Ami Arad's presentation on May 21 at 2:05pm! He'll contrast the traditional ways sellers prioritize their accounts and the new way made possible through buyer intent and predictive models. Get the details here: https://okt.to/GhFXdQ

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Improved ramp time for new reps by 40% Some CROs see the value and still want to wait for the “right time” (ie. after SKO, after year end) Other CROs like Brent Thurrell see the value and move fast knowing now is the only time. A big reason why he’s running a half a billion ARR revenue org. Decisive and knows the moves he made earlier in the year start paying off in Q4 and in Q1. Your next year starts now. #TOP #Sales #Training

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People don’t realize what “closing skills” are in sales, and they’re not “is persuasive.” Reps with closing skills CONSISTENTLY know, can choreograph and advise on how the deal gets signed and returned. And their forecast accuracy reflects those skills.

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AE: "Can you demo to this super warm prospect?" SE: "Sure, what top outcomes are they looking for?" AE: "Umm, here's the e-mail thread. Figure it out." SE: "We might need more information than this..." AE: "But we NEED the demo to sell it to them." SE: "Okay, when's the call scheduled for?" AE: "At 3pm. Today." SE: 😭😭😭 Can anyone relate? Let's change the narrative. #presalesevolution #solutions #sales

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A bad sales comp plan will kill your sales team productivity. A good sales comp plan motivates your team to hustle through the end of each month. As we scaled the Levelset sales team to 60+ front-line sales reps, we learned a TON about how to build great comp plans. Here are my principles for good sales compensation: 1. Salespeople don’t do sales and other things well. Let the salespeople sell, don’t saddle them with additional responsibility. For example: Sales and Customer Success are separate functions. 2. The compensation structure should be so simple that you can do the math on the back of a napkin. 3. No commission-only roles. Sales reps should get base salary + variable compensation. 4. At least 40% of sales reps On-Target Earnings should be in the form of variable compensation. 5. No “draw on commission” for ramping reps. New reps should have some mix of guaranteed variable compensation during their ramp period. 6. Sales reps should be paid “straight-line” up to 100% of quota. There should be compensation accelerators above 100%. There will be no compensation hurdles or decelerators for producing below 100%. 7. Annual quota for Account Executives should be 5x On-Target Earnings. For example: $500k annual quota, $100k OTE. This keeps your cost of sales to between 20 - 25% of gross revenue. ‍ 8. Did I mention accelerators? You need to include accelerators for over-performance. This isn’t a comprehensive list of principles. But if you follow these principles, your comp plan will motivate the team to hit their number. Read the full list of principles here: https://lnkd.in/gmwXkRE9

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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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The transition from founder led sales -> a repeatable GTM motion is hard... Extremely hard. There are so many things to consider to mitigate risk and get as many repetitions on closed loop feedback as quickly as possible. -> what profile of a rep should I hire -> how to assess the right talent -> SDR or AE or growth hacker type or both -> what channels should we be testing -> what does good look like? What does great look like? -> how do I know if we’re making progress? And so much more… We’re discussing all this live next Tuesday at Kiln. If you’re in Utah, come check it out: https://lnkd.in/eQ9dyJK4

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ZoomInfo Copilot is working 24/7 — surfacing important updates you should know about your top accounts.  With breaking alerts delivered via Slack, you'll never miss when a buying group shifts or a key account spikes on intent. 🔔 Have a question about one of your accounts? Ask Copilot's interactive, AI-powered chat and get answers in seconds.  Ready to give Copilot a try? Request a demo: bit.ly/3Kj4myP #ZoomInfoCopilot

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14 meetings, 9 opportunities, 4 closed/won deals, all in less than 60 days, all from one hour of prospecting. How'd we do it? This is a play I created at ON24 that I call our Executive Power Hour. A team of 8 or so pulled in our CRO and another senior leader for an hour meeting. Each person brought two accounts they were targeting, we all had LinkedIn and Sales Nav pulled up. "I'm trying to crack Komodo Health...who do we know?" We weren't looking for who knows who - that's table stakes with Nav and if you have TeamLinkExtend enabled. (<---don't sleep on this insanely impactful feature of Sales Nav). We were looking for who knows someone who knows someone. We were looking for the, "I don't know anyone but my neighbor is connected with their CMO and it looks like they worked at UHG together for seven years, I'm on it." Your executives' networks are brimming with senior level people who also know senior level people. And execs are more likely to say yes when other execs make the ask. In one hour of teamwork, we put referrals and relationship selling to the test, and it stands to be one of the easiest ways to source meetings. We not only found camaraderie and motivation through these wins, but we increased speed to lead and speed to trust by coming in through trusted sources. Bonus? It gave that team great exposure to senior leadership that they didn't ordinarily get. Double bonus? You can create a killer monthly or quarterly SPIF around this, complete with leaderboards and prizes. The full playbook for this move is available in our prospecting playbook, along with nearly fifty pages of education and plays that will set your bookings on fire, but will also teach you how to use Sales Navigator to sell exactly like I do. https://lnkd.in/g4kSRRVe #samsales

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3 things your VP of sales forgot to mention about comp plans. (This is how comp plans are really set with finance) 1. Quota to OTE ratio. The average AE is $75k base, $75k variable = $150k OTE (on track earnings) The rule of thumb is a 4-5X multiple on OTE to quota. Sometimes you might see 3-7x ranges. $600k - $750k would be the expected quota. This scales with enterprise reps. $150k base, $150k variable = $300k OTE. $1.2m - $1.5m quota. This is general board level benchmarking for efficiency, it's not based on attainment. Usually the multiple you end up with trends in the direction of historical performance of the team. 2. Cost of sale (%) This can vary greatly, but normally companies target 15-20% all in. Meaning the total commission dollars paid out on a new business deal is 20% or less. This includes everyones variable combined. BDR's, AE's, Mgr's, Dir's, VP's, CRO, etc. The biggest misconception about comp plans is that simple is better. No. It isn't. Unless of course you want to be paid less as a top performer without BDR's, Sales engineers, or Mgrs! Take a flat rate for that $150k OTE rep on a $600k quota. $75k / $600k = 12.5% 2.5% - 7.5% remains... and we aren't factoring in kickers, bonuses, and accelerators. The problem here quickly becomes under performers cannibalizing big % chunks of deals when they are only at 20% attainment. This is also why sales leadership will see an inflated target above the board plan. Adding some complexity here can really allow you to pay out your top 40% of reps in a way that recognizes their contributions with much higher $$$. Yes you pay for their added $$$ with the under performance of the bottom reps. This is NOT the only way to do it, but just one example of HOW to do to make the math work. 3. CAC Payback Period (Months) CAC Payback Period = Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) / (Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) * Gross Margin) This one is played up as rocket science. It's super simple. Add up all sales and marketing costs (salary, benefits, tech, spend, commission, etc.) Take MRR (monthly recurring revenue) multiplied by gross margin aka how much money is left after COGs. Usually "good" in tech it's 80-90% gross margin. The target here is to have a 6 to 12 months "CAC payback period", meaning for every deal you do... the company breaks even on the CAC within 6 to 12 mo's. TYING IT ALL TOGETHER! If quota is lowered, but OTE stays the same, CAC goes UP! Can't doit. If quota is lowered, with some added complexity, OTE can stay the same. CAC stays flat. You can sell this to finance. The reality? Negotiating with finance shouldn't be us vs. them. It's a bit of science and art. It's a partnership. Science = we need to fit into the financial banding that maps to industry standards. The math is the easy part. Art = how do you create a plan that motivates and retains employees, while hitting the growth goal of a business, while staying under budget. Operating is hard.

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