Alex Boyd’s Post

It took me 6 months before I closed my first deal. Deals started to trickle in but it wasn't fast enough. So I began documenting my journeys with each account I worked on. 6 months later, I found myself working on a framework that allowed me to gain momentum en-route to winning 63 accounts in my first 5 years as an AE. It’s a framework I use to make sure that: I don’t repeat the same mistakes again I apply things I should have I avoid things I should avoid I make sure I take the effort to close up any gaps identified by my managers, peers or myself. The Objectives: To keep myself accountable to all things concerning my sales career. The Result: Achieving momentum from my sales activities. The Rule: To find and work on a solution within the same week. That said, here’s my Lessons Learnt Framework broken down into 7 pillars: Prospecting Discovery Solution Closing Pipeline Skills Knowledge As a result: - I was more confident and clear as I knew what I was equipped with to push the deal forward. - I knew what was missing in my resources in the previous deal and got them ready for the next one. - I managed to ‘foresee’ potential pitfalls in future deals that I worked on. - I had a fat pipeline. There was more quality and quantity in my pipeline. - I began investing some time to watch YouTube videos on how I can sell better; trying them in my prospect meetings. - I was able to ‘call out’ more accurately what could be closed in the current month. (Managers would love you for this) - Also ‘call out’ what's missing and request for potential support. All these improved the sales process. And gave me more confidence in the much feared sales meetings 😅 Here's my takeaway: I'm Gen X. And naturally I was tech-averse in the beginning. So I started to jot down notes and document stuff as I go along. I admit that I'm lousy in entering updates in Salesforce CRM. But when my manager does his audit, I'll spend some time keying in these updates by copying from my scribbles. Hey, I'm not perfect 🤭 So sales pros, start documenting your sales journey and I guarantee that you'll see improvements. Do you want a template of the Lessons Learnt Framework? Leave a nice big ‘YES’ in the comments.

Providers like Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism has forced sales teams to be become lazy and outdated with how they prospect. It’s even made VCs become so black & white with sizing up a markets. If your team are doing this 🔽 they have to switch to see any decent results: 1️⃣ Heads to Sales Navigator and types in United States, Computer Software, VP of Sales, 1-500 2️⃣ Uses Cognism, Apollo or ZoomInfo to pull the list from Sales Navigator 3️⃣ Adds them to Salesloft or Outreach What happens next? 👇 4️⃣ Waits and wonders why they have 0.8% reply rate via email and a 1% call to book ratio. 5️⃣ VP or CRO gets fired as a result hence the 18-month shelf life. Why does this suck? If you take your ‘market’ the reality is that less than 3% is actually interested in buying a software or service like yours. So pulling generic lists like this is the fastest way to burn through leads that will never convert in the first place and waste your sales teams time. Lots of gurus say to personalise about golden retrievers or that you know their auntie. Some say how the offer trumps all, which can be true to an extent when paired with good timing. BUT These tactics may help you book meetings which is why people share screenshots of their Smartlead or Instsntly but if you then look at the close/won ratio it’s still a sad viewing. I’ve seen a anywhere between a 5-10% increase in Close Won Ratios with the same sales team (not improved sellers), when they focus on prospecting around either Static or Dynamic triggers. Get your personalisation and timing from this the rest follows.

Let's talk about pipeline. Why is it so important and who owns pipeline? So first of all, why is pipeline important? It's important because it's an early indication of what your future quarters are going to look like. So if your sales cycle is, say, three months, six months, nine months, you can look at your pipeline today and figure out if you're likely to quota next quarter or the one after and give you enough time to take corrective actions if needed to generate more opportunities. One of the things that's most important to talk about is what's called pipeline coverage. Pipeline coverage essentially measures how much pipeline you need to have in dollar value and in # of deals as well as what stages in order to figure out whether you're on target for the quarter or not. Typically for SaaS companies, it's somewhere between 1:4, 1:5. It depends on the quality of your pipeline. If your quality is low, your conversion rate is likely to be low and therefore you're going to need more fuel. If your quality is high, you're doing a good job at qualifying those opportunities before they get into the sales pipeline, then one to four is a good benchmark. So again, pipeline coverage gives you an indication of how your quarter is likely to end. Together with pipeline velocity, which measures how quickly new opportunities turn into deals, these metrics give you a good outlook for future quarters. Who owns pipeline? Historically It was mostly SDRs or marketing. Nowadays I think everybody owns pipeline. First of all, at least my philosophy is that AEs have SDRs and marketing to help them, but at the end of the day, they own their quota. Experienced AEs know how to partner with their SDRs, mentor them, help them focus, give them lists of target accounts and even collaborate with them on the outreach. They also know how to partner with marketing to generate lead-gen activities in their territory, whether it’s lunch-n-learns, webinars or other initiatives. They understand that those functions play a critical role in their success and know how to partner with them and drive them to a successful outcome. Pipeline can be generated from an upsell or a cross sale, selling to a new department inside an existing customer, or a referral from an existing customer, which alludes to the fact that customer success contributes to pipeline. A prospect might come as an inbound after they saw the company at the conference and Googled the company then read some blog post, and then they might have attended a webinar and downloaded some white paper and talked to a rep and disappeared for a few months and came back because an SDR or an AE was nurturing them. This is just a journey or one lead. An account today might include multiple leads and so it is being touched by so many people, therefore, again, everybody is responsible for generating pipeline. 

Edit: I was wrong. This is good for Q1 pipeline. Not gonna help you hit # in Q4. Glad Ryan Reisert called me out. Fastest unlock for most outbound sales teams to help hit their number in Q4 If your sales team is having about 5 live call connects a day each Go into ZoomInfo (if you aren't, I'll explain an alternative below) Pull a list of 100 prospects for each rep with direct dial phone numbers... BUT only select prospects with the fire icon AKA they are likely to respond Write up a simple Josh Braun / Justin Michael phone script FIRSTNAME LASTNAME? Who's in charge of (whatever their title is responsible for)? How are you solving (problem your product solves for)? Sequence structure Linkedin profile view to confirm fits ICP 1 email (just ask 1 question) 5 call attempts... just 1 voicemail Check your numbers and calling time, you should be hitting 15-30% connect rates. DON'T focus on the calls on booking meetings if they are new. Just focus on learning what they LIKE about solving the problem today Anyone who is in a buying cycle will start complaining Let them complain and they'll take a meeting Record a 90 second video explaining how you solve the key problem informed by the convos you have, then call back 1 week later. If you're in Apollo.io or another tool that doesn't have phone validation yet... just go with TaskMinions Cloudlead.co Outplay, they can get you lists in under a week. Edit: As Ryan Reisert pointed out, no, I have not rigorously tested this at scale with a sales team. I did see one BDR have 20 connects in 4 hours of calling, so for the average Zoominfo using team, this would be a massive shift in their sales team. Phone Ready Leads® also has a pricier solution where they'll call blitz with your team and give you phone ready leads, which is like 5-10x more expensive but also the gold standard in qualify It might expose that your sales team is not that good at cold calls: that's OK. Now you can start solving the next biggest problem... which is cold call skills. We're launching a program to 2x outbound meetings in 90 days for 5 sales teams. We'll implement this system as well as 4-6 other systems in your outbound sales team to unlock more conversations at meetings. DM me if you want in

For those np customer side. Always useful to learn how (good) sales peeps approach things…

I’m turning 40 next month. I’ve been in sales for 17 years and managed 100s of AEs. Here are the top 10 things I wish I’d known when starting out: 1. Sellers don’t close deals, buyers do. Obsess with buyers’ internal meetings as much as your sales meetings. Tie your actions to the critical tasks they need to complete to build consensus internally, not your sales stages. 2. Having all calls on the calendar ≠ control (!). It is the illusion of control. If calls aren’t balanced with a good between-meeting buyer enablement workflow, you’ll most likely end up surprised. 3. Your role is not to just execute your sales stages, but offer ‘Project Management Services’ to your buyers’ stages. The sales stages are there to offer a good foundation to go back to, but they cover only 5-17% of your buyers’ stages… 4. Budget rarely is a reason to qualify out. Nobody wakes up with a budget set aside for the thing you sell. "No budget" simply means they haven’t found a good enough reason to create one yet. Unless they’re too small, in which case, why are you having a sales call? 5. Multithreading is more than how many people are on your calls/emails. That’s a vanity metric. It’s about building relationships with each key stakeholder separately to support their specific needs/requirements/concerns. That’s what moves the needle. 6. Structured deep discovery doesn’t work well in executive calls. You *have to* lead with stories, teach them something new, and let a conversation develop. If you try to have conversations first, they’ll tune off. 7. You *cannot* run Outbound intro calls like it’s Inbound. Lead with discovery on the latter. Lead with insights on the first (like w/execs). It’s ok to use slides if they serve the discovery. It’s even OK to demo before you have all the pain points figured out. As long as it all serves the discovery. 8. Only in a perfect role-play can you get all disco done in an intro call. If you try too hard, you end up with angry prospects. Worry less about the letters in your framework, and more about having a meaningful conversation around ‘why do anything’, ‘why now’ and ‘why you’. The rest only helps you and can come later. 9. Nothing cuts down deal cycles like dictating a high rhythm of communication. Received an email? Answer from your phone right away. Talking next steps? Offer a call tomorrow. Discussed timelines/MAP? Recap that on every follow-up. It’s not a sales trick, it’s sociology, human nature. 10. Never begin a POC without executive alignment. On the scope, success criteria, and the problem and priorities the project addresses. Explain to your champion how getting execs involved helps get their voices heard before putting in all the resources that a POC requires. Make it about them, not you. ——— Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Make mistakes and learn. But make sure to learn from other people’s mistakes first. What do you think’s missing? What hard-learned lessons would you give your younger self?

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📞 Booked 7 outbound meetings last week 📞 All via cold call. All on Monday and Tuesday. Another solid week, but heavily lopsided towards the beginning of the week. Found the last few days of the week tough, which I attribute to it being EoQ. Sales leaders were harder to reach, and when I did reach them, I was overcome with more objections than usual. I made 1062 dials - 462 were made on Wednesday (a lot for one day lol) but were for a side project I was helping my marketing team with. Thus, I didn't log any dispositions since I wasn't trying to book meetings. An area of improvement for me --> callback connects. I wasn't able to connect with anyone who gave me a callback. A lot of this can be explained by the fact that I was on an active call, the caller quickly hung up after dialing, or I was not logged into Orum at the time. However, there were at least a few I should have been able to get, and the conversion on these tends to be higher than usual. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘀 (𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆, 𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗹/𝗟𝗜 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗱) 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸: - 7 meetings booked - 600 dials - 4% connect rate - 62.5% connect-to-conversation rate - 46.7% conversation-to-meeting booked rate 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲: - Connect rate ⬆ (4% vs 3.6% in trailing 90 days) - Connect-to-conversation rate ⬇ (62.5% vs 65.2% in trailing 90 days) - Conversation-to-meeting booked rate ⬆ (46.7% vs 29.3% in trailing 90 days) - Dials ⬆ (1062 vs 796 weekly average in trailing 90 days)*** ***I included all 1062 dials made since it was still part of my weekly activity. 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹: - None 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗜 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹: - Personas --> 2nd Level+ Sales, RevOps, and SalesDev Leaders - Industries --> Software Development, IT Services / Consulting, Computer / Network Security - Org Size --> 500 - 10k employees #coldcalling #coldcalls #bdrs #sdrs #salesdevelopment #weeklyrecap

I sketched this a little while ago. Something happens on almost every sales call I sit at the moment… It’s been the same for the last 6 months or so, and it’s happening more & more frequently… It looks a bit like this: Me: So, what’s working well for you at the moment? Prospect: We’ve always sent a lot of cold emails, and have had success with that historically Me: Historically? Prospect: Well, it used to work really well, but it’s just getting harder & harder to get results... Me: What do you mean by that? Prospect: Response rates have dropped massively, the quality of the leads who do respond is crap, and meeting show-up rates are the lowest they’ve been… … It’s almost predictable that this (or similar) is said in my sales meetings. Especially in the SaaS space. Most people’s answer is to just send more & more emails… But the issue is the channel. It’s completely saturated. And the more emails everyone sends, the more saturated it becomes. For everyone. The answer is to look at which channels are least saturated, and put some time & money into trying something different. I believe the most success this year is going to come from: -> Cold calling -> Direct mail Especially a combination of the two. In other words - more human, real world, approaches. It’s what stands out.

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