Insights

Leveraging trusted relationships through channel partnerships is one of the easiest ways to break through to buyers who are being bombarded with information from social, digital, and traditional media.  “Channel partnerships have become more important than ever,” says...

No one really cares about your product. That is, unless it solves an important problem for them. That is why skill #2 in our Sales 3.0 Series is building your expertise with micro-presentations highly tailored to each buyer’s goal to replace a product pitch. The sales...

AI has sparked both excitement and apprehension. With its ability to automate tasks, process vast amounts of data, and mimic some human characteristics, AI has already started to transform business and will continue to do so. As far as the sales profession, I have...

Land and Expand is a key growth strategy for any multi-product company. Less obvious is that the #1 driver of land-expand success is the go-to-market leadership team’s mindset. “There are lots of things that have to be well aligned for land and expand to work,” says...

Sales 3.0 Series, Skill #1: Start every sales conversation with discovery, rediscovery, or confirmation on your buyer’s why. Why are they talking to you? The sales profession is still recovering from the disaster of the Sales 2.0 period (2011 to 2019).   Sellers were...

Creating faster account expansion is always a priority, particularly in a challenging economy. The key to expansion is continual discovery across your entire go-to-market (GTM) team. “Rather than being siloed focusing on a single product, you have to always connect to...

We are in a Sales 3.0 world. Your mindset drives your performance. But, there is a catch.   Almost all your sales training has created the wrong mindset -- a mindset in which the seller journey dominates the buyer journey.   Below I share four sales practices that...

Customer Success (CS) has become vital to sustainable sales growth. Recent headlines tell the story: "Why Customer Success is the Future of Revenue Growth" and "Why Customer Success is Vital to the Future of Sales."  So why is this? This strategic role of customer...

For growth-driven businesses, the buyer journey needs to take priority over the seller journey. “We have to think about accountability to the buyer for each go-to-market team,” says Roderick Jefferson, author of Sales Enablement 3.0. “It cannot be about sales above...

Curiosity is an important skill for all of us, but not so much in our sales conversations. Great selling is based a lot more on consistency than it is on curiosity or creativity. I am thinking about this because a CRO recently shared his view that improving curiosity...

“What’s the one thing that will make you more successful?” Mastering that simple question in your buyer conversations will make the difference between top and mediocre sales performance. All sales and deal velocity comes from helping a buyer see a path to a more...

Customer success teams are in an ideal position to orchestrate expansion sales. And, staying anchored on customer value makes expansions a role-aligned activity.  “Our first focus always is providing value to our customers,” says Leslie Ortego, VP of Customer Success...

I am back in Latin America with my family. It is a place I love. It is a place of so many formative experiences stretching back several decades. It was in Latin America that I learned what it meant to be the “other.”   As an eight year old, I was one of two white kids...

You have probably heard of a Total Addressable Market (TAM), but how about the less commonly discussed Total Reachable Market (TRM)? It’s an important concept that will have big implications on how GTM teams ‘do more with less’ in this economic cycle that requires...

An account-based marketing strategy (ABM) is a “people-based process.” You have to ensure your whole internal field team is educated first before you can effectively educate buyers. That’s how Zora Senat, Chief Commercial Officer at Verisk Marketing Solutions (VMS),...

I used to think I was naturally empathetic, then a family member’s crisis showed otherwise. I have always been curious about other people, what makes them tick, and what they need. I listen actively, recap often, and make sure everyone is included in the conversation....

Account expansion is hard, right? Maybe not. Hilary Riley, VP of Partner Success at Mainstay, has a more strategic approach to account expansion – it is all about working a mutual success plan. “You have to make sure you regularly go back up to the balcony and take a...

It’s been a long, often lonely, journey. But I’ve found my tribe. I started my professional career as a Ph.D. social scientist doing qualitative research for a decade at Stanford and the RAND Corporation. I loved the focus in the Academy on learning, evidence-based...

There is a persistent disconnect across Go To Market teams. Does any of this sound familiar? Marketing develops branding and messaging that isn't used by DemandGen or Sales  BDR teams set meetings that Sales views as poorly qualified and a waste of time Sales develops...

Today will be interesting. I have to tell a CEO that “yes, he really does need to lead go-to-market strategy.” Revenue team alignment has to replace revenue team acrimony. I want to be as polite as possible. But, wow, conflict between these sales, marketing, and...

For ABC Fitness, like many businesses, the pandemic was a do-or-die moment. Unlike other businesses, ABC used the crisis as a moment of opportunity to get better and stronger. “We took that time to really think through a lot of our strategy and our approach to sales,”...

Simple story, important insight. Your customers are the source of all truth. I was connected with a CEO working to turn around a company with a disruptive video infrastructure technology. They’d quickly gotten to $1MM in ARR then stalled. This CEO had a previous exit,...

Personalization is a human skill. When we focus first on others, we do better ourselves. Few individuals demonstrate this principle in such a compelling way as Kimberly Moore, Co-founder, and CEO of Go Together. She has had great success as a line sales producer,...

One simple thing sets top revenue teams apart from other teams. They get buyers to answer this question: “What is holding you back from reaching your goals?” The focus on gap discovery leads to top performance for at least four reasons. The first is that it anchors...

“We do that already!” blurted out the VP of Marketing and VP of Sales almost in unison at a once promising $10M MarTech company.   Growth had flatlined. So, a board member asked me to answer a seemingly complex question:  “Why is this promising company underperforming...

“In the early 1900s, sales was a trusted and admired profession,” explains Todd Caponi, author of The Transparent Sales Leader and The Transparency Sale, “so much so that President Woodrow Wilson took time to keynote a 1916 national sales conference during World War...

I had a verbal altercation on Christmas Eve. It was a valuable reminder that the “flight or fight” response wired into our brains is toxic. I was on my usual running route that morning. I had just stepped off the curb into a crosswalk. Out of the corner of my eye, I...

“It is now cheaper to build your own audience than to sponsor. But to stand out, you need to find a niche that a group of people really cares about, and go deep on that topic,” posits Chris Savage, Founder, CEO at Wistia, a B2B video marketing company. We’re all...

“I’m not sure Winalytics is a fit for us, but I’m glad to talk if you feel there is a fit,” emailed a VP of Sales whose CEO has expressed interest in partnering with us. My response: “If you can share the top two or three areas you’d like to see your team improve, I...

To build a culture of service to others, focus on personalization. Anyone who has ever volunteered with teens on soup lines will know exactly what I mean. One type of teen will show up on time and do everything asked of them, but do very little to engage patrons they...

“We should always be pushing ourselves and our customers to grow and do better,” is how Marci Trares, VP of Customer Success at Activator, opened our conversation about the Customer Success (CS) team's role in supporting revenue growth. All CS leaders understand their...

“I delete hundreds of emails every day, but I responded to yours. So, let’s get going.” That is how the CEO of an industrial automation company began a meeting with me at a recent  conference. His interest was piqued, but he was also in a hurry to get to the point. It...

I am a 2nd degree black belt. I got there by always checking my ego at the dojo door. I started karate at 47 to have an activity I could do with my then 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.   At the beginning, I was bad, really bad - the bottom quarter of any given...

“The best marketing strategy is helping people,” says Daniel Cmejla, VP of Community and Brand at Chili Piper. “Since we are all wired for connection, one of the easiest ways to help is to support authentic community development.” Daniel defines an authentic community...

Last week, I was in a closing call with a new enterprise client. At one point, the Director of North American Sales, who was part of the buying group, broke into this huge smile. “I love that you just did a ‘trial’ close,” he said. “It was awesome the way you stepped...

If we build it, they will come… This is the PLG (product-led growth) story. Here’s a little secret: the PLG model is more human-led growth (HLG) than product-led growth. PLG works when product, success, and marketing teams work together, effectively with an agile...

“Sooner or later, everything old is new again” was the saying running through my mind as I interviewed Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO at Casted, about amplified marketing. “An amplified marketing strategy starts with having great conversations,” says Lindsay. “The more human...

Relationship-first leaders set their teams up to underperform. Sounds callous, but it’s true. Strong leadership begins with setting clear, actionable goals and then leveraging relationships to enable each team member to achieve their top potential. I am thinking about...

If your experience is like mine, “breaking through the noise” to reach buyers is getting harder and harder. We are seeing companies produce great content and still feel like they are struggling to capture mindshare. It is for this reason that I was thrilled to learn...

Growth mindset is not enough. Because one alone cannot achieve business excellence. This is a lesson I was introduced to early in my career. But it took me years to figure it out. Six months into my very first revenue leadership role, my CEO sat me down and said:...

Your ego has many costs.   For sales and customer success teams, the biggest cost is revenue. The more you make your conversations about you, your company, and your product, the more you will lose new logo deals, renewals, and expansion opportunities. The more you...

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...

We are on the cusp of recession -- if we are not already in one -- so what is a sales leader to do? We have to stay focused on what we can control. A recent survey from Jimney revealed that 65% of us are worried about a recession. In fact, it’s one of the top concerns...

The temptation to sell on ROI is understandable. Upwards of 60% of sales end with a “no” decision because buyers don’t see enough value in making a change. The status quota is a formidable obstacle. But, here’s the thing, selling on ROI actually hurts your chances of...

Buying is now a team sport. Selling needs to be as well. “To engage and convert more ideal customers, align your sales and marketing teams around an ‘always be helping’ philosophy,” says Johan Abadie, Chief Marketing Officer at ProcessMaker. “It is no longer sales or...

Agile is the new sales methodology. Go-to-market (GTM) teams can learn a lot from software developers. Many of us know that modern software development is all about designing, developing, testing, and iterating based on systematic feedback loops. When executed well,...

The simplest way to improve your deal velocity? Get to a buyer success statement. Think of the success statement as your buyer’s why. It recaps in two or three sentences what will motivate your buyer to purchase from you. A success statement leads to higher deal...

Top business leaders drive growth with a mix of ambition and humility. That’s a hard balance, but according to Amer Kaissi the author of Humbitious: The Power of Low Ego, High Drive Leadership, it is exactly what sets great leaders apart. “Humility plus ambition is a...

If you are on a sales or GTM team, like it or not, buyers are now in charge! To create engagement and deal momentum, you have to put your buyers and their goals first. So, how do you put Buyers First? I talked recently with Carole Mahoney at Unbound Growth to answer...

A hyper-personalized buyer experience is typically associated with B2C companies and the consumer journey. No longer. It has become equally important for strong B2B growth. I recently spoke to Pouyan Salehi, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Scratchpad,...