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Ep. 52: Amplifying Revenue With Go-To-Market Operations: An Interview with Culture Amp’s Andy Mowat

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Selling Podcast! In today’s episode, we have Andy Mowat, the VP of Growth Operations at Culture Amp.

Culture Amp is a company that makes it easy to collect, understand, and act on employee feedback so that you can build a better company culture.

I wanted to have Andy on the podcast because he focuses on the go-to-market strategies for sales, marketing, and customer success at Culture Amp.

His job is to figure out how to amplify revenue from the point of initial customer acquisition all the way through to customer retention and upsells.

I want to give you a couple of the highlights of our conversation so you know what to listen for as you are tuning in to this episode.

Some of the topics that we covered were:

  • Operational tracking for sales and go-to-market operations.
  • Data quality, performance tracking, and deal quality.
  • The configured price quote.
  • Pipeline quality, and how it’s different than deal quality.
  • Seven areas of sales operations, and what you should be tracking in each.
  • Time-to-close and time-to-loss.
  • Percentages of deals converted versus percentage of disqualified deals.
  • Lead-to-account matching model versus an account-contact model.
  • When to install a sales operations person in your company.
  • NPS and the Confidence Question and how to think through evaluating your accounts on the customer success side of your business.
  • Sale Not Acceptable (SNAP), and how at Culture Amp gives their salespeople the ability to disqualify sales leads.
  • Sales compensation.

As you can see, we covered lots and lots of ground in less than an hour.

You should follow Andy on LinkedIn, he writes articles about marketing, sales metrics, customer success metrics, tech, and operations.

Where to find Andy:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amowat/

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Ep. 51: Simple Actions to Increase Your Sales Pull-Through: An Interview with Selling Boldly Author, Alex Goldfayn

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, in today’s episode we have Alex Goldfayn. Alex is a global sales consultant, speaker, and the author of a Wall Street Journal best-seller called Selling Boldly.

Here’s an excerpt from his LinkedIn bio:

My consulting firm, The Revenue Growth Consultancy, creates an average annual revenue growth of 10-20% for my clients. Also. about once a week, I deliver keynote speeches, sales kickoffs, breakout sessions and workshops for various associations and companies around the country. The topic is sales growth, but I also dive deeply into confidence (instead of meekness), proactivity (instead of reactivity), and optimism (instead of pessimism). Fast sales growth is a function of mindset change and a system of simple behaviors.

After reading Alex’s book, I sent him a note on Linkedin. We talked on the phone, and we immediately clicked. So I invited him to the Startup Selling Show, and he graciously accepted.

The reason I wanted to have Alex on the podcast is to talk through the strategies he uses when he consults with large companies and their sales teams, and how you can implement them with your startup as you grow and scale.

In today’s conversation, we focused on how start-up sellers can change their mindset and use communication to increase sales.  

Here are some of the topics that we covered in our conversation:

  • How to develop friendlies in the marketplace.
  • How to increase positive psychology when selling.
  • Overcoming fears and how to have positive conversations with the people in your marketplace.
  • How to migrate away from lazy, low-risk communications and what to do instead.
  • How to have “human” interactions with your prospects.
  • Communication techniques you can use to increase your sales.

Where to find Alex on the interwebs:

Resources mentioned:

That’s it for now!

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Ep. 50 – For Sales Leaders: Ideas to Help Your Sales Team Be More Productive

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Selling Podcast. Today’s episode is a bit different because there’s no special guest. It’s just you and me.

A couple of years ago I wrote a book “52 Sales Questions Answered” (get a free copy here).

Back then, I used to be really active on quora.com answering sales related questions. I got to the point where I had answered so many questions, that I decided to put them all together into a book and that’s how “52 Sales Questions Answered” was born!

Today’s episode is like an audiobook with comments. Meaning, I read the question, I read the answer I wrote back, and then I add comments based on new experience.

Since one episode is not enough to read the whole book, I chose a few questions that I think would be particularly relevant for CEOs or Sales Leaders that are managing a sales team.

Enjoy!

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5-Risks Of Hiring A Salesperson at Your Startup

Hiring any salesperson too soon.

If you’ve yet to acquire paying customers, then it’s too soon.

You’re still in Customer Discovery and Customer Development mode.

And, while Customer Development really is sales, as the company founder it is vital you develop a sales framework that includes buyer types (e.g., Economic, Technical, Users) within your target prospects and overcomes common sales hurdles (e.g., legal, technical, price).

By hiring a salesperson without clear knowledge of how and why your target market buys, you have no means to hold your salesperson accountable.

It is very easy to confuse and justify salesperson activity for business development. “Well… he’s been with us for six months and while he hasn’t closed any deals, he’s making lots of contacts and doing lots of demos.

This will create market awareness for us and when the product is finished, we can close these prospects.” Wrong. It may be you’ve hired the wrong salesperson, and it may be you hired a salesperson too soon.

Without metrics from which to draw – pull-through rates and timelines from lead to customer – your decision to retain or fire a salesperson lacks any rigor.

Hiring a senior salesperson because you think they will bring a Rolodex of contacts and customers.

The purchasing decision in an enterprise sale is too large for any one individual to blindly purchase a new product simply because that executive has a relationship with your newly-hired salesperson.

A Rolodex may provide an entry point in target accounts but will not lead to sales.

Taking an incorrect approach to candidate assessment.

Unlike many technical jobs, you cannot test a sales candidate on their proficiency.

Traditionally, you are reliant on their resume and interviewing skills.

To overcome this challenge, use behavioral profiles such as Myers-Briggs or Zero-Risk.

I’ve used Zero-Risk (www.zeroriskhr.com).

It is very good at providing you specific questions to ask in an interview, so you can delve into potential weaknesses or mismatches between the job task and the candidate’s behavior.

Every salesperson will tell you they are entrepreneurial, don’t require heavy management, and they love the challenge.

These behavioral assessments help you separate fact from fiction.

Another option is the DISC Profile (www.discprofile.com). Both are well worth the investment, considering the cost of hiring the wrong person at your company.

Hiring “closers” instead of creative problem-solvers.

Closers don’t know the difference between an objection and a product requirement.

“Okay Engineers, if you just add this and this and that, I’ve got three customers that are ready to buy…”

Creative problem-solvers assess the client’s requests and look for opportunities to begin working together, even if in a limited way while product development continues.

Closers focus on closing the sale, not implementing a strategic process for your client.

Hiring only one salesperson.

If your business has reached a point that you are compelled to hire a salesperson, then hire two salespeople.

This diversifies your portfolio of salespeople, should one not work out despite following all the rules to recruiting and hiring.

This also provides additional data points to measure salesperson performance, not just against your forecast but against each other.

Hiring two salespeople provides you insurance in working with individual prospects.

It is very common that a salesperson’s and a prospect’s personalities simply do not match up.

By having a second salesperson, you can bring her into the conversation.

You may also find certain salespeople do better/worse with certain kinds of accounts or markets.

Now you can align these accounts based on individual strengths.

Lastly, this will enable you to scale faster, assuming you hire two effective salespeople.

Training and ramp up time, particularly in an enterprise sale setting, is long and laborious.

It may be six months (or more) before you see your first deal close from your new hires.

As a startup, your business will be drastically different in six months.

What happens if you decide then to hire salesperson #2?

You’ll need to wait another six months to see the revenue results.

Want to master your sales hiring process?

I created a 12-step hiring system that I’ve used over the past 20 years to build and manage multiple successful sales teams.

Check it out here:

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Ep. 49: Building Your Channel Partnerships The Right Way with Matthew Harrell – Google’s Head of Cloud Channel Business

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Selling Podcast. Today we have Matthew Harrell as our special guest. He is a business leader, advisor, and angel investor. He has over twenty years of experience in enterprise sales and channel management at Google Cloud and Symantec.

In 2009, he started off with Google as a Strategic Accounts Manager. Since then he’s been quickly moving up the ladder. He was a Regional Sales Leader, then he was the head of Google Cloud Channel Business in the Americas, and now he’s the Head of Google Cloud Business in Latin America and the West.

A lot of his work today is focused on channel distribution, channel partnerships, channels sales, and partner development.

His LinkedIn job description says:

Lead team of 30 Channel Sales Managers and Partner Development Managers responsible for the Google Cloud partner business and channel go to market strategy for G-Suite and Google Cloud Platform across the US West and Latam. This includes owning the channel sales targets, ecosystem development of all channel types, including GSI’s, MSP’s, Regional Systems Integrators (RSI’s), VAR’s, Telcos, etc. and development of disruptive partner models that will drive significant scale.

Matt and I met around seven years ago.

I cold emailed him through LinkedIn and invited him to join a meetup group I was running back then. He graciously accepted and attended a meetup as a guest speaker to talk about enterprise sales. We’ve stayed in touch since.

I wanted to have Matt on the show to talk specifically about his work in channel partnerships and about indirect selling versus direct selling. Some of the topics we covered are:

  • Compensation Neutrality.
  • Compensating Partners VS Compensating Your Sales Team.
  • Inbound VS Outbound.
  • Different Channel Types.
  • Different Layers of Partnerships
  • Selling a Disruptive Technology to Fortune 500 Companies.
  • Innovative Sales Methodologies.

Where to find Matt on the Interwebs:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewpharrell/

 

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Ep. 48: Head, Heart & Gut: Building an Entrepreneurial Organization – An Interview with Shannon Waller

Welcome to another episode of the Startup Selling Show – Talking Sales with Scott Sambucci… in today’s episode we have Shannon Waller…

Shannon Waller is a passionate expert on entrepreneurial teams. She’s been working with Strategic Coach since 1991 and she’s also the creator of The Entrepreneurial Team Program, a parallel program  – for team members of her Coaching clients – that focuses on fostering a winning entrepreneurial attitude in its participants.

Shannon is a sought-after speaker, presenter, and coach. She’s a Kolbe Certified Consultant and the 2015 recipient of the Kolbe Professional Award for individual leadership in building conative excellence.

She also co-authored the bestselling book Unique Ability 2.0: Discovery and has written two books about entrepreneurial team success.

Her first book, The Team Success Handbook, is a wealth of her distilled teamwork wisdom and includes 12 actionable strategies for working successfully in any entrepreneurial company.

Most recently, Shannon published Multiplication By Subtraction, a comprehensive guide to gracefully letting go of wrong-fit team members.

Shannon has been working with entrepreneurs over the past 27 years helping them build highly functional teams and with their entrepreneurial mindset.

In today’s conversation with Shannon, we talked about

  • Shannon’s story, why she got into coaching entrepreneurs.
  • The importance of creating an entrepreneurial organization.
  • Small bureaucratic organizations Vs large bureaucratic organizations.
  • Teamwork and team building strategies – How to assess/hire the right people.
  • Behavioral assessments and behavioral profiles – Kolbe Index.
  • The dangers of cloning.
  • Core values and how to articulate them.
  • How to let someone go – Graciously.

Where to find Shannon on the Interwebs:

www.yourteamsuccess.com

Team success podcast

 

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Good salespeople are not “salesy”

Salespeople are masters at taking the right actions, listening to customers, asking questions, and implementing a clear strategy. Most of all, good salespeople are usually the nicest people you’ll ever meet because they are genuinely interested in helping other people.

Sales strategies are real. They are not underhanded or deceptive. Just like a Java developer finds and installs Java libraries or how a QA engineer learns specific skills to locate bugs, the salesperson must internalize a set of skills that focus on communication and problem-solving. That’s what you’ll learn from this book.

You started your company because you thought the current set of products and services underserved the market. You saw market complacency and discontent, and now you’re risking everything to solve that problem. You want to make people’s lives better. That’s exactly what an excellent salesperson does. Being an excellent salesperson is simply an extension of your embedded character trait as an entrepreneur. It’s just a matter of developing and refining the daily practices that will enable you to reach your market and your customers – to solve the problem you set out to solve.

As the Founder and CEO of your company, you may not be deploying these advanced skills yourself every day. However, to evaluate your sales team over time, it is imperative that you hold them accountable for knowing the fundamental enterprise sales techniques.

I’ll help you get there.

This is an excerpt of my book: “Startup Selling: How To Sell If You Really, Really Have To And Don’t Know How.”

Get a free copy here.

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The 4 Ps to Perfect Product Demos

Do you spend a lot of time and effort building the perfect demos?

….Only to get:

  • “This looks pretty cool, send me a proposal.”
  • “This looks like it might help us, send us your deck and we’ll circulate with the team and get back to you.”

And then. Nothing. Nada. Crickets.

Tons of startups suffer from this problem.

Hint… hint… It’s not the demo that’s slowing you down. It’s the lack of planning and work you do around it.

If you want to deliver a perfect demo, then you have to nail down the 4 Ps:

1-Problem

2-People
3-Personal

4-Progress

Watch my video about the 4 Ps to Perfect Demos here.

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3-part pricing structure

1) Configuration & Implementation, 2) Platform & Users, 3) Professional Services

1 – Configuration & Implementation –

This is all the work that goes into getting 100% up and running.

For heavier enterprise software, this means integrations with other systems. Then there’s training and phased implementation

You can add this to your pricing package, then you have leverage to reduce or waive as part of a deal.

 

  1. Platform & Users –

Pretty self-explanatory. Depending on size and complexity, sometimes there is a baseline platform fee + Per user fee.

The per-user fee can scale down as the number of users rises.

  1. Professional Services –

Future configuration, training, consulting, etc. You can add this as part of your early packages:

“We require a Quarterly Consulting Session that is comprised of two one-hour work sessions where we look at how you’re using Acme Solutions. We analyze what’s working, then make recommendations to you.”

Put a price on this because it’s a huge value-add, and again, you can reduce or waive as part of a deal.

That’s it!

-Scott

BTW – I’m doing a live sales q&a, if you haven’t saved your spot yet, click on the link below:

Submit your questions and save your spot here.

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Pick. Up. The. Phone.

“The prospect asked me a question [or a bunch of question…] via email about… Price, Product, Integrations, timing, etc. etc. etc.”

What should I do?

Pick. Up. The. Phone.

3 key reasons why:

  1. You need to learn the question behind the question(s).


“Can you send me a data flow diagram?”

Isn’t a question about how your product works. The REAL worry is that their customer data will end up on a Siberian server.

“Do you have a white paper that describes your APIs and SDKs?”

Isn’t because they want to add a recommendation to their Tuesday afternoon Book Club.

The REAL worry is that your product will be hard to integrate with their legacy mainframe systems, and no one at their company has a clue on how to work on anything except SQL and .NET.

Instead of answering the question they’re asking, LISTEN FIRST then ask THEM a question –

“That’s a good question. Happy to answer. Mind if I ask – any reason in particular for that question?”

  1. You should always share new information in real-time to see if the prospect REACTS (negative) or RESPONDS (positive).

  2. You want to build trust with the prospect.

That’s it!

-Scott

BTW – I’m running a Live Sales Q&A Webinar soon.

Click here to learn more and save your spot.