Alex Vacca 🧠🛠️’s Post

If you are wondering what the buzz has been lately in the Sales Comp community, it's #NUDGE2024, starting next Monday, July 29th. Comp leaders are referring to it as the Coachella of Comp. Revenue leaders are calling it Revenue OperationstoberFest. Sales leaders have been describing it as the olympics of On-Target Earnings. Finance leaders are promulgating that this is the world cup of budget forecast accuracy. Here at Forma.ai we are just calling it what it is, THE virtual conference about the psychology of sales compensation. Join us next week, and prepare to lead your company.

Looking at how Skillsminer helps employees in our latest feedback

A lot of reps believe that their company is going to train them up and invest hours into them to get them to be a top performer. Even at the companies ranked #1 in training, this is not true. I hit 193% of my ramp quota my first quarter and here’s what I did outside of my required training: 1. Researched my customers, tried to understand what challenges they face and what they want to achieve (nobody cares about the features of your product). Read case studies, created ChatGPT prompts, read industry trends from neutral, 3rd party consultants (ex: Deloitte, West Monroe, etc…) 2. Found the top performers, put 30 mins on their calendar and came prepared with questions (very important). If they worked in the same office as me, I shadowed them while they made calls, when I was creating emails I asked for their input. I still ask others for advice on my outreach. 3. Picked. Up. The. Phone. I had my bosses bosses boss tell me that I had to slow down when I was ramping one time at a different company because they couldn’t keep me off the phones (I didn’t slow down). There were some internal changes with AE alignment, so it made sense to chill out on activity. But my point stands, you can only learn so much from researching. 4. Never stop learning, you’re ramping up until you’re the CEO. Outside of my regular work, I try to find new webinars, articles, listen back to past calls, etc every week to educate myself on different industries and personas we cater to and what they care about. What else would you add to the list? P.S. If you do all of this does it mean you’ll smash your quota? No. Will it make you wayyyyy more likely to smash your quota? Hands down 100%.

The Radically Authentic Discovery method isn’t just ‘listening more.’ Here’s what you need to know to really get your customers to show up and open up… ‘Listening more’ is just 1 part of the RAD method. To solve your customer disengagement problem, you also need to know: How to quiet your mind. How customers perceive you. How customers think and behave. How to ask Disruptive Questions. In which context to ask a question. In which context to not ask a question. How to understand clearly when they answer. How to react and respond when they answer. How to handle the fear of asking the questions. How to avoid misunderstandings of a customer’s priorities. How to avoid misunderstandings of a customer’s challenges. How to avoid misunderstandings of a customer’s perceptions. How to create the mindshift from ‘our product’ to ‘your problems’ How to be confident interacting with customers in an authentic way. Listening is key. But there’s so much more that needs to be learned if you want to have Strategic Customer Conversations. If your customers don’t open up, learn how to solve the problem here: https://lnkd.in/eShpWB5U

With seamless integration of coaching into our quality monitoring solution, personalized guidance is just a click away.    Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all training – Etech's QEval's automated delivery tailors coaching to each agent's unique strengths and areas for improvement.   But that's not all! Goal tracking ensures our coaching efforts align with tangible performance objectives, fostering a results-driven culture where agents continuously elevate their skills.    The impact? Boosted agent performance, increased retention rates, and ultimately, delighted customers. After years in the industry, I can confidently say that built-in coaching has been a game-changer for our operations.   Empower your call center with QEval's built-in coaching for personalized guidance, improved performance, and satisfied customers.    https://lnkd.in/dkbuDSxD   #CallCenter #ContactCenter #QualityMonitoring #AgentCoaching #AX #CX 

In case you missed it, here's a refresher on how to improve feedback volume 💡 Check out our blog below, where we share our top tips, including best practice for promoting your Feedback Site👇 #guestfeedback #guestexperience #hgem https://lnkd.in/emB8fbGR

We sat down with Luke F. at Deel last week and what a conversation it was! Luke is Head of one of the fastest growing Customer Success Teams out there and we had the chance to dig into a lot of practical topics for CS & CS Leaders alike... 🟢 Innovative approaches to incentivising CS 🟢 The maturity stages of CS Teams 🟢 How to set expectations with customers 🟢 How to drive product adoption 🟢 Developing your CS Career 🟢 and more! But one of the best parts of the discussion was left for Customer Success Managers looking to develop their careers and go (further) into management. Luke brings great clarity to the essence of what you need to master at each each level : 🔷 Entry level: Mastering Prioritisation 🔷 Senior CS: Becoming an Advisor 🔷 Manager: Solving for the outer-loop (fixing it for all customers) 🔷 VP: Solving for the outer-outer-loop (aka cross functional) Lot's of great takeaways from this one. Check out this clip below and the full episode on YouTube: @UseDelegate

Pro Tip: 6 effective ways to turn operators into problem solvers

I feel that #3 is the hardest to “learn”. It must be gained through real experience. Not necesssrily the same experiences as those you are supporting but in understanding the stress, anxiousness, and unrelenting desire to return value to themselves and their organizations with what they elect to invest in. Once you approach sales and success conversations with this mindset, active listening, research, and the other important tips from this article will naturally follow. https://ow.ly/VVSc50R54MU

A starting point for Customer Jobs-to-be-done Prioritization is to leverage Strategizer's prioritization framework. I like to prioritize across each quadrant (awareness, expectations, trade-offs, experience) of The Wheel of Progress® to inform Experience Design Sprints related to prioritized jobs pains and gains. ▶️ Job Importance: Rank jobs according to their importance to customers. ▶️ Pain Severity: Rank pains according to how extreme they are in the customer's eyes. ▶️ Gain Relevance: Rank gains according to how essential they are in the customer's eyes. Learn more about my Customer JTBD Courses (principles and methods, listening skills, interviewing skills): https://lnkd.in/guntcz2f Customer Centric Solutions LLC #brandexperience #customerexperience #customerdiscovery #productdiscovery #wheelofprogress #jtbd #prioritization #customerprogress #