Haris Halkic’s Post

How big should my sales team be? I was speaking with a founder who's company goal is to achieve $10M in revenue growth this year. He then asked, how big should my sales team be? A seemingly straightforward question that requires a good bit of investigation There's two main elements at play 👩💼Capacity - assume lead generation isn't a problem. Based on your current business model, how much workload can each sales person handle to hit $10M. Capacity models tend to be the "spreadsheet" math that got a lot of companies in trouble over the last few years 📈Pipeline Generation - Between your various lead channels (Inbound, SDR, AE, etc), does your pipeline support $10M? What is your mix of lead channels? Are you 100% inbound? 50/50 Inbound/SDR? Are AEs contributing to lead generation? This mix has implications on how you should hire 👩💼Capacity You need people to close deals. Too few people and they don't give enough attention to each opportunity. Too many people and their aren't enough leads to go around. Everyone underperforms. Take the time to understand the capacity of each individual on the team. For example: Each AE can work 2 new deals each week. Your company has a 60 day sales cycle. By the time their first deal has closed they should be working 16 active deals (2 deals/week x 8 weeks). You have average deal size of $50k, and a 25% win rate. That means about every other week an AE will close one of the deals they started working ~2 months ago = $100k per month. The annual run rate of that sales rep would be $1.2M. $10M/$1.2M = 8.33 reps (better round up to 9). Capacity model states that you should have 9 reps to be conservative, 8 reps if you think you can push your team over capacity. 📈Pipeline Generation Here's where companies have historically ignored data. Your model is currently 100% inbound. You're generating 20 leads per week. 50% of those convert into opportunities. Those leads are currently split between 5 sales reps. Each sales rep works 2 deals per week. But, you only have 5 sales reps. Inbound gets diluted when you bring on more team members. Marketing commits to growing inbound by 20%, so they'll generate 24 leads per week. At 50% conversion you're now creating 12 opportunities per week vs. 10. But, now you need to hire 3-4 more sales reps to handle the number of deals to support your $10M goal. With 8 or 9 reps and only 12 opportunities, the math doesn't work. How do you close that gap through other channels? Do you have a scalable and repeatable outbound model? Do you have a team of sales reps that can generate their own opportunities? As you grow the team, ensure you have the pipeline mechanics to support a bigger team. Always lean towards having your sales reps calendars be too full than not full enough.

Stay hungry. Prospect daily. Learn from the best: • Giulio Segantini: Phone-centric multi-channel cadence → https://buff.ly/3UVzQ4b • Paul M. Caffrey: Prospecting tips from 17 of the world's most elite sellers → https://buff.ly/3wvm3YO • Mark Hunter: Have you ever been stressed about prospecting? → https://buff.ly/3UWM6RY • Kevin Hopp: Talking about PAIN on cold calls doesn't work. → https://buff.ly/3wzcpnY • Chris Russell 📞📧: Prospecting into accounts rather than leads? → https://buff.ly/3UZ87zL • 🎺 Rory Sadler: Sales reps "Video prospecting takes too long" → https://buff.ly/3UvDmko • Kayla Cytron-Thaler: Don’t ask a prospect to confirm it’s them → https://buff.ly/3UE0vkP • Joel Graber: Quick cold outreach tip → https://buff.ly/3UXCZAD • Luigi P. To script or not to script. → https://buff.ly/3UTIcJw • David Craig White: Should you leave a voicemail on sales calls? → https://buff.ly/3QGPb6c • Morgan J Ingram: Here is how I view LinkedIn profiles to schedule meetings → https://buff.ly/3UXnrwA • Erik Aberg: Five best practices for a BDR using a multi-channel approach → https://buff.ly/3QJUVMt • Robert Akerele: How I became 3x more efficient with minimal effort → https://buff.ly/3USHcp3 • Jacob Karp: 39-year-old AE who generates +75% of his pipeline → https://buff.ly/3QGrz1w • Cait Kennedy 🏳️🌈 🥄: "The list is the strategy" → https://buff.ly/3V08DgY • Harry Monkhouse: Here is my prospecting workflow → https://buff.ly/3UVqG7H • Ross Keating: No prospect remembers → https://buff.ly/3QHitBQ • Paul “PJ” Jackson: Just simplify it so I understand → https://buff.ly/3UY5wWO • Trent Dressel: The hardest part of prospecting  → https://buff.ly/3QIGjwL • Holly Allen: April gave me a much needed wake up call. → https://buff.ly/3V08GJG • Melissa Gaglione✨: If you aren't leveraging video in sales … → https://buff.ly/3UTI90i • Andrea Perry: Fueling my days with a powerful routine! → https://buff.ly/3QH9vEl • Max Clang: Learnings after 1,000 calls → https://buff.ly/3QFZoQl • Vicki Culverhouse: five ways to make your cold calls more effective → https://buff.ly/3UVS5X6 • Dom Odoguardi: "Please don't pick up" → https://buff.ly/3wvm9j6 • Felix Frank ⚙️: Hw about cold call personalisation? → https://buff.ly/3UDNdVh • Ibrahim Asgarli: We've just kicked off cold-calling our prospects → https://buff.ly/4bEO2UV • Cameron Morgan: use the 'AHA' method → https://buff.ly/4akRwL8 P.S. I'm working on a massive guide with the best sales advice that I have learned on LinkedIn during the last 6 months. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀: https://lnkd.in/eDf_GhwT

Dear Sales leaders. Ever wonder why deals are stuck near the top of your sales funnel? > the stage before the prospect books the discovery call or demo Your sales reps are working really hard, and they want to generate more revenue for the business, but some of their deals may be stuck near the top of your sales pipeline > 'curious' or 'interested' stage where they have not yet committed to a discovery call or demo but the prospect has shown interest either from a conference an email reply a LinkedIn message or a cold call ending in "yeah I'm really interested to learn more but right now isn't a great time." Your sales reps want to be more creative to advance those prospects to the 'discovery call' stage perhaps by leveraging sales enablement like video testimonials or video case studies - authentic feedback from clients with specific quantifiable outcomes/benefits where the challenges > solutions > and benefits are wrapped up within less than 90 seconds to increase your company's credibility and trust (and not those scripted overly produced videos that you have to pay local videographers $5k+/video) or a series of short videos (<60 seconds) that explain your process, who you help, who you are NOT for, the type of challenges you solve, how your pricing works, what type of benefits your solution is able to deliver. But instead... your sales team is left with multi page PDFs that don't motivate your prospects to look at the material and because your prospects aren't looking at the material your prospects aren't moving across your sales funnel as fast as you would like them to or they are stuck there...for good (clogging your sales pipeline). and when you do your pipeline review calls and ask your sales reps "what's going on with this deal and that deal, why aren't they moving forward?" the chances are it's because your prospects don't have an easy user experience to self qualify themselves which causes hesitation to wanting to book that discovery call or demo Just like you, your prospects are very busy and don't have 20 mins to read through some boring slide deck to determine if there is even potential for a good fit with your services But luckily, there is a solution to help your prospects self qualify or disqualify themselves more efficiently that will advance your prospects faster across your sales funnel I have coined this solution called the Video Business Card Comment 'video' below and I will send a detailed overview on how to build your video business card to help score more discovery calls.

Winning prospecting strategies 🥇 • Kyle Asay: “Sales math” used to be simple. → https://buff.ly/3WoDxit • Todd Busler: Will booked 83 meetings with Director+ at mid-market and enterprise accounts → https://buff.ly/46vagHe • Jim Breton: Free tip to renew your pipe organically. → https://buff.ly/46p2or3 ******* Get my collection of 120 cold call openers: https://buff.ly/3WK4uOL  ******* • Stéphane Séguin: Getting objections from prospects isn't great. → https://buff.ly/3LNHBnu • Nia Woodhouse: Struggle to hit your ‘meetings booked’ KPI last week? → https://buff.ly/46r5FGg • Justin Jay Johnson: 4 mistakes reps make when booking meetings  → https://buff.ly/3M7uQEB • Shabri Lakhani: Good outbound is a result of these three things → https://buff.ly/4dr8wRY • Matthew Harrison: Break it down into 3 parts → https://buff.ly/46r5FpK • Morgan J Ingram: AEs: "I don't have time for prospecting." → https://buff.ly/46x23Tg • zoë hartsfield: Pro-tip that booked me 4-5 meetings from my top accounts per quarter → https://buff.ly/3LMGEeZ • Jordan Crawford: Signals based outbound is a terrible idea  → https://buff.ly/46rtYUq • 👨🍳 Elric Legloire: 7 tips to prospect during the summer slowdown → https://buff.ly/3WoDx1X • Tom Alaimo: 10 Rules of Prospecting that I've taught to 1,000+ salespeople → https://buff.ly/3LLb5Cj • Elmer Lopez 🏆: How to self source as an AE → https://buff.ly/46x29KC • Ivan Hrynievych: There are no rules in sales - only best practices. → https://buff.ly/3WoDwLr • Hannah Ajikawo: That awkward moment when you connect with a prospect → https://buff.ly/3WoDwep • Carlos Iborra: I've struggled with stagnant sales myself. → https://buff.ly/46r5FWM • Brian LaManna: Non-scalable prospecting → https://buff.ly/3WoDvXT • Jc Pollard: I sent a prospect a really good well-researched email... → https://buff.ly/3WoDvHn • Aaron Margolis: One thing all salespeople need ASAP to help them up their game? → https://buff.ly/3ynT9ut • Anthony Natoli: Simple outbound prospecting framework → https://buff.ly/3A2ajyq • Saad Khan: My Signal Led Outbound Playbook → https://buff.ly/3A9lANu • Debdutta Saha 🧘♂️: How to consistently hit and exceed your SDR targets? → https://buff.ly/4dsN1QF • Chad Johnson: A truly personalized experience → https://buff.ly/3LKf1DB • Dale Dupree: 2024 is all about attention → https://buff.ly/46p21wF • Tyler Gruca: 5 pieces of advice for outbound. → https://buff.ly/3LLiHVu • Mark McInnes: Prospecting Poker → https://buff.ly/4dpeZwt • Holly Allen: For outbound meetings, do this → https://buff.ly/3yl8sUI • Luigi P.: Outbound cadence → https://buff.ly/46r5Gdi P.S. Subscribe to my daily sales newsletter and get access to all lists, cheat sheets & templates: https://buff.ly/46JGD5v 

The secret to sales multi-threading 🧵 (insights from 10+ sales experts) I was facing challenges with several deals that were stalling, or I was getting ghosted. So I started exploring better ways to manage the sales process and nurture prospects. While creating a nurturing playbook, I discovered the importance of multi-threading. Multi-threading is a strategy where you engage with multiple stakeholders within a target account. The key benefits of multi-threading include: - Increased deal velocity by gaining diverse perspectives and buy-in - Reduced risk of deal stagnation if one contact becomes unresponsive - Better understanding of the organisation's needs and decision-making process - Higher probability of closing larger deals by addressing concerns across departments I collated best practices from experts like 👩🏻🏫 Krysten Conner, Gal Aga, Nate Nasralla, Melissa Gaglione✨, Mike Gallardo, UserGems 💎, Jen Allen-Knuth, Josh Norris 🐦🔥, Brian LaManna, Salman Mohiuddin, 💜 Will GPT. After implementing these strategies, I’ve managed to progress some of the stalling deals. My favourite is the “off-call” follow-up email strategies. I’ve put everything into a playbook, covering: 🔸 How to multi-thread 🔸 What exactly is multi-threading 🔸 Recommended cadence of multi-threading 🔸 11 on-call script examples by sales experts above 🔸 17 off-call follow-up templates by sales experts above 🔸 Common mistakes to look out for while multi-threading 🔸 Key benefits and statistics on the power of multi-threading Everything is in a Notion database that you can duplicate for your own use. If you want access: [1] Comment “multithread” below [2] Connect with me (important, otherwise I can’t send it over to you) 💢 Repost to share with your network 💢

We are in the midst of significant headwinds in the B2B SaaS space. If we look back at history and previous success in this market, it can tell us a great deal about how to chart a better sales path forward.

Sales pipeline management is not easy! 🤯 It all starts with knowing the difference between sales suspects and sales prospects. ✨ In this article on QuotaPath, you'll find a breakdown of these two crucial categories and some actionable tips on how to nurture each group effectively. 💡 🔍 Learn to spot the subtle cues that separate casual interest from genuine buying intent, streamline your sales process, and convert more leads into loyal customers. 🛒🔄 Ready to optimize your pipeline? Check out the full article! 👇 https://lnkd.in/dXRBNgRj #SalesSuccess #PipelineManagement #B2BSales #LeadGeneration #SalesTips

Last year, I met 33 companies without a sales qualifying process 🤯 Here’s one question I asked them all to narrow their Sales qualified Leads👇 💬 ‘Tell me about a good sales meeting that resulted in a new customer and a bad meeting that wasted your time?’ Is it this simple? No. But it’s a start on the journey to develop a qualifying framework and inadvertently begin creating their ideal client profile. This lack of a process at the beginning of the sales process also indicated 👇 👉 Low to no ideal client profiles mapped 👉 No clear pathway for moving deals from lead to closed won 👉 No to low sales process structure to build a repeatable pipeline Interestingly, these companies typically identified the same challenges with their sales. Questions sounded like: 🔎 How do I get the next meeting? 🔎 What happens when people ghost me? 🔎 How do I hire someone to lead sales and fix this? 🔎 How do I do outbound to more leads and close more deals? 🎉 The good news… More leads are not the answer. You don’t need to hire, just tighten your process. We are able to build this framework and save Founders tons of time. ☠ The bad news… You are unclear on who your customer is. You have to start saying no to people you want to help. You have been wasting time in meetings that should have never happened. So why was there no qualifying process in these 33 businesses? They had 👉 A live product Paying customers Revenue $10k - $500k And, regular sales meetings The reality was  👉 No one showed them how. So, back to where to start. Questions! My second favourite question is: 💬‘How do you separate a buyer and new customer from the prospect that ghosted you?’ As Founders begin to list the answers, a shape forms for qualifying inputs that are measurable and searchable this also gleams the beginning insights to their ideal client’s profile. What gets me most excited is that with this new information, a Founder can start to leverage it in their meetings, providing a greater experience. So what are the outcomes of building a clear sales process? ⏳ Save time not being in the wrong meetings 🔁 Sharpen product feedback loop by building for a market not individuals 🎣 Find a repeatable sales process that matches your buyers journey needs In these calls, Founders walked away with their first qualifying framework and the first sharpening of their sales axe. This work progresses into the sales playbook V1 and sets up for scaleable growth💰 📓. If you are reading this, nodding and feeling like you or someone you know has been 1. Wasting time in meetings 2. Talking to the wrong prospects 3. Want to build your first sales playbook Reach out. Why can we help you? Well, Roy and I have been building sales processes together since 2021 when we launched 3 SaaS products to market in 16 months and have now worked 150+ Founders on Sales and we'd love to to help you next. Ping me or Roy for more info! #sales #founders

Should you prevent leads from talking to a Sales rep? Yes, I think you should And here's why In the beginning of a company's trajectory The more leads the better. The more conversations the better. Product-market fit still isn't there yet. So the more you know💫 And the more relationships you create The more awareness you seed in the market. But after a certain level of growth Sales reps are valuable assets. Their time is costly. So anything a company can do to protect their time and their calendars From tire-kickers and poor-fit leads And increase speed-to-lead times for the good-fit leads The better. All Sales leaders want to ensure that leads are routed to the right rep for follow up But don't spend much time considering qualified lead routing vs other lead routing Only 56% of B2B marketers verify their generated leads before assigning them to the sales reps. (And maybe the company hasn't assigned MQL data quality to anyone yet) So Sales reps often have poorly-qualified leads sitting in their queues And the warm-but-not-yet-meets-MQL-threshold leads Are on no one's radar at all. Companies that use the tools they have available to them And do not allow bookings on a Sales reps calendar for just anyone Can scare some people. It goes against the idea of being always available. But you can STILL create the beginnings of a decent relationship Even when saying NO to leads who are just not the best fit For whatever reason. Good Sales + Marketing alignment is driven by the power of NO And automation wherever possible While still creating a good brand impression. An enterprise client Thought their process was fine When all demo requests from leads were bookable from an online calendar We have lots of leads! they said But the Sales leader shared stats that 42% ended up DQd after Sales followed up. Digging into the data it was clear Company type and use case were two very obvious reasons This needed an overhaul. ↳Removing Sales reps' calendars from the website ↳Adding negative scoring ↳And automated email templates for specific company types and use cases ➡ Created lead routing for the poor fit leads away from Sales reps' calendars ➡ Allowed Marketing to warm up leads that weren't quite yet qualified enough ➡ And only passed through the best-fit leads to Sales ➡ Resulting in a MUCH better MQL conversion rate ➡ And healthier pipeline. We all need to say NO much more often And consider HOW we do it in a way to leave the door open for the future.

I had no idea last week’s post about “funnel velocity” would cause such a stir in the sales and sales leadership world. I had four really argumentative messages in my inbox and one person even left a six-paragraph response (deleted) arguing “funnel velocity” is a “made-up statistic” invented by people who have never sold and the correct term is “sales cycle.” So, I’d like to set the record straight. “Funnel velocity” and “sales cycle” are two entirely different things. “Sales cycle” is a true sales statistic. It measures the time it takes a prospective customer to move from one end of the sales funnel to the other. A solid sales process with documented sales stages, complete with necessary milestones to advance through the stages, is key to making the most of analyzing your team’s sales cycle. You can break down your sales cycle by deal size and vertical or industry to come up with the average “stage duration” (number of days in a sales stage). This is the ULTIMATE litmus test of a pipeline or a forecast. You can use this to leverage other connections in the company when a deal starts running long in stage, as stage duration is a leading indicator of a prospect who is “sold” on your solution or one that is going cold for any number of reasons. The sales cycle clock, in every organization I’ve been part of, starts when the prospect engages and says they want to consider the product or solution. “Funnel velocity” is a measurement that spans sales AND marketing. So sales leaders who haven’t bridged the gap to make sure sales and marketing are working in concert are typically the ones laser-focused on the “sales cycle” metric (and are probably the ones throwing up their hands when their team misses forecast because “marketing didn’t provide them enough sales qualified leads” - but I digress). Funnel velocity tracks everything from the first engagement. Attend a webinar? You’re counted. Stopped by a trade show booth? You’re counted. Clicked a “call to action” link on the company website? You’re counted. Stop and think for a minute. NONE of those scenarios are “sales qualified” hand raisers. These are “tire kickers” who may just have even thought the business did something different than what it does. How these potential prospects work through the funnel, to possibly enter the “sales cycle” allows the ENTIRE business to look at brand, product-market fit, value prop messaging, and more. The result is a much more cohesive, company-wide effort to generate more revenue. That’s the difference between a Chief Revenue Officer and a Vice President of Sales. #SalesFunnel #FunnelVelocity #SalesProcess #SalesLeadership #PipelineManagement #DataDrivenSales #RevenueGrowth #SalesOptimization