Fran Brzyski

2🔑-- Alignment + Customer Obsessed The full SalesIntel.io podcast drops tomorrow but here's a sneak preview.... 🗝 Alignment You must get aligned on your metrics. If you're not all working toward the same goal, how can you expect success. 🗝 Customer Obsessed There are a lot of companies who talk about being customer-centric but do your action speak louder than your words. Can your customers articulate how you've delighted or exceeded their expectations? This will lead to referrals and help with partnerships! What is your favorite tip to unlock growth? #randispeaks #sales #GTM

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What should you do if you're missing quota? SDRs/BDRs, if you are not making quota, immediately schedule a meeting with your sales leader and do a funnel review. Be sure to ask for help before the last week of the month. Ask your sales leader to help you develop a strategy to help you reach your monthly goal. You should have a couple of suggestions ready to present to your manager in case they ask if you have any ideas in mind. If you don't know what to say, starting with reviewing the database is a safe place to start, as well as sorting your CRM by everyone you have spoken with over the past six months. You are trying to make sure your manager knows you need guidance and that you are willing/coachable enough to ask for help. Taking these steps does not guarantee you will hit the quota, but they will allow you to pivot to a new strategy and not keep doing what has not been working. #quota #salesmanager

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What should you do if you're missing quota? SDRs/BDRs, if you are not making quota, immediately schedule a meeting with your sales leader and do a funnel review. Be sure to ask for help before the last week of the month. Ask your sales leader to help you develop a strategy to help you reach your monthly goal. You should have a couple of suggestions ready to present to your manager in case they ask if you have any ideas in mind. If you don't know what to say, starting with reviewing the database is a safe place to start, as well as sorting your CRM by everyone you have spoken with over the past six months. You are trying to make sure your manager knows you need guidance and that you are willing/coachable enough to ask for help. Taking these steps does not guarantee you will hit the quota, but they will allow you to pivot to a new strategy and not keep doing what has not been working. #quota #salesmanager

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What should you do if you're missing quota? SDRs/BDRs, if you are not making quota, immediately schedule a meeting with your sales leader and do a funnel review. Be sure to ask for help before the last week of the month. Ask your sales leader to help you develop a strategy to help you reach your monthly goal. You should have a couple of suggestions ready to present to your manager in case they ask if you have any ideas in mind. If you don't know what to say, starting with reviewing the database is a safe place to start, as well as sorting your CRM by everyone you have spoken with over the past six months. You are trying to make sure your manager knows you need guidance and that you are willing/coachable enough to ask for help. Taking these steps does not guarantee you will hit the quota, but they will allow you to pivot to a new strategy and not keep doing what has not been working. #quota #salesmanager

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To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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

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

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Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

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Each quarter, Ryan Neu and the Vendr team release some killer insights based on the huge volume of SaaS deals they see. There's a lot of nuggets in here for SMB execs and operators. Here's my top 5 highlights from this quarters report: 1. SMB's should be more diligent in their tool selection A notable 23% decrease in purchase volumes for top suppliers will lead to SaaS co's increasing prices meaning SMB's should be more diligent in their software vetting & budgeting. 2. Teams are documenting their workflows more Lucidchart is on the list showing how businesses are investing in defining & documenting their processes to help level up their operations. 3. We're well past "Digital Transformation" Many categories climbed 10+ spots this quarter as buyers are rushing towards them as we move away from the "should we digitize?" to "we've got a lot of tools and people, let's get things in sync!" These categories had 10+ spot jumps in the leaderboard • Data integration tools • CRMs • Communication & Collab Suites 4. Security is more accessible than ever We're big fans of 1Password ourselves so it was great to see the first top 10 appearance for 1Password, which now leads its competitors with a transaction volume more than triple of any other supplier in its category. 5. ERP adoption increasing 9 of the top 10 categories in the SaaS Leaderboard this quarter were the same as Vendr's 2023 Year in Review with 1 big exception. ERP is new to the top 10, jumping 16 spots YoY, signalling that teams are increasing focus on financial reporting & controls. Link to the full report below in the comments.

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Want to catch the WinsDay replay? Matt Calhoun and I chatted about... ➡ Pre-Sales Strategies ➡ Demand Gen: Avoiding Failure When Outsourcing ➡ First Go-to-Market: Pivoting Your Startup  ➡ SDR Success: Leaders' Role in Prospecting Some themes popped up.... ☑ being data driven ☑ getting your ICP right ☑ documenting your processes ☑ what does good like ☑ what clues does customer success tell us ☑ culture ☑ people first leadership ☑ know your worth (mindset) ☑ trust and candid conversations .....and so much more Check out the comments to catch the replay! #sales

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Hey sales people, be careful with ‘Gong’ advice. Because you don’t work for Gong. Gong had 6 funding rounds. Each time millions of people heard about Gong. Branding Familiarity Your company probably doesn’t have that level of awareness. When Gong sales people engage most decision makers already know what they’re calling about. People with in the prospect have probably already had a discussion about Gong. Gong is a great company with great people. But the branding makes it a lot easier to sell so take the advice with a grain of salt. Have a great Friday! #sales #ifurnotgong

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Maintain a sufficient pipeline of 4 times your quota. Adequate pipeline helps to relieve the stress to perform on specific deals. Reduced stress allows you to approach sales as a competitive game and a fun challenge. Do not take success per deal personally. Treat each deal as a competitive contest you can walk away from proud of knowing you gave your best effort. Building relationships with your customers is the fun part of sales. Ask personal questions. Invest time to learn about your customers as humans. Personal relationships require empathy, time, and patience. Extra credit challenge: Getting a hug from your customer confirms you have a personal relationship. Credit to Drew Elam

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So many people over complicate prospecting tech stacks. A few years ago, budgets were big and teams purchased every cool tool without ever thinking about what problem you’re trying to solve. If I was building out a stack today, I would start simple and focus on giving your reps the best chance of doing their job effectively. No distractions. What will let them complete activity easily and effectively. My non-negotiables stack: ✅ CRM ✅ Sales engagement tool Salesloft Outreach ✅ Communication Slack Zoom ✅ Scheduling Calendly ✅ Data Kaspr Cognism ✅ Conversation intelligence Gong ✅ Dialler - use it in your sales engagement tool or standalone like Aircall Anything I’m missing here? What would be in your non-negotiable list?

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Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

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PE investors / operators: have "hire additional sales capacity" on your VCP or annual plan? HIRING new reps is only half the battle. For the ROI math to math, gotta then make 'em productive. As quickly as possible. But when it comes to making reps productive quickly, B2B companies face two big challenges: →The average tenure of a B2B sales rep is less than two years, YET... → Reps hit their peak performance two to three years in. Translation: Most reps leave before they’ve reached max productivity. Eek. In many cases, weak sales onboarding is to blame. But taking a more intentional approach to sales onboarding has a bevy of obvious benefits: • Reducing sales turnover • Shortening time-to-revenue • Higher odds of achieving your rev targets Hit on this in the book in Winning Move #32, but check out the vid below for a deeper dive on the P's and Q's of sales onboarding ▶️ * * * * * Found this helpful? Plenty more where that came from. Check out the Winning Moves Platform: the ambitious PE leader's toolkit for accelerating value creation. ↳ A digital arsenal of resources, how-to's, and tools to help private equity leaders make value-generating Winning Moves with confidence. Link in the comments below. ⤵️

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From a recent office hours session... ME: How many outbound sales activities do you do every day? "ZERO" Why zero? "We pay people to do that for us." How many outbound sales activities do THEY do every day? "Not sure." You see the problem here?!?! You're the boss and on the hook for results no matter who does the actual work, so you better be able to track data and hold employees/vendors accountable or else you're just wasting money and spinning your wheels.

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Sage advice

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No one taught you solid GTM fundamentals It's no wonder your pipeline looks so sad right now Everyone defaults to more volume of leads. The math totally makes sense. But .... Have you revisited your segmentation and messaging? Defining your market segments can't be an afterthought. It's the most mission-critical task for revenue. Companies look generic in the market, because they're thinking generic. Here’s how to do it right: 1) Define Clear Objectives: - Why are you segmenting the market? - New logos? - Marketing efficiency? - New product launch? 2) Use Multiple Segmentation Criteria: - Demographic - Psychographic - Geographic - Behavioral - Firmographic This is a true complete picture. 3) Conduct Thorough Research to Understand: - Characteristics - Preferences - Behaviors Short on time? Use Perplexity. (seriously, 75 minutes yesterday I blew the doors off a business model) 4) Ensure Segments are Measurable and Profitable: - You can only do this when you have segments ;) 5) Test and Iterate: - Experiment on your segments and follow data. - Then, adapt or double down. Avoid these mistakes: 1) Overly Generic Segmentation: - You can't describe a segment in less than 10 words. - That's not granular enough if you can. 2) Ignoring Data and Insights: - Very few companies use data correctly. - Go take a class or hire someone to help. 3) Lack of Alignment with Business Goals: - Is this aligned with your GTM motion? - Retention is different from new logos. 4) Neglecting to Reassess Segments: - The market changes faster than ever. - This is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise. If you really understand your market, your messaging becomes easy breezy. When your messaging is easy breezy, it's easier to buy from you. Is 75 minutes spent worth a healthier pipeline?

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"When is the right time to hire your first sales leader?" I sat down with Eric Boduch, Founder of 24 and Up, CEO of Revcast, and co-founder of Pendo.io, to discuss the key signals every founder should look for before making this critical hire. Check out Episode 449 of The Full Ratchet for his expert insights! Link to the full episode is in the comment section below.

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