When executed correctly, RevOps takes a holistic approach to revenue generation. It encompasses marketing, sales, and post-sale activities such as customer success, implementation, support, and account management.

It’s a comprehensive strategy that combines all aspects of the customer journey to drive revenue. (You can check out my RevOps handbook with strategies to leverage RevOps across the funnel). As Mollie Bodensteiner explains:

“I think the word “revenue” tends to imply to business leaders that they need someone with a background in sales operations to lead their revenue operations. But it is important to remember that revenue operations is larger than revenue, it is really operationalizing the customer lifecycle to create predictability and growth throughout go-to-market. While it is important to hire for the skillset your organization needs based on their goals, it is important to not overlook a marketing operations background as you hire for a RevOps leader. This persona likely has the deepest understanding of your customer experience, tech stack and analytics architecture.” 

Unlike many RevOps leaders who grew up in SOPS, I got my start in RevOps from the marketing side of the house. I ran Marketing Operations (MOPS) at Upwork, Box and Culture Amp (and added the other pieces along the journey)

So TLDR:  MOPS is a great background for your RevOps leader, but in a few cases you’ll still want to go with a SOPS background.

• MOPS has broader experience with data (which is rewiring GTM), a more complex systems stack and a deeper understanding of the entire funnel
• SOPS understands how to drive employee behavior through systems and compensation
• If you are focused on SMB/Mid or have a PLG motion, MOPS is likely best.  If you have large enterprise deals, start with SOPS.
• BUT above all else, prioritize the right mentality over background.  

The Power of a MOPS Background for Your RevOps Leader

Marketing operations leads systems and data strategy across the entire lifecycle of the customer. With a strategic approach and data-driven mindset, MOPS leaders bring numerous benefits to your team.

Top of Funnel Experience

Leads are the driving force behind your sales funnel. MOPS know how to maximize conversion throughout the funnel and evaluate return on investment (ROI) for each lever.

“Marketing Ops is better equipped to manage the data and tools that will drive ToFu leads MoFu engagement, and BoFu “self-serve sales”. Plus, the speed at which AI is replacing sales functions, sales teams will see significant HC reductions.”   Matthew Fleming, CEO @ Speed Sync

A Holistic View of the Customer Lifecycle

Marketing isn’t just about attracting TOFU leads. MOPS leaders excel at accelerating pipeline growth, retaining and expanding existing customers, and turning customers into brand advocates.

Marketing Operations is more focused on what’s occurring down-funnel after handoff compared to how much Sales Ops spends time up-funnel.  Max Maeder, CEO @ FoundHQ

Collaboration Across Functions

MOPS professionals work closely with sales teams on lead conversion, customer success and account management on marketing efforts, and finance teams on forecasting and ROI. Their cross-functional relationships ensure seamless coordination.

“Marketing Operations is usually involved through the lifecycle of a customer where sales and CS have clear lanes or touch points.”  Justin Shine

Understanding the Full GTM Stack

While sales operations may be confined to the CRM, MOPS leaders understand the sophisticated marketing stack. They know how to optimize leads and campaigns as they flow through the CRM, giving them a distinct advantage.

It’s more likely that a MOPS lead has CRM knowledge than a SOPS lead has Marketing Automation knowledge.   Ahin Thomas, VP of Revenue Operations @ League Apps

Data Fluency

MOPS leaders have a history of leveraging complex data analysis for marketing insights. As data warehouses and analytics become increasingly crucial across the GTM spectrum, their expertise becomes even more valuable.

“After doing both sales ops and marketing ops I can truly say the marketing ops side is much more important.  Especially with the construction of customer data platforms, you need someone here who understands how to collect information (and drive insights).”  Jesse Oullette, Founder @ Lead Magic

MOPS are systems thinkers, architects, data nerds, and the best plate spinners.  MOPS has learned SalesOps so they can be prepared to respond to any concerns or blockers. MOPs is much more prepared to handle SalesOps than SalesOps is to handle Marketing Ops.

The Counter Argument for a SOPS Background

Obviously, when it comes to choosing the right leader for your go-to-market (GTM) strategy, considering their SOPS experience can be crucial. However, it’s important to determine which type of leader will best fit your specific needs

For SMB/Mid-market deals, prioritizing data and efficiency makes MOPS the ideal choice for your RevOps leader. On the other hand, if your GTM motion revolves around high-value enterprise deals, starting with a Sales Operations background is likely the way to go.

“A MOPs leaning RevOps leader will likely struggle in an enterprise sale where sales cycles are long, sales methodology, comp plans, and sales pipeline management are keys to success. But they will likely flourish and be the best option in a PLG / SMB sale where AI, data management, and growth hacking are keys to success.”  Christopher Turley  VP, Marketing Technology & Analytics @ Bill.com

Some key skills that SOPS brings to the table include:

• Performance-Driven Compensation: SOPS has deep experience creating comp plans to drive the right behavior and aligning hiring plans to growth
• Sales Win Rates: SOPS professionals collaborate closely with sales leaders and enablement teams to analyze wins and losses, identifying areas for improvement and optimizing team performance. 
• Channel:  SOPS leaders often have a deeper understanding of channel partner alignment, streamlining processes and driving better outcomes 
• Revenue Recognition: SOPS specialists are adept at structuring deals, ensuring accurate quoting, and aligning them seamlessly with financial processes.  
• Retention:  Typically, individuals with a SOPS background have experience in implementation, renewals, and expansion, making them invaluable when it comes to maximizing customer retention. 

Regardless of your growth plans, choosing a RevOps leader who can build a team that can amplify your entire GTM motion is crucial . You will want someone who understands the entire customer journey, not just one part of it. Above all though, focus on hiring a leader based on mindset rather than background.  My RevOps handbook talks about it in more detail. 

“It’s the person. But if it’s not and I just have to force myself to answer this I say it’s marketing ops.”   Jesse Oullette, Founder @ Lead Magic

Leading a cross-functional RevOps team requires more than just technical proficiency in data and systems.  It takes leadership and an ability to build a team.

The post Why Marketing Ops Makes the Best RevOps Leaders appeared first on RevGenius.

Being a leader comes with its challenges, and one of them is shifting from being in the spotlight as an individual contributor to becoming a background figure. Instead of being recognized for our own achievements, the focus is now on the success of our team.

One helpful strategy is to place the leader at the bottom of the organizational chart, below the account executives and BDRs. This visual representation reinforces the idea that the leader serves the team. By openly acknowledging this, both internally and externally, we can foster a unified message and prioritize the needs of our team and customers.

“Leadership is a Choice, Not a Position.”

Leadership is more than just a job title – it’s a conscious decision. Simply being in a managerial position doesn’t automatically make someone a leader. True leadership comes from embodying certain qualities and motivating others to share a common vision. As Stephen Covey said, “Leadership is a choice, not a position.” 

The common misconception many people have is that once they become a manager, everyone will automatically listen to them. They believe that a title like manager, director, or VP gives them a natural aura of leadership. However, being a manager and being a leader are two separate roles.

While it’s true that people prefer to be led rather than just managed, management is still crucial. 

As a leader, there are certain things you need to understand: 

• You will have less personal freedom as you will now be working for your team instead of yourself. 
• Job security is also less stable for leaders compared to high-performing individuals. 
• While leaders have the potential to earn more money, their income depends on their team’s performance, not just their own skills.

Inspiring Teams to Run Through Brick Walls

Transitioning into a leadership role may come with challenges like reduced freedom and job security, but it also offers significant rewards. Leaders have the opportunity to lead a company towards a common goal and contribute to substantial growth. Witnessing the transformation of team members and helping them achieve their dreams can be incredibly fulfilling and something that only leaders get to experience.

To be an effective leader, it’s essential to inspire and motivate the team to fully commit to the vision and direction. A great analogy, shared by my favorite VP of sales, is that a leader’s role is to motivate people to run through a brick wall for them. It’s about instilling a sense of purpose and confidence, not only in the company but also in each individual team member.

Authentic Human Connections  

To cultivate a positive and productive work environment, it’s crucial to blend work and play and develop a genuine understanding of your team members. This entails recognizing their motivations, preferred forms of acknowledgment, and feedback preferences. By promoting authenticity and embracing diversity within the team, leaders can build a group of unique individuals who drive better results and ensure greater success.

Here are some helpful strategies:

• Foster human connections: Practice empathy, flexibility, coaching, and a focus on diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI).
• Embrace radical candor, responsiveness, and follow-through, even when it seems challenging.

To create real human connections, you can make a simple change in how you interact with every team member and cross-functional partner. Instead of responding with generic phrases like “That’s awesome”, “Sounds cool”, “Congrats”, delve into the details, express genuine interest, and ask follow-up questions. I refer to this approach as the “Tell me more” methodology. For instance, instead of just saying “Congrats!”, you can say “Congrats, tell us more!” or “That’s awesome, how did you go about it?”.

Balancing Boldness and Diplomacy

Being a leader goes beyond agreeing with higher positions. It involves having your own opinion and the willingness to push back when necessary. However, it is important to distinguish between advocating for your team and making decisions that benefit the company. Balancing these responsibilities is difficult yet crucial for effective leadership.

Managing up is not just about reporting upwards but also about building credibility, influencing decisions, and securing resources for your team. Leaders must articulate their team’s needs, achievements, and challenges to upper management in a way that aligns with the organization’s objectives. It requires diplomatic skills to present ideas and feedback, which may involve tactfully challenging the status quo. When managing up, leaders should focus on being solution-oriented, offering well-thought-out solutions instead of merely presenting problems. Disagree with something? You cannot simply tell your manager “You’re wrong” or “no” without providing context and data. Think you have a better solution or answer than your manager? Don’t show them up and make them look bad. This is what is known as a “CLM” or a career limiting move.

Here are some tips for managing up:

• “In data we trust”: Have a data source to back up the story you are trying to tell.
• Over-communicate the “how”: This is how you build trust, show how the sausage is made.
• Document, document, document: Frameworks and playbooks will be your best friends.
• Understand the “why“: When you receive direction from above, going at it blindly is a recipe for disaster. It is important to understand the “why” behind the “what,” similar to how we talk about leading with “why” when giving your team directives.
• Don’t present problems without solutions: This is why you are a leader. This is what you are getting paid for. Bring options to the table.
• The devil is in the details: Know your stuff!

Embracing Diversity in Leadership

Leaders should encourage their team members to be authentic and play to their unique strengths, promoting diversity within the team. Creating a team of individuals rather than a group of identical copies leads to better results and greater success.

Ultimately, leadership is not about dictating what others should do; it’s about developing the team and empowering them to achieve their potential. Leaders should focus on inspiring, motivating, innovating, and creating a vision that everyone can rally behind. Without the support and growth of the team, a leader cannot succeed. So, it’s crucial to appreciate, acknowledge, and truly know your team members and align their success with that of the company as a whole.

Developing a Compelling Vision

As a leader, it is your responsibility to provide a clear and inspiring vision that gives meaning to the work your team does. By explaining the “why” behind the “what,” you can unite your team towards shared goals and create a sense of purpose. This vision must be compelling, making your team look forward to coming to work every day and fostering a deep connection between their efforts and the overall mission of the company.

Nurturing Emotional Intelligence

Leaders should show emotions but manage them appropriately. Being authentic and human is essential, but being unhinged is not acceptable. Leaders must be self-aware, understanding the impact of their words and actions, and embrace change management effectively.

Helpful strategies: 

• Emotional Intelligence Development: It is the capacity to understand and manage your own emotions, and those of the people around you. Leaders should invest time in learning and improving their EI. This involves enhancing their skills in empathy, self-regulation, motivation, social skills, and self-awareness. Leadership training or coaching, books, online courses, or even meditation and mindfulness practices can help enhance EI.
• Authenticity and Vulnerability: Being authentic means staying true to who you are, what you do, and who you serve. In an environment where everyone is competing for the attention of followers, it’s those leaders who speak from the heart that truly stand out. Leaders should be encouraged to share their struggles and successes equally. This honesty can make them more approachable and relatable.
• Regular Self-Reflection: Leaders should frequently self-reflect to stay aware of their emotional states, behaviors, and their impact on others. This could involve maintaining a daily or weekly journal, seeking feedback from team members, or working with a professional coach.
• Managing Stress: Leaders often face high levels of stress which can impact their emotional wellbeing. They should adopt stress management techniques like regular exercise, a balanced diet, sufficient sleep, and time off work.
• Understanding the Context: The appropriateness of showing emotions can vary depending on the situation and cultural context. Leaders should understand these nuances and adapt accordingly.
• Adopting a Growth Mindset: Embracing change is easier when you view challenges as opportunities for growth. Leaders with a growth mindset are more adaptive and resilient in the face of change.

Effective Leadership Communication: Words and Beyond

Communication is key in effective leadership, and it encompasses more than just verbal exchanges. Nonverbal cues can greatly impact how your message is received, making it crucial to be aware of your words and actions. Understanding how to communicate upwards to your boss and sideways to your peers is just as important as managing your team. By mastering various forms of communication and emphasizing nonverbal cues, you can enhance your effectiveness as a leader.

Helpful strategies:

• Mastering Active Listening: Effective communication is not just about speaking; it’s equally important to listen. Active listening involves fully focusing on the speaker, understanding the information, responding thoughtfully, and remembering the conversation. By mastering active listening, leaders show their team members that they value their input, which can improve relationships and trust.
• Understanding Body Language: Non-verbal cues such as eye contact, gestures, facial expressions, and posture convey a lot about our emotions and attitudes. Leaders should be aware of their own body language and how it can affect the message they are trying to convey. Equally important is learning to read and understand the nonverbal cues of others, which can give leaders important insights into team morale and individual emotions.
• Emphasizing Clarity and Brevity: Leaders should strive to communicate their ideas as clearly and succinctly as possible. This reduces chances of misinterpretation and confusion. Also, using language that is simple and straightforward makes your message more accessible to a diverse audience.
• Adapting Your Communication Style: Different situations and people require different communication styles. Some people prefer direct communication, while others respond better to a more diplomatic approach. Leaders should be flexible and adapt their communication style based on their audience and the context.
• Practicing Empathy: Communicating with empathy involves understanding and acknowledging others’ feelings. When leaders communicate with empathy, they show their team members that they value and care about them, which can foster a positive work environment and improve team morale.

Make Every Minute Count 

Every meeting you schedule should have a clear purpose, a well-defined agenda, and a topic that requires dialogue. Avoid scheduling meetings just for the sake of having them. For example, in sales meetings, it’s unnecessary to go over numbers and reports that can be reviewed individually. Instead, focus on discussing outliers and creating action plans to address them.

The Power of Deep Focus

Multitasking may seem like a valuable skill, but it actually detracts from the quality of your work and can be disrespectful to others. True leadership requires deep focus and giving your undivided attention to those you interact with. Minimizing distractions and actively listening demonstrates respect for your team members and allows for meaningful connections.

Conclusion

Serving in a leadership role goes beyond having a job title. It requires consciously choosing to recognize team accomplishments over personal efforts, understanding team members and promoting diversity in the workplace, crafting and delivering a compelling vision of purpose, exhibiting an appropriate balance between advocating for the team and making decisions for the company as a whole, mastering effective communication techniques both verbal and nonverbal, spending time on meaningful conversations, and providing necessary feedback to superiors. This combination empowers leaders to motivate teams towards achieving their ultimate goals and cultivate a positive work environment. It is not an easy ride but it’s worth it! 

ATM Unplugged is the new content series by Adam Jay where he delves into the art of successful selling. From mastering sales processes to fostering a thriving sales culture, he shares unique learnings that are exclusive to this series. Adam believes in empowering the next generation of sales leaders to set new standards, and he’s here to support you every step of the way. 

Don’t forget! Discover the top GTM strategies from B2B experts at RevCon: our must-attend annual conference on October 18-19, 2023! 

The post ATM Unplugged: Rise as a True Leader appeared first on RevGenius.

Don’t Be a Manager, Become a Leader 

I despise the word “manager.” So much so that I try to NEVER use it. Managers are for factories. No one wants someone over their shoulder telling them what to do, and when/how to do it. The transition is viewed as a linear progression from being a business development representative (BDR) to an account executive (AE) and eventually a “manager”, without deeply considering whether one genuinely desires the role of a leader. Merely wanting to control others and dictate their actions is not a good motivation — pursuing such a path will lead to personal dissatisfaction and an unhappy team. Instead, reflecting on what truly matters to you and why you want to make this transition is vital. 

Empathy, Guiding Others, Sharing Best Practices Over Quota 

There are a few important realizations when transitioning from a sales rep to a manager. Firstly, it’s crucial to understand that being the top-performing salesperson doesn’t automatically qualify someone as a manager. These roles require vastly different skill sets. Oftentimes, the top-performing rep will make the worst manager. My personal story may help to illustrate this point.

For years, I was the number one sales rep, and I applied for a manager position not once but twice and was turned down both times. I was frustrated and couldn’t understand the reasons behind it. Then, during a national sales meeting, I had a conversation with the VP of Sales that I will never forget.

She straightforwardly told me that managing involves leadership, helping others, fostering collaboration, and effective communication. These were all things I was failing miserably at. Time to take a long hard look in the mirror.

While an exceptional salesperson, I had the habit of constantly highlighting my accomplishments, being unwilling to share my expertise, and not supporting others. Those qualities didn’t align with being a good leader. It was a truly eye-opening moment. 

If you aspire to a leadership position, you need to make a change. 

While you don’t have to be the top-performing rep to become a manager, you can’t be the worst. Finding yourself in the middle of the pack can be a good starting point. So, what does the transition to a leadership role entail?

Key Considerations for Aspiring Leaders 

• Adopt a Leadership Mindset from the Start

First and foremost, if you’ve decided to pursue a leadership role, it’s important to start acting as a leader before officially becoming one. 

• Take the initiative to coach and support your fellow reps. 
• Proactively seek opportunities to assist those above you and demonstrate your commitment to learning and growth.

The most exceptional leaders I’ve encountered, whether they were promoted internally or hired externally, were the ones who showed leadership qualities even without the title. They willingly assisted struggling reps, not because they had to as a leader, but because they genuinely wanted to help others improve.

• Embrace the Change from an Individual Contributor to a Leader 

As a sales rep, you operate as an individual contributor responsible for your own success, having control over your performance. However, as a leader, you relinquish that control. Your success depends on the collective performance of your team. You have to be willing to work to make everyone better. The team is only as strong as its weakest link.

• Get Ready for Difficult Conversations 

Be prepared for a mental shift. As a leader, you must embrace being a team player and take on the responsibility for the success of others. This may involve challenging conversations and holding individuals accountable, even if they were once your friends and colleagues. You’ll experience increased responsibilities and pressure. Your performance will be evaluated based on the performance of your entire team, not just your individual results. You won’t be in the spotlight anymore, so get comfortable being in the background.

• Connect with the Community of Leaders

To better understand the role, it’s crucial to seek insights from individuals with firsthand experience. Don’t limit yourself to speaking only with your immediate leader or a colleague. Connect with multiple people who currently hold or have held the leadership position. This research and exploration will help you grasp the reality of the role, which may differ significantly from your initial assumptions. 

• Build Cross-Functional Relationships

Prepare yourself well in advance and start cultivating cross-functional relationships before getting the role. Making a name for yourself and positioning yourself as a leader is crucial. Otherwise, you’ll be isolated, operating as a lone soldier without recognition. You’ll give yourself a competitive advantage by demonstrating your readiness for the role, engaging in conversations, and fostering relationships.

You’ve Landed the Role, What’s Next?

Sad truth? There’s no playbook. You’ve gone through everything we’ve discussed, aced the interview, secured the promotion, and you’re suddenly a manager. Congratulations! The problem is, no one tells you what to do or how to do it.

If you’re lucky, you receive thorough training when you’re hired as a new sales rep in most companies (excluding brand-new startups). You learn about the product, handling objections, conducting demos — you name it. But when you get promoted to manager? No training, no guidance, so where to start? 

There are a ton of great books out there on sales leadership, but in my mind, the single most important thing you can do is to get a coach and a mentor. It’s important to note that these are two very different things. A mentor is someone who is in the role now, who takes you under their wing to provide help and guidance. A coach is likely someone with significantly more experience who you pay for their time. I didn’t hire a coach until 3 years ago. Had I done it sooner, I have no doubt I would be much further along in my career. 

Four Pillars of Management

These pillars form the foundation of successful leadership, and mastering them will set you on the path to becoming an exceptional leader.

Supervising

It involves ensuring that everyone is handling their day-to-day responsibilities. Are they hitting their targets, making their calls, and taking care of their customers? Are they properly inputting data into the CRM? Most people typically associate this with being a manager, but it’s just a quarter of the role. And if your team respects you, and if you’re working alongside them, this aspect tends to take care of itself. Supervising should only take up a small portion of your time. 

Mentoring

This is where you truly shine as a leader. Leading by example is crucial. There are two types of leaders: the ones who sit and refresh Salesforce all day, checking on their team’s performance, and those who serve as mentors.

People want a leader willing to get in the trenches, lead by example, participate in customer calls, and even role-play to demonstrate how the job is done. This mentoring aspect should take up around 50 to 60% of your time. It’s also the most challenging part of the job. Here’s the tricky part: resisting the urge to step in and preventing your team from making mistakes during sales calls.

Allowing them to make mistakes is essential for their learning and growth. Stepping in too soon hampers their development and damages their credibility with customers, so letting them own their mistakes and addressing them after the call is crucial. To this day I will still sit on my hands on some sales calls to allow my team to make mistakes. 

Training

Take the time to train your team in the art of sales. You’ve been chosen for this role because you demonstrated your sales skills and leadership potential. Now, it’s time to share everything you’ve learned throughout your career and teach your team. This can be done through role-plays, one-on-one sessions, mock discovery meetings, demos, or group training. It’s important to remember that the goal of training is NOT to make everyone a mini version of you. The goal is to make everyone a better version of themselves. 

Coaching 

This is where you provide ongoing feedback and guidance to help your team members excel in their roles. This is primarily done through one-on-one sessions, not in group settings. Coaching allows individuals on your team to overcome their own obstacles or “head trash.” It’s about finding their motivation, understanding how they can succeed, and working with them on skill development and attitude.

Many leaders make the mistake of combining coaching with pipeline reviews and performance conversations. Critiquing someone’s numbers or going through their pipeline is one thing, but coaching is about helping them improve at their job. 

How To Excel in the Leadership Role?

Become an Advocate for Your Team

You must champion your team and ensure they have the necessary tools and training for success. Advocacy also extends to maximizing their compensation plans and closing deals. This changes the more senior you become. As you move from being a front line leader to a second or third line leader, your “team” changes. More on this below.

Ask For a Feedback 

A key element of being a successful leader is actively seeking feedback. Many leaders hesitate to ask for it from their team due to fear of vulnerability or negative perceptions. However, you can gain valuable insights by openly acknowledging your imperfections and inviting input. One of the helpful tools could be a “working with me” doc, which outlines our strengths, weaknesses, and preferred ways of collaboration. Encouraging team members to create similar documents fosters a culture of feedback and continuous improvement.

Time Block Your Calendar

Effective time blocking becomes essential as your managerial responsibilities increase. As a leader, your role is to simplify your team’s work lives by minimizing administrative burdens. For instance, owning the agenda for one-on-one meetings can alleviate your team’s need to come up with discussion topics.

Find a Coach 

More people need to recognize the value of having a coach. Continuous improvement should never cease, and a coach can play a pivotal role in helping you enhance your leadership skills.

Transitioning to a Director

Managing managers brings new nuances and challenges. They have already been placed in their roles because they are leaders and they are competent at what they do. You need to foster a strategic partnership with them. You cannot manage managers the same way you manage individual contributors. 

Focus Shift To Bidirectional Exchange

As a director, your focus shifts towards a bidirectional exchange of ideas and feedback. You work together with the managers, supporting them and their teams. Your role becomes more of a strategic thought partner rather than a frontline leader. 

Advocating for the Executive Team of the Company

As a frontline manager, your advocacy is primarily for your team, their tools, training, and compensation. However, as a director, you must advocate for your first team, which is the company’s executive team. This requires a fundamental mindset shift. For instance, when it comes to a compensation plan, you move from advocating for a plan that benefits your team to one that strikes a balance between fairness for the team and safeguarding the company’s interests. (You can learn more about it from the book: “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”  which delves into the concept of the “first team” versus “your team.”).

Assuming Fiduciary Responsibility for the Company 

Becoming a director entails assuming a fiduciary responsibility to the company. As a result, you may need to make decisions that protect the company’s interests, even if they are not always popular with your team or managers. 

Focusing on Cross-Departmental Communication & Collaboration 

As a director, you must emphasize the importance of cross-departmental collaboration and communication. Building relationships and understanding the perspectives of other departments, such as product and marketing, becomes essential. It’s no longer solely about managing the sales team; it’s about comprehending the decisions made by other departments and effectively communicating them to your leaders and their teams.

Navigating Internal Dynamics with Tact and Empathy 

Being a successful director also requires finesse and tact in navigating internal dynamics. You have to be selective in choosing the battles you fight.

Adopting a leadership mindset, embracing the shift from an individual contributor to a leader, building cross-functional relationships, and following the four pillars of management will help you make the foundation for your new role. Whether you’re contemplating a leadership role or seeking to excel in your current position, these strategies can contribute to your personal and professional growth.

ATM Unplugged is the new content series by Adam Jay where he delves into the art of successful selling. From mastering sales processes to fostering a thriving sales culture, he shares unique learnings that are exclusive to this series. Adam believes in empowering the next generation of sales leaders to set new standards, and he’s here to support you every step of the way. 

The post ATM Unplugged: From Sales Pro to Sales Leader appeared first on RevGenius.

The approach is two-fold.  Bottoms-up forecasting, starting with people and ending with a Top line revenue target; or Top-down, starting with a revenue target and fitting people into this target.

For pre-sales and sales, the main focus is ensuring you have enough Account Executives to cover the revenue targets and that those Account Executives have enough SDR and/or Solution Engineering support to cover the pipeline needs for the revenue targets.  

A secondary focus that tends to get less attention is marketing.  Specifically, is marketing bringing in enough leads to support the sales targets? Usually, your marketing and sales leaders work together to decide what portion of the pipeline will be covered by marketing vs. pure sales outreach. We’ll touch on marketing in part II of this series. 

When you look at these two focus areas, it would appear that from a planning standpoint, you only have a little to be able to move around besides the hiring dates of the people needed to execute. And that’s mostly true, but there are 4 other main levers that pre-sales and sales has a lot of control over. 

• Ramp Time
• Average Selling Price
• Sales Cycle
• Conversion Rates

Ramping up your account executives and SDRs (and SE if needed) quickly is essential to delivering  revenue to the business.  Below are a few focus areas to positively impact ramping time:

• Sales Enablement Focus
• Hiring dates and training plans
• Configuration of the pre-sales team

 Ramp time is commonly overlooked. Further, not a lot of change management is set aside to improve it.  If your company doesn’t have someone dedicated to sales enablement, specifically how to get the sales department selling, then incremental improvement can’t be expected. Can you imagine being able to train a sales representative 20% faster? The impact on productivity numbers, when you will hire, and what size team can’t be emphasized more. 

Do you have Solution Engineers? It’s possible to find that it takes an extended time to train SDRs on a complex product, but maybe it’s time to look at hiring your first solution engineer to dive deep into the product.  This saves a lot of the complexity for the small portion of prospects that need it while your SDRs are now trained to be much faster and scalable. Training, efficient hiring plans, and having the right support are critical to decreasing ramp time. 

Sales can impact average selling price in a few critical ways:   

• Provide more value
• Increase Prices
• Go Up Market

First, you can only expect to sell more if you provide more value. Providing more value only sometimes means more features or functionalities, but could be a different persona or market segment that values your products or services more. Honing in on the portion of the market that provides your sellers the highest selling price is a tried and true way to drive up the average selling price.  

Another avenue may be price increases, but this can be a lot harder depending on your customer’s usage. Typically,  if your customer can’t do without your product for a week, reasonable price increases will not drive off good customers.  

Flip that scenario around, however, and a price increase could drive good customers away to competitors.

Lastly, “going up market” is a plan that many companies can strive to achieve, but if you started at the lower end of the market, going upstream is major change management that would likely require resources your company does not have from a hiring standpoint.  This means your company would probably have to hire an entirely different sales team to support significantly larger prospects and selling cycles. However, with investment, patience, and a solid up-market strategy, this could be a viable way to increase the average selling price.

Compressing the Sales Cycle

The sales cycle can be compressed, but it has to be done sustainably:

• Find segments that will buy faster
• Measure milestones in deals and find what steps can be compressed
• Eliminate any unneeded friction in the buying process (online payments and digital signing)

Finding a segment that will buy faster is the ability to identify a major pain point in your buyer that has an extreme impact if solved quickly.  It works when time passing is painful for the prospect and you don’t have a cheaper competitor they could go with instead.  If your prospect isn’t in a hurry to buy, this isn’t going to work and your product either can’t create urgency this way or the wrong ICP has been targeted.  

Measuring milestones in the sales cycle is critical because it allows you to know the duration of each stage and if it is necessary for the sales cycle or if it can be compressed and or eliminated. Using timestamps in SFDC is the easiest way to analyze this (you can use history reports, but they are a pain). This also assumes you are using best practices and have a linear sales process in place to measure the time between stages. 

Eliminating unneeded friction can be as simple as putting your contract in a digital signing platform and accepting any form of payment possible. Accept checks, credit cards, PayPal, ApplePay, whatever you can.  Make it easy to sign and easy to pay.  This can shave off days and sometimes weeks off of the sales cycle. 

Improving conversion rates can be achieved, but tracking and governance are key. Below are a few steps to follow:

• Align your funnel to forecastable stages
• Create reports that use these definitions
  • Channel conversion rates vs People Conversion rates
• Design Dashboards that instantly update

Aligning Marketing and Sales 

Getting together the teams responsible for the prospect funnel, namely marketing and sales, is imperative to ensuring conversion rates can be monitored and improved. Every stage in the funnel does not need to be tracked for this purpose, but usually 3-4 stages need to in order for conversion rates to be forecastable.  An example would be if all lead stages were tracked, then daily conversion rates from lead stage to lead stage would vary wildly depending on the amount of traffic, day of the week, and other factors. This variation makes it difficult if not impossible to forecast. To get around that, each week, measuring all leads and comparing that to the number of appointments set up and then the number of demos run and finally the close rate, you’ll find your conversion rates won’t vary as much and you’ll be able to improve them over time. Using data that fluctuates too much will give false signals on what is working and what is not.  

Conversion rates should be calculated weekly and monthly using channel conversion rates and people conversion rates. 

Channel conversions are calculated using only the channel that carried the lead along the prospect journey. People’s conversions are the same except you aren’t worried about where the lead came from, but who actually worked the lead. You’ll find when you break it out this way, certain people will be better at converting from different channels. This allows you to focus people on the channels that work for them and not assume your best channel works the same for your entire sales team.  This is almost never the case. Doing this will allow you to improve your conversion rates for each person and channel, which in turn improves the overall conversion rate. 

Performance Dashboards 

Dashboards are one of the best and most transparent ways to hold teams accountable for performance. Daily reporting is okay as long as the team knows the weekly or bi-weekly trends are what the team should use to pivot strategy instead of any daily spikes driving decisions.  Lastly, find your industry average and make sure you aren’t trying to get a higher conversion rate than what is typically seen.  If you’re already closing 70% of the deals that are in the sales cycle, then you should probably focus on a different area to improve. 

Key Takeaways

When average deal size, sales cycle and conversion rates are focused on, then the operational side has a lot more input. Providing the hiring plans they need to achieve their target is only the beginning.  By improving average deal size, sales cycle, and conversion rates, you are essentially making sales a force multiplier allowing your team to do more, with less people.  

This level of transparency also allows better and more cogent conversations with the other parts of the business if something isn’t working.  What assumptions were made that are causing the disconnect?  We either didn’t hire enough people, we set our conversion rates too high, we weren’t able to sell for at least our average price or we took a lot longer to sell than we anticipated.  

Stay tuned, the next article in our series talks about planning from a marketing perspective.

Video of building a plan from scratch for all departments: 

The post Next-Level Sales and Pre-Sales Annual Planning appeared first on RevGenius.

There are dozens of reasons and plenty of empirical evidence to explain why Sangram and Bryan advocate for his, but at its core: Compensation and incentivization drives employee behavior and the only person in a company who can align the compensation strategies of Marketing, Sales, Customer Success and Product in most organizations is the CEO.

That said a CEO has a day job (and let’s be honest, probably a night job as well). While the GTM organization is likely to be at least half of the employees, the CEO still has to contend with the rest of the organization, the board, investors, market champions, business influencers, large clients, and a host of other people vying for attention. There is only so much a CEO can reasonably give!  

Additionally the CEO is brought fires on a daily, sometimes hourly basis that need quick and often gut-based decisions to resolve.  If a person is in constant fire-fighting mode, it will be difficult for them to center on the long complex chain of if-then decisions needed when analyzing and adjusting a Go-to-Market strategy.

When CEOs were faced with one of the most complex challenges of our generation, a global pandemic, their entire focus was pulled to the health and safety of the people working for them and the overall survivability of the business.  It was a responsibility that trumped all others, but that left many GTM strategy teams without a head for months, if not over a year.  

At the end of the day, the CEO has the right authority and the right perspective on the business to successfully run any go-to-market team, but it is also likely that they lack the time to do it consistently.

Our next most prolific cross functional executive is the COO.  What part do they play in the running of your Go-to-Market strategy?  

The COO is one of the true chameleon roles in a modern organization today.  This role, which had been in decline over the past 20 years.  According to a recent McKinsey article, in 2018 only 32% of the fortune 500 companies had a COO on staff.  Today that number has risen to 40%, but its role remains undeniably ambiguous. 

As COOs focus on the running of a business, it could mean financial responsibility, global organizational management, legal responsibility, being the air-apparent to the CEO, etc.  Depending on your industry and corporate structure it is possible that your COO has key expertise in key Go-to-Market activities that would allow them to successfully lead the GTM teams perfectly. However, it is also possible that their primary skill set and mission encompasses other pressing needs as well. 

Our last usual suspect for heading up the GTM strategy is the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) or Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). When this role was introduced, many of us were hopeful that it would foster a harmonious relationship among the GTM teams, which includes sales, marketing, product, and customer success. Unfortunately, the CRO/CCO role usually primarily focuses on sales and marketing teams, which already have a historically complex (and sometimes negative) dynamic.  

In an article from LinkedIn in 2016, Kate Bullis spoke about the rise of the Go-to-Market Officer role and specifically referenced sales & marketing as being the key departments who would report to this role.  Eight plus years later, the achilles heel in this approach is now becoming clear: demand marketers and sales teams are heavily influenced by their short term revenue goals and they are measured and compensated heavily, if not exclusively, in short term dollars.  

While dollars are the reason the GTM team exists, there is an element of long term sequencing and roadmapping that product, brand marketers and customer teams must manage which is not necessarily how the current CGO role is incentivized to behave and therefore reward.   

Now that we see that the CEO and COO are unlikely to be able to provide their full attention, and the CRO/CCO is rarely given the opportunity to shake the inevitable need for in quarter results, we are left to wonder: who is running go-to-market on a daily basis within your organization?  

For most organizations it is either a prolific CMO, CRO or SVP of Marketing with high likability and a strong point of view coupled with enough success to drive the organization without the appointed authority.  This rockstar leader will often stabilize a GTM team, but can unwittingly create a power and knowledge vacuum that is hard to recover from when they leave.  

Alternatively, your GTM is leadership could be a committee of functional leaders that include the CMO, CRO, CPO and CSO, and a team of VPs and Directors in cross functional roles like Revenue Operations and Enablement who are trying to cobble together consensus across multiple executive leaders with very different perspectives and increasingly specific KPI expectations that when not aligned can quickly drive division (read: inefficiency) in your go-to-market strategy.

 In both of these scenarios, GTM coordination becomes a delicate ballet of collaboration, quid-pro-quos, and compromises for cross-functional leaders. They aim to foster cohesion among the teams led by each functional leader. This is followed by a multifaceted political game of persuading directors, managers, and individual contributors to adhere to the plan. 

Achieving this level of collaboration involves training, employee outreach (sometimes known as “forced fun”), and the strategic implementation of collaboration technologies such as CRMs, Work Management Solutions, Customer Systems, and more. These tools are designed to enforce a specific way of working together, thereby keeping the teams on track with, or without executive leadership cohesion.

Using technology interest as a proxy for problem solving, of the top 15 use cases GTM teams have been searching for over the last 12 months, over half of them exist to help GTM employees work more effectively together or stay engaged. 

#2 Project Management

#4 Employee Recognition

#5 Task Management

#9 Employee Engagement

#10 Project Collaboration

#11 Sales engagement

#12 Workflow management

#13 Work management 

G2 Data (last 12 months/500K+ of searches for GTM related technologies)

(Re)Introducing the Role of a Chief GTM Officer

It is for all of these reasons and more that the role of the Chief Go-to-Market Officer should exist.  They should sit alongside the COO and CEO and have complete responsibility of ensuring the investment in taking your products to market are being done so in the most efficient way possible.  

Reporting Structure (Mid-Market Organizational Structure)

Primary Functions

This role will serve three primary functions: 

1. Live and breath the customer experience & the market expectations
2. It will keep the GTM teams focused and aligned on the strategy – they will be ruthless in their prioritization and their utilization of the GTM resources
3. It will collaborate with the CEO and COO/CFO to ensure complete alignment with the overall goals of the organization

Key KPIs 

• Cost of Acquisition (CAC)
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
• Cost of Retention (COR)
• GTM Motion Delivery (Outbound/Partnership/Ecosystem) 
• Net New Logo/New Business Goals
• Product usage
• Share of Voice in the Market (share of intent)
• Clase Rates by stage
• Actual Contract Value (ACV)

Key Responsibilities

• Oversight of the GTM Organization
• Oversight of the GTM Strategy
• Oversight of the GTM Budget (spending, staffing, compensation, incentivization) 
• Own the key aspects of GTM strategy planning including: 
  • Market Approach: Ideal Customer Profile & Total Relevant Market
  • Product and Market strategies
  • POV of the organization
  • Leadership Management
  • Revenue operations tracking and forecasting
• Executive Approver of the follow key GTM programs
  • Product roadmap 
  • Brand, market and product messaging
  • Sales structure and compensation
  • Customer management programs
  • Revenue operations priorities and projects

Leadership Characteristics  

• Held C-level executive positions for multiple GTM teams in at least 2 of the 4 core functional areas (Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Success).  
• Have an analytical approach to decision making and be comfortable with data structure and systems required to have the data needed to make decisions.  
• Have a collaborative work style, understanding that there will be natural conflict between teams based on their perspective.
• Ability to build strong rapport with customers.

A Note On Different Sized Organizations 

Enterprises and large organizations will likely carry so much complexity that it would be impossible to have a simplistic model like the one exemplified  in place.  As a result most complex companies will develop a commercial center of excellence who will take on the key responsibilities outlined, but it will be wrapped into a centralized department that has enough oversight to be able to develop strategy and affect change throughout the GTM departments. 

Small businesses will not need to immediately invest in this role, as the team should be working closely enough that inefficiencies should be easily mitigated in team meetings with consistent structure.  When you start to develop an organization with VPs, Directors, Managers and Individual Contributors across multiple GTM departments is when you start to be at risk for creating revenue impacting divisions that could be mitigated through a centralized leader.  

How can we make this a reality

Hopefully at this point you are convinced of the need to focus on a holistic management approach for your Go-to-Market strategies and teams. 

GTM Partners has created a system designed to help keep GTM teams working as efficiently as possible regardless of whether or not you are running a founder-led go-to-market or a large complex organization.  

To learn more, please check out GTMondays or gtmpartners.com.

Don’t forget! Discover the top GTM strategies from B2B experts at RevCon: our must-attend annual conference on October 18-19, 2023! 

The post The Rise of the Chief Go-To-Market Officer appeared first on RevGenius.

Then came lockdowns and the plans to have me meet the team in-person were cancelled. I ramped up in a role known for being a grind throughout the SaaS community and had the chance to do it remotely. All of this during the height of the pandemic and global shutdown while we were selling software meant for brick and mortar stores!

Somehow, some way, after fifteen months I am still an SDR at my current company and have found it quite difficult to leave despite all the adversity. As someone who has left previous jobs more readily I wonder what’s kept me around. I also wonder why my role is one where attrition has become the name of the game. Today, you get to hear from an SDR who has stayed at his company for a while and compared to places where he would have quit by now.

The SDR Role is Important and it is No Joke.

We all know Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) as the front line for a business to generate interest from prospects to the point that they actually want to evaluate your offering. From there, the prospect usually talks to an Account Executive (AE) whose goal is to further qualify and then turn them into your clients. If the SDR does not generate that initial interest, the AE has to deal with a smaller pipeline for your business with the likelihood of less sales overall.

According to Sales Hive, 12% of companies experience an SDR attrition rate of 55% or higher, annually.

According to a study by BrainShark, the average tenure of an SDR is 1.5 years. I’m coming up on that average, myself. According to studies commonly shared featuring statistics by The Bridge Group, the attrition rate for SDRs is around 39%. The numbers do not lie, SDR attrition is a problem for most companies.

In an economy where the market is currently in the favor of the employees, your SDRs are in a better position now than usual to leave for another opportunity.

If You Lose One, They are Not as Easy to Replace.

According to a TOPO study mentioned by Salesloft, SDR ramp time to full quota is 3 months. Another study quoted by Gartner by the same firm mentions that 83.4% of SDRs fail to consistently hit quota each month. Let’s assume we live in an ideal world. You just fired an SDR or maybe one just left, so you hired a new one. Now that new SDR comes in and after month three, they hit quota. That is still three months of missing a fully-ramped SDR that could have been producing pipeline for your AEs.

Numbers aside, seeing a veteran SDR leave is also demoralizing for the rest of the team. New hires see this and wonder what they just got themselves into. Sure, sometimes it can be explained away with poor performance but when it is a somewhat decent SDR that quits, you are at risk of a Domino Effect that will have you losing even more SDRs soon.

I’ll Let You in on a Little Secret, Most of Them Didn’t Just Wake Up One Day and Decide to Quit.

I’ve been that SDR who has quit on a job well before I even put in that two-weeks notice.There is an art to it. First, it starts off with more “dentist appointments” and “personal time-off” than normal. Afterwards, it goes to being disengaged where we show up to “Happy Hours” less and voluntarily take ourselves out of team meetings. Slowly, it all evolves into that one magical morning when your SDR pulls you into a meeting and puts in their two-weeks notice.

Now if you are a halfway decent company, you do an “exit interview” but you know how much people want to hold back. Maybe if you are lucky and thick-skinned enough, your SDR will let you know exactly what you did wrong and how to fix it. Most of the time though, they will give you the politically correct and “nice” feedback in order to not “burn a bridge”. You’ll never learn the reason that they left.

Here are Some Common Reasons.

Sometimes, SDRs quit because an offer that paid better came around or because their chance to move into another more promising role (hint: It’s AE) came knocking. Occasionally, SDRs might realize that they are not cut out for sales and part ways with the profession altogether. The fixes to these problems seem obvious enough but they can be tough for an organization to really handle.

After all, you may want to promote that promising SDR to an AE but there are just not any AE roles open right now with the way things are. You may want to pay your SDR more but not be in a position to do that. Perhaps you want your SDRs to be enabled to better generate meetings but with the way things are, it is tough to make that happen. How do you keep them on your team? How do you keep them happy?

What if I Told You… That an Age Old Saying in the Workforce is Just as True in the SDR World?

People don’t quit their job, they quit their boss.

According to Career Addict, 79% of people would seek new employment because of bad leadership. In my opinion, sales is one of those professions plagued with not just bad but often toxic leadership.

In the past, I was a part of toxic sales teams where leadership ruled with fear, intimidation, humiliation of reps, and “tough love”. For a while, it seemed like a decent script for a Martin Scorsese film, until it didn’t. You had your more senior reps leave for better opportunities and shortly thereafter, others followed suit. Not long after that, the team slowly fell apart to where even the leaders either moved on or got fired.

So if people leave their job because they have a terrible boss, then it is fair to say that people will stay at a job if they have a great boss even if things are less than ideal.

Such is my story.

I onboarded remotely during the pandemic which was no easy task. Now, add to that being in an outbound role where you had to convince people to take a meeting to buy new software when the entire economy was on lockdown, particularly for the brick and mortar locations we service. I’ll add even more fuel to this fire, try being in a situation where you don’t even know if you will be promoted to AE even after you have been in this grind for over a year. Not ideal, right?

In the past, seeing this situation, I would actively be in the job market and interviewing. Given how the job market bounced back as 2021 progressed, I had every reason in the world to interview at other places, especially since I had recruiters coming at me with AE roles. Despite all this, I found it very tough to leave. Things were different this time. Most SDRs in my situation would have jumped ship but after fifteen months, I am still here and feel like I have found a long-term home (knock on wood!).

Because No Matter the Circumstances, Good Leaders Make it Very Tough to Leave.

In the past, I have endured poor, and especially toxic leadership, at work which made life outside of work miserable, too. After all, you spend eight hours a day at your job, it is tough to not take some of that energy home. I saw how stressful it was to my own well-being having leaders that ran a culture of fear, intimidation, and outright cruelty. Unfortunately, this is all-too-common in the world of SaaS sales. And even worse it doesn’t get fixed as most outgoing SDRs are too scared to give honest feedback in their “exit interview”.

The thought constantly came to my head: “What if I do leave for more money and a higher title but have to endure through that same toxic leadership which forced me and others to quit past roles?”

I had the most valuable thing any SDR could wish for, two good leaders in a row that just made it tough to leave. While in my past role I would be scolded for making a mistake, in this one I had a leader who understood that I am human and gave me guidance on how to do things better. In a past role, I had leadership that would micromanage and try to get me to change how I do everything, but in this role my boss gave me free-reign to do my own thing which led to good results. I witnessed in past roles where leadership would toss over countless inbounds to a specific rep and parade them as the best. Leadership shouldn’t run on nepotism. In a past role, I had managers who were too busy trying to show off. They were too busy trying to make their personal favorite reps look good instead of helping them succeed. In past roles, I had managers but in my current one I have leaders.

You would be surprised to find how much people will value sanity, peace of mind, and a positive atmosphere over a title or slightly higher pay. For me, showing up to work everyday knowing that even if I made a mistake, I would be properly coached through it, made it easy to stay.

Being human, I have made some mistakes and slipped up. In past roles I knew this would come with some serious consequences that would make it tough for me to have the same morale to do my job. I called, emailed, and talked in fear which even my prospects picked up on. By having good leadership, I can be fearless and bring my best to every call and interactions with prospects which has led to better performance. It’s not easy to stay in the SDR role past fifteen months when headhunters are calling you up for AE roles, but good leaders make it a lot easier.

If Your SDRs are Mysteriously Quitting, You May Have a Leadership Problem.

If you have a high churn in your SDR team, especially from those who are more tenured, it is time to start looking at their leadership. As tough as it may be to do, if you feel that it is not due to pay and career progression alone, it might be time you used your intuition a bit more to see how their leader is actually like. You might have to talk to some of your more senior SDRs who seem a lot less engaged in a creative way about how they really feel about leadership.

A good SDR leader can be the biggest difference between keeping those handful of reps on your team and stopping the entire SDR org from falling apart. In the future, I look to talk about traits that I have noticed in toxic and good SDR leaders.

The post Cut your SDR Churn Rate with good leadership appeared first on RevGenius.

You may think that you’re currently using data effectively to coach your sales reps, and many sales managers and leaders believe the same, but are making one critical oversight.

Sales organizations think coaching using data is the same thing as coaching to the pipeline.

But there are two issues with this.

The first is that coaching to the pipeline is all about finding tweaks and small changes that can be made relatively quickly to improve short-term outcomes. It’s not about long-term gains.

The second is coaching to the pipeline means managers and leaders base their decisions on the performance of multiple reps by using an average. This doesn’t give managers a very accurate picture of individual performance – just an average one.

When it comes to coaching sales reps effectively using data, it should be about how to coach reps as individuals based on their own performance at various stages in the sales process.

Why Coaching Sales Reps with Individual Data is Important

Many sales managers have held meetings where their people will show up with pipeline review sheets or pull up a Salesforce dashboard and just regurgitate the numbers.

But question how valuable this is for your reps.

Are you looking at data consistently to provide insights to your team on their performance? Is it all a qualitative opinion of what the process and pipeline should look like? And again, are you just looking at the average?

For example, say your team or organization’s average sales cycle is “45 days.”

But when you break it down, Rep 1’s average sales cycle is actually 32 days, Rep 2’s is 47, and Rep 3’s is 52. Knowing that, you can then break it down even further and understand that Rep 1 goes longer at step three in the process and Rep 2 goes longer at step four.

Breaking down and coaching to these individual, specific metrics is what it truly means to coach sales reps using data.

When put into practice, these five tips will help you properly run your meetings, know what you should prepare, what metrics matter, and ways to be a better coach.

Let’s dive in.

5 Tips For Using Data to Coach Your Sales Team

#1 Be the Coach that Shows Up Prepared

When you show up to your one-on-ones each month (and if you don’t have a standing monthly, you should), make sure you’re the manager that shows up prepared.

If it’s an hour-long review, spend at least an hour or two that month digging into that rep’s numbers, what’s going well, and what isn’t.

It’s a complete waste of a meeting if you spend half of the time getting up to speed and not providing any real feedback or coaching.

Sales engagement and revenue intelligence tools like Outreach and InsightSquared, respectively, are great for insights into what’s working at specific stages in the process and make it easy to gather this information.

Showing up prepped and prepared like you would for any other meeting allows you and your people to quickly understand where they stand, dig into issues, and provide valuable guidance.    

#2 Bring Insights, Not Just Data

The reason why prepping for your monthly one-on-ones may take an hour or two is because it isn’t enough just to pull the data. Data is only as good as the insights and actions you can take from it.

I often see managers fall into two buckets.

1. They bring a ton of metrics and numbers to meetings but don’t explain to reps what it means.
2. Or they fall on the other end of the spectrum and bring qualitative data to the table that is vague, not actual data, and also not actionable.

The insights managers need to properly coach reps needs to explain the complete picture broken down into actionable components.

For example, reviewing the average sales cycle by stage by rep. You can then hone in on what step in the process takes the longest or has the lowest conversion rate for that rep.

Instantly these conversations change from are reps above or below their target to this is where they need to improve their skills to hit or exceed their target next month, etc.

#3 Use Technology, Not Your Gut

Technology is going to be the key differentiator in coaching with quantitative versus qualitative data. Building on tip #2, make sure you’re coaching reps on actual data points and not what you think the process should be.

Buyer preferences and journeys are constantly changing, and they differ from industry to industry, product to product. Sales operations and revenue intelligence tools allow managers to see exactly where the bottlenecks and gaps are in their team’s process.

I mentioned InsightSquared earlier, but there are a couple of other leading-edge tools that have their own unique features, like Clari, People.ai, and Gong.

Conversation intelligence in tools like Gong can provide even more data points around why certain reps may be better at converting in meeting one or two based on the specific points they hit on in their conversations with buyers.

The important thing to understand is what this technology is trying to help you achieve as a manager coaching reps. It allows you to make decisions not based on previous best practices or gut instinct.

You can definitely see, for example, that five people on your team are faster at X step in the process by almost ten days. This tells you which reps actions to replicate across the team and gives you an opportunity to pair those reps with the people who have longer times at that step.

And again, this isn’t a gut instinct but based precisely on what you see in the data.

#4 Help Provide the Resolution

As a manager and leader, not only is it essential to know the strengths and weaknesses of each rep, review metrics and data on the team and individual level, and provide insights into what that data means, it’s also on you to help provide the resolution.

It can be as simple as pairing up two people to talk about what one rep is doing differently at this stage and why their conversion rate is higher, or it can be listening in on calls in the next two weeks to provide feedback and help push deals forward.

Coaching your sales reps doesn’t stop with uncovering the gaps and bottlenecks but working with your people to make sure they are clear on next steps and how they can develop their skills.

#5 Build on Insights Month-to-Month

This fifth and final tip for coaching sales reps is an important one.

It’s about accountability from the manager and the rep and making sure you have an ongoing development plan that structures change and growth.

This meeting may be separate from the typical monthly one-on-one reviewing performance and data points or a part of it. Whatever works best for your team. But there is nothing more discouraging than having the same conversations every month with no change.

It’s frustrating for managers, and it’s frustrating for reps.

You must hold each other accountable for what was agreed upon in the previous month, review how well the changes went, and talk about what you can continue to build on from there.

Coaching to Data Requires Rep & Manager Buy-In

If you didn’t catch on, these five tips for coaching sales reps build on each other and require manager and rep participation at every step.

For my reps out there, you should also be looking at your success at each stage in the sales process with a magnifying glass. You need to know your own numbers so you can grow without solely relying on someone else.

Managers and sales leaders, when you can get your team to take their growth into their own hands, these meetings become faster, more beneficial, and reps will start to come prepared with their own solutions and strategy.

This is how you are going to build a high-performance sales team by coaching and using data effectively.

The post How to Use Data to Coach Your Sales Reps appeared first on RevGenius.

What is sales fatigue?

Sales fatigue is an acute mental health condition that affects an individual’s motivation, engagement and performance. That means up to 15% less profitable, 18% less productive, and 37% more likely to be absentee according to Gallup reports.

Specifically, sales fatigue is part of a sales-specific burnout scale that ranges from “primed for peak performance” to “I am putting in notice of resignation”. By managing our levels of stress and recovery, we can maintain a healthy balance to keep hitting quota without sacrificing our mental health.

A career in sales is a marathon, not a sprint. That means longevity needs to be a focus just as much as sprinting at your next month’s goals, or you risk full on burnout.

This can be difficult since we tend to be judged weekly, monthly and/or quarterly which incentivizes pushing ourselves in any given sprint (something we often wear as a badge of honor, justifiably so – we earned it!).

In order to keep ourselves happy, healthy, and on our game – let’s first look out for symptoms of sales fatigue, the levels of fatigue we go through, and finish with strategies to mitigate or avoid sales fatigue altogether.

Symptoms of sales fatigue?

The reality is that many of us have gone through various cycles of fatigue in our jobs. This is normal. If any of the following apply to you now – don’t worry! We are going to make sure to give you what you need to manage your fatigue.

That being said, oftentimes the early symptoms are easiest to manage if we act quickly. The first thing to look out for is feeling tired all the time – especially if the amount of sleep you are getting is regular. That, and a sense of always being behind or looming tasks to be done without the motivation to start moving is classic signs of job fatigue.

Additionally, if the work you are doing feels below par for you, or you are taking excessive amounts of time to do the work – you are likely to be experiencing signs of fatigue.

In sales, this might mean being way behind on logging activity in salesforce, falling behind on follow up emails, or failing to hit activity metrics; especially if you have had periods where these goals were easy to be on top of.

Levels of sales fatigue?

Fatigue either slows the output, or increases the stress associated with achieving your baseline output compared to working when primed for peak performance. It is not uncommon for this to happen as a reaction to failing to meet sales or activity goals, and often silently festers inside reps until manifesting as full blown burnout, a mental health episode, or resignation.

The first level of sales fatigue is languishing fatigue, where a salesperson becomes disconnected from their work and feels empty in their role. This may come from something as small as slipping performance (no matter how subtle), concern over career path, or environmental factors happening outside of the workplace in general.

The next level concerns acute fatigue, where performance starts to trend downward and reps become further dissociated from their jobs. At this level, employees are at risk to be poached by other organizations, despite possibly not having said anything to their teammates, management, or even HR. Most organizations cannot afford to churn too many performers due to neglecting fatigued employees. Losing these performers would be a big hit to their business’s revenues.

Lastly comes full blown burnout. Here, you can kiss your reps’ effort goodbye, because they are done. At this point, you may risk having toxic employees on your hands, which can cost an organization upwards of $12,000 per person and spread like wildfire. These people may show open dissent, be cyber liabilities, and require intentional support to get back on track.

Strategies for mitigating sales fatigue

Now for the good stuff… how to manage all of that fatigue. The truth is, what works for any given person is based on a wide range of factors and unique to that individual alone. Think of this all as balancing stress and recovery like an athlete. There is no one size fits all solution. Here are a few options to try:

High-Low method

This is one that I personally use to manage my days. Essentially, it focuses on producing a large stress stimulus (a spike), followed by medium stress days that should feel low in stress by comparison.

A model for this might be:

Monday – High Stress

Tuesday – Medium Stress

Wednesday – Low Stress

Thursday – High Stress

Friday – Medium Stress

You could also do the same for a working month or quarter, where you have high stress periods and lower stress ones. What really matters is that you use this to push yourself on high stress days, and really take the time to recover on low stress ones.

Pomodoro Method

This technique relies on setting timer intervals to complete smaller chunks of work in manageable sprints.

The standard way is doing 25 minutes of undistracted work followed by a 5-minute mini break.

This works when you break work into smaller chunks like making 30 cold calls, or sending a few personalized emails. Make sure not to stretch the breaks or let technology creep into the equation and distract you…

Realign Your Goals

Okay, this one is admittedly a little meta, but bear with me. If you are experiencing fatigue, try realigning to your personal mission or “why”. Any time that I feel like I am coming up against a wall, I remind myself why I’m working so hard.

In my case, that is to prove everyone right who’s believed in me most and provide a comfortable life for my family. With that in mind, it makes grinding through a few more calls, hosting a couple more demos, or whatever else much easier to handle.

It could also be your “why” for a given role, focused on promotions or other future opportunities.

Accountability Partners/Groups

Sometimes all it takes is a friendly face checking in on you, or holding you accountable to your own goals. Teaming up with someone, whether or not they’re in your organization, is a way to stay connected to friends while achieving greatness together.

These are best implemented prior to sales fatigue setting in, so that by the time any issues arise you are already familiar with each other and have built up trust.

Ask For Help

This is probably the most underrated one on the list. As someone who sells to sales leaders, I can say with confidence that your managers want to help you.

I know that at times you may feel at odds with management, or members of your team, or whatever else – but the truth is that if you approach any of the above and ask for help – they will be happy to do what they can.

When doing so, try to make sure not to be placing blame or making accusations; and engage assuming positive intent.

Time Off

This is our fire alarm traditionally, but I think we should see it more as a yearly check-up.

When you start to feel fatigue or burnout setting in, taking a few extra days off to unplug from work is one of the most effective ways of recovering.

The key is making sure to actually unplug, and allowing yourself to relax. We’ve all (myself included) taken vacations where we thought about work the whole time and just ended up more stressed.

If you aren’t good at using PTO currently, start by throwing a few 3-day weekends on your calendar. It doesn’t matter whether you use them for a big trip or just to sleep in; these extra breaks will help normalize time off.

I personally am a believer in taking at least a full week off once per year, with smaller breaks along the way.

Conclusion

We started by taking a look at what sales fatigue is, how it relates to burnout, and why mitigating it is crucial to achieving performance goals.

Then we identified some warning symptoms and levels that sales fatigue sets in at. Again – this is all part of a complex system of ever-changing factors, all unique to each individual. As fatigue festers, it worsens.

Arguably, the most important thing here is identifying and addressing issues as they arise and not once they’ve started hurting performance.

On an ongoing basis, having a way of managing these factors and using the right sales fatigue mitigation strategy at the right time will help create distance between you and your competitors.

Take Time Off!

The post How to Push Through Sales Fatigue appeared first on RevGenius.

So, you got a new job. You’re about a month in. So far, so good. You like the role’s day-to-day. You consider your pay to be fair and you have some pretty decent benefits.

By month two, you’re dealing with misogyny, homophobia, racism, and/or bigotry. It’s driving you mad. You may even be getting frustrated with yourself and asking, “How did I not see this before signing on the dotted line?”

All Too Relatable

Many queer people relate to the above in some form or another. There have been times where this has even led to individuals losing their jobs because they’re gay or transgender; despite the 2020 Supreme Court ruling.

There is a lot of reconstruction of society yet to be had to end this systemic issue of LGBTQIA+ targeted hate and discrimination in the workplace.

However, there are some steps you can take as a professional in sales, marketing, or other roles, to help vet out potential employers and minimize the chances of these obstacles ever existing for you in the workplace.

Read This Disclaimer Before We Continue, Okay?

I’m not a hiring expert. Additionally, I do not claim to be an expert on all-things LGBTQIA+ related. I also acknowledge that my own life experiences, identity (in various contexts in and out of being part of the LGBTQIA+ community), and upbringing mold my perspective as does everyone else’s. The purpose of this article is to suggest strategies that I have benefited from given my personal and work life experiences as well as my opinion(s) on how to navigate the above challenges. Do what you wish with this information: but keep it productive and constructive. Let’s get into it:

Consider The Company’s Firmographics

Listen, not all of us want to work for a large enterprise like Google, Amazon, or Facebook. Equally, there are many people that would dread the thought of working in a small business with less than 50 employees or a hyper-growth, early stage startup with a small team and limited funding.

There are massive differences in the day-to-day experiences at these types of companies that make significant impacts on your career paths. With that said, it should be clear that the definition of how an organization thinks about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their company’s culture and processes is going to vary. There is more than one “right way” for companies to go about doing this. Before you start applying: Ask yourself which “right way(s)” is most important to you and your comfort level joining a new environment.

I work at a Series A software technology startup named Reprise that happens to have less than 75 employees at the time of writing this article. If I asked Jeffrey Hall, a recruiter at Reprise, questions about DEI and culture at Reprise and expected the same answer I would expect from Google: I’m setting us both up for failure.

Is Reprise going to have an incredibly large DEI budget compared to companies like Google, JP Morgan Chase, Facebook, Amazon, etc? Not anytime soon. Maybe one day. But, not now, for sure.

If I were applying at a larger company (like Google): best believe I would expect to hear a potentially more “scripted” or “process-oriented” response with references to internal resources groups and similar initiatives in contrast to the response I would expect to hear from Reprise.

Quick Comparison: Small vs Big

At a small company, as a gay man, all it takes is one homophobic coworker or leader to create a massive problem for me. However, if the company is small enough, statistically there’s a good chance I can dodge bigotry all together. With the stakes being so high on either end of this (it could go amazingly well or completely awful) — I have to care a lot about the experiences of current employees as well as the reputation of the company’s leaders. I’ll even make an effort to do more digging online and request additional interview steps with current employees, if any.

At a big company, as a gay man, statistically there’s going to be some bigotry, unfortunately. We’re not yet at a place in society where a company with 1,000+ employees can say with confidence that all of their employees are not homophobic. With that said, however, there should be a reasonable expectation that the majority of leadership (if not all) and of my coworkers would be allies of the LGBTQ+ community. So, one homophobe is potentially less of an impact due to the sheer size of the internal support that a big company can provide. With this in mind, at a big company, I expect to hear a lot about DEI processes, initiatives, and track records of successful initiatives, both internally and externally. Also, if it feels scripted: it’s probably because they get asked the question even more often: so, I’ll let that slide a little.

Interviewing with Smaller Companies Is Tricky

Let’s say you’re interested in working at a smaller company or an early stage tech startup. You’ve gone through the self-discovery motion mentioned in the disclaimer. What does this practice look or sound like in reality?

In my experience, being direct and vague will often provide the best test of the employer’s true authenticity and prioritization on anything DEI related. In every single interview, I would ask the same question, nearly verbatim.

“As an openly gay, polyamorous man with PTSD and a strong care for all things anti-racism, DEI is incredibly important to me in any employer-employee dynamic. Can you speak to me about DEI at your company?”

I have some friends that totally changed that first sentence; which is fine. They prefer to be a bit more discreet about their gender identity at first. Here’s a talk path a friend of mine uses to source similar information.

“I care greatly about all things anti-racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, and overall equality and equity. With that said, DEI is incredibly important to me in any employer-employee dynamic. Can you speak to me about DEI at your company?”

With smaller companies, I expect answers about the mission of the company as well as its history with DEI. I also expect candidness about their limitations with DEI: such as DEI-specific budget or concrete figures about the number of resources they have. (i.e. groups, dollars, initiatives, events, action items, previously, ongoing, and planned) I also hope to hear these things in the form of a story and not a script.

Big Companies: What To Do & Expect

Reader. You’re not me. So there’s a good chance that you want to work at a larger company, for whatever reason.

You’re in luck! Big companies have budgets for DEI Initiatives that enable them to make a lot of this information readily available online. Check and see if they have a person that specializes in DEI via their company website or LinkedIn page. Additionally, I recommend you ask a similar question above while being prepared to hear a more “scripted” answer with plenty of numbers to back it up.

I Repeat: There’s More Than One Way

It goes without saying that there are plenty of caveats left uncovered here: being part of multiple marginalized identity groups, industry, education, abilities, skills, talents, passions, self-awareness, life experiences, goals, and even the obvious need to pay the bills.

I encourage readers to leverage peer-to-peer communities like RevGenius. There are various DEI-related resource groups (such as RevGenius’s #pride channel in Slack) where you can network and pick-the-brains of other LGBTQIA+ members about their experiences assessing employers. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice and leverage the experiences of people who have been in your shoes.
Additionally, I recommend you follow folks like Madison Butler and myself, Evan Patterson, on LinkedIn for more conversations and resources  surrounding being LGTQIA+ in the workplace.

The post Tactics for Revenue Driving Professionals to Vet for DEI Initiatives appeared first on RevGenius.

Burnout is real. Your team is suffering from it right now. You need a plan.

Burnout and its relationship to performance management is one of the most misunderstood concepts in business today. A problem so large, burnout costs the workforce an estimated $1 trillion in lost productivity each year.

Tell us about burnout

What is Burnout?

Most of you reading this have zero clue what burnout actually is, how it affects your employees (both physically and mentally), and most importantly, how to fix it once burnout sets in. And that’s ok. We’re here to teach you all about burnout, how to avoid it, and what to do when it comes up.

It’s complex systems theory (bear with me). Burnout, fatigue, mental health, and even employee performance as a whole are all based on complex systems theory. Complex Systems Theory refers to a system that has multiple inputs ranging from your genetics, your ability to run a mile, and even the fight you had with your spouse this morning after they watched a new episode of The Boys without you (which is a damn good show by the way…and how dare they?)

Burnout is biology on its simplest, most evolutionary level.

We treat things such as burnout and “resiliency” like they are a one-trick ponies that can be fixed with a day off, a walk in the park, a nice conversation, or yoga at lunch. Unless you’re converting to Buddhism’s 8-fold Path as it relates to your business practices, these methods will likely fall short.

Burnout is a lot more complicated than that. Although we are getting better, we need more data to understand the actual complexity of its system. Without the data, we will continue running on the same “employee engagement” treadmill, year after year, and simultaneously steal years away from our employees while not helping them improve their well-being.

We humans, are strange, adaptable, and very different in how we process and manage stress. Everything and nothing will work for the different members of your team. So we have to get real. Unless you have data and a strategy for helping each and every individual person on your team, you’ll be in the thick of burnout hell, fast.

So what’s the answer?

To manage burnout, we need to take a deep dive into the very real factors behind performance management and understand that humans are made up of resources that can be depleted over time. Once those resources are depleted, Enter Burnout (cue “Enter Sandman” music).

You need a game plan to manage these resources, your sales organization, and possibly even yourself.

Game Plan

As always, this game plan starts with data!

We will call this “wellness data”.

How do we use it?

Our wellness data inputs from above are built into a 1-5 survey model. With 1 being the worst, and 5 being the best. This survey allows you to gain a composite score of your team before and after-sales sprints, or even busy quarters. Think of this as your “performance index”.

Using this performance index, develop a spreadsheet with both the time of year and the type of sprint you are benchmarking. Once you have the scores (before and after), you simply enter those performance scores into your spreadsheet. This score is reflective of your “cost” from the people perspective of your sprint.

For example, think about a scenario in which you have a crazy quarter with huge people demands. When you implement your survey you will find that you have a tremendously low score (Remember: 1 is the worst & 5 is the best). That is the cost to your people. You now have a quantifiable way to understand how the resources of your people are depleting. You get to understand the cost, on your people, of that crazy quarter.

There is a ton of noise in this data initially, but over time you’ll gain insights into how to better manage your team leading up to, during, and after a heavy sales push. See our 1-5 breakdown across each key category below:

Some Real-Life Examples

Performance Index before a sales sprint

• Much like a pro sports team, being fatigued and unprepared physically for an event is never a good idea. That’s why in situations where your team is fatigued going in, you must tread lightly. This might be a time where you adjust OKRs to match their current state of readiness, or even scrap the sprint entirely, if possible. Regardless, you must be mindful to not add too much to the fatigue when it is already so high. Do whatever you can to reduce stress for your team as much as possible.

Performance Index after a sales sprint

• When driving this exercise, it is important to look at your past wellness scores to understand how high they measure up to other stressful scenarios. If relative stress is within a normal to slightly elevated range, then you can think about maybe adding more stress or increasing the goal the next time you have a similar sprint. If the scores indicate more stress than normal, you will need to help your team bounce back FAST! Adjust schedules, give days off, schedule an in-office massage, outdoor office days, etc. The goal is to drive recovery before the next sprint, so get them ready!

The grind, the constant push, and the unrelenting stress that work can bring will break your team into a million pieces over time. We can’t treat our people as if they’re machines. Machines break, but humans will shatter. Burnout needs to be snuffed out. To do so, we need to start treating it like the medical condition it is.

Thinking back to when the RG Mag covered Three Must-Have Soft Skills for Sales Leaders, all three of these skills can help you manage burnout. The Authenticity to recognize it, the Collaborative approach to tackling it, and the Emotional Intelligence it takes to value the state of mind of all your direct reports. These are necessities.

So leaders, hear us. Burnout is real. Burnout is measurable. You need a plan to mitigate it. Bring awareness to your teams, showcase your care for their wellness, and see how they benefit from it firsthand, both physically and mentally.

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