From her first sales job to a CRO role for a Series D, B2B SAAS company in four years.
How did that happen? How did that happen in such a male-dominated field?
“As a consultant, I was trained to always begin a client conversation with how I can help them solve a business problem,” says Monica Gout, Chief Revenue Officer at True Fit. “And, then I learned that the quickest way to build trust was connecting with people individually by really understanding what they care about, their goals, their priorities, and their business.”
Monica attributes both her individual success and the success of the True Fit go-to-market team on this consultative focus of “How can I help?” rather than on the company product.
The True Fit team uses a consultative approach to differentiate itself from other sales and go-to-market teams who can get overly focused on their product, features, and functions.
Monica believes bringing that consultative way of doing business and voice into leadership conversations also helped her succeed individually in a male-dominated profession.
I had a chance to talk to Monica recently and she shared a few of her core pillars to building a consultative mindset across her go-to-market team.
1. The Consultative GTM Team ❣️
“Consultative means different things across the go-to-market team,” says Monica. “You have to recognize this to build continuity and a smooth messaging transition across marketing, sales, and customer success.”
Monica describes key elements of being consultative for each go-to-market team in this way:
- Marketing is focused on nurturing relationships around product market fit; they have to understand who they serve and effectively communicate solutions to specific problems
- Sales needs to go to the next level down and get into the why and the “so what” for each buyer; they need to run a very engaged dialogue and conversation
- Customer success has to be a trusted advisor and continue to unlock value by guiding customers on new ways to implement and leverage your solution
2. Institutionalize Collaborative Process 🤝
“There is huge value in handing off relationships smoothly between sales and marketing and sales and customer success,” Monica explains. “We have all experienced those situations where you’ve just been sold something and you are handed over to someone who has no idea why.”
At True Fit, all three go-to-market teams report to Monica, so she can set the expectation for collaboration and smooth buyer and customer hand-offs. She begins with the expectation for collaboration, and then creates processes to make collaboration predictable.
The key process to connect sales to customer success is a transfer of information (TOI) meeting. The meeting is sales led and focuses on goals, key players, and what is most important to each new customer. The meetings include sales, customer success, and delivery team members.
The key process for connecting marketing to sales focuses on inbound lead distribution and insight. Collaboration in the early pipeline means being able to track the outcomes and results — who gets each lead, how long does it take to get to demo, how leads convert to opportunities, etc.
3. Recruit for a Consultative Mindset 🧠
“We focus on recruiting individuals who are interested in a win-win approach and seeing the team and whole company do better,” concludes Monica. “Recruiting for cultural fit around this consultative mindset is key for us.”
Monica typically has a cross-functional team of four to six across sales, customer success, and marketing interviewing every candidate to really assess for cultural fit.
They want to see a strong initiative, and a go-getter mentality, but also humility and not being afraid to ask for help. Humility is key to collaboration and consultation.
Many individual sales producers are looking for ways into a leadership role. Monica’s rapid rise from line producer to CRO suggests that building a consultative mindset and consultative approach to your buyers is one of the key foundations.
Watch Monica’s and Brent’s full conversation here: