Sales RX Podcast

So you've made it through discovery and now you're onto your product demo. Especially if you have a technical product, you're most likely leaning on a solutions engineer to co-sell with you.

The problem with most sales demos, is there are not standards and expectations set to help efforts scale. Sometimes your demo counterpart can turn into a technical admin rather than the co-seller you need.

Typically, this is by no fault of the sellers themselves, but of a faulty understanding of the benefits of solutions engineers and their role in the sales process.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn:

• The core functions of a solutions engineer
• The role that solutions engineers play in the sales process
• Best practices for co-selling with a solutions engineer on a demo

As we’ve finished the first month of the new year, you’re likely getting a look at what habits are sticking and which ones aren’t. Is it no surprise you might be slumping back to your status quo of November & December (the months that made you want to make a change)?

Managers can play a vital role in helping their contributors develop new habits professionally to ensure their success in the new year. As for IC’s it’s important to get an internal view of what should a good routine look like in sales and what the habits inside of that routine I should be focusing on.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn:

• How to get over the procrastination of starting new habits
• Support methods to create fool-proof systems for building new habits
• A sample set of what a great day in sales looks like with a framework of habits that will double their production

Even though we don't live in the candidate market we once did - hiring, onboarding, and training are still just as important as in the blank check era of 2020-2022.

The problem is, that it feels like there are no really good benchmarks for what works, and many people are just ad-hoc putting together programs based on crowdsourced insight.

To effectively onboard sellers, we need to understand what works, why it works, and how to implement it which both of our guests will be talking about on this episode.

Money is not the biggest motivator. It can help, but it’s not the only reason team members choose to stick around at a company. Jim Rohn said, “The greatest value in life is not what you get; the greatest value in life is what you become.”

If we don’t create a healthy company culture that centers around the continuous development of our team members, they will have no problem taking $5,000 a year to go work somewhere else.

The biggest problem companies face is feeling there’s not enough time to commit to the right level of development needed to boost morale and create consistent performance. The reality is, that there is enough bandwidth but we unfortunately mix training and coaching with support while forgetting to segment the three.

In today's episode, viewers will learn:

• What a proper training and development cadence look like for individual contributors
• How sales enablement can get a seat at the table with the other department heads
• Metrics and KPIs to measure the effectiveness of your professional development program

The first 30 days of a sales rep are some of the most overloaded but important weeks of their career at your company. The average sales rep takes 3 months to ramp up and nearly 10 months before they are profitable with the company. With average tenures being less than 18 months, that means you have only about 8 months of productive selling time with reps.

This is a big problem for organizations especially when you consider a bad sales hire costs a company up to 70% of the seller's annual revenue goals. To solve this companies need to speed up their rep’s time to value by moving them faster through the onboarding process and putting practices in place to help them retain and enact sales strategies more consistently.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn about:

• How to provide a more engaging onboarding experience instead of just throwing reps into hours of Zoom calls accompanied by pages of documentation.
• The metrics behind onboarding and speed to value of a rep's quota and the effect it has on the business unit.
• What a great onboarding plan looks like and the mindset to instill in a rep during that process.

With the recent changes to Gmail and Yahoo's email deliverability policies, hyper-growth outbound might hit a roadblock.

Since spam reporting rates are lowered, and domain sending limits are hampered, sales is going to have to spend even more time being intentional with their outreach.

Could this be the resurgence of cold calling in a post-COVID world, or will social media automated outreach replace spammy email inboxes?

In this episode, Chet and Billy are going to have a discussion about what the changes coming to email deliverability are, why we got here, what sales teams are going to have to think about, and ways to overcome this roadblock to hyper-outbound sales motions.

Right now NRR is such a big part of the conversation, and with CAC being so high it makes sense to balance it out with a higher LTV. But unfortunately, what does that mean for sales teams?

We have to solve for high customer acquisition costs and with fewer dollars to compete in a market where fewer dollars are being spent, it's time to get creative with our pipeline generation.

One of the most common ways companies are finding success is by building out the right channels for partnerships. This could be companies that integrate into your ecosystem providing their customers the most optimal results by partnering with you and vice versa.

It could also be building out affiliates and ambassadors to help spread the good word, send qualified leads, and reap the benefits alongside your sales team.

We all know referrals close at a higher rate than cold outbound and even most inbound leads from a website or gated content, and this focus should be front and center for all revenue teams walking into 2024.

Is high churn a sales or CS problem? Are salespeople selling features that don’t exist, or are our customer success managers dropping the ball on supporting and making the customer successful?

Could it be as simple as failing to effectively hand off the deal from department to department?

Think about it…Sales spend anywhere from 30-120 days and beyond with their deals. Then in the blink of an eye, those deals are handed off (sometimes blindly or with little context) to another team responsible for the next 12 months of customer success.

In today's episode, viewers will learn about:

• How sellers can cross-collaborate effectively with customer success in the sales process to set their team up for success.
• How much involvement should sales have in post-sales customer onboarding and implementation?
• What good customer success handoff looks like and how to connect the dots for closed-won deals from prospect to customer

Marketing is becoming harder than ever for GTM teams. With fewer dollars to be spent on even fewer dollars to be acquired, creativity and innovation are going to play a big part for marketing teams in 2024.

Thanks to the Predictable Revenue model, SDRs are the backbone of demand generation in sales-centric organizations.

Even if they are responsible for calling out on inbound requests to filter out unqualified opps, they play a big part in helping pipeline growth be efficient.

Lately, there has been quite a bit of chatter about the model and whether buyers want to start at the top of the funnel by having conversations with junior salespeople, or if it’s time to move to a full-cycle sales motion.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn about:

• The pros and cons of having roles specialize in certain functions of the sales funnel
• Best practices to align SDR and AE relationships when it comes to prospecting and deal handoff
• Opportunity qualification criteria that should be used to decide what dictates a qualified opportunity for AEs

Nobody gets to where they want to go by following the status quo. Jim Rohn said, “Show me what is on a person’s bookshelf, and I can tell you how much they have in their bank account.”

If you’re an individual contributor, accelerating your learning above your cohorts will give you a leg up on your growth trajectory.

As a Senior Leader, understanding how to create a great program to develop your individual contributors is key to creating internal promotion paths.

In today's episode, viewers will learn about:

• How to prioritize what areas of development they want to focus on
• Different formats and mediums for professional development
• Unique ways to accelerate your ability to learn

Unfortunately, most sales managers only became managers because they were good at their job. They never learn how to be good managers and leaders. Because of this, only 1 out of every 4 managers has never had official training or consistent coaching to get better at their job.

Being someone worth working for can either make or break your ability to accelerate your career.

For executives, it’s important to outline a path of development for first-time managers because they are leading the frontline of your sales team.

Your ability to hit revenue targets depends on how well you can enable these first-time managers and provide the level of coaching needed to help them be someone worth working for.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn about:

• What the first 90 days as a frontline manager should look like
• The difference between training, coaching, management, and leadership
• How to manage reps through personal struggle and avoid scapegoating performance issues

Especially in a tough economy, it can be hard to find opportunities for promotion.

If you are someone striving to climb the ranks and grow your professional career, you have to learn how to have effective conversations with your manager, and other department heads, and build your internal brand regarding the optics of how you are perceived in the company.

In today’s episode, viewers will learn about:

• The importance of creating better dialogue with their manager and senior leaders
• Unique ways to facilitate creating dialogue with those higher-ups
• How to leverage feedback in 1:1s to make the case for your career trajectory within the company

With the spike in salespeople looking to integrate AI into their sales efforts to reach more prospects in a shorter amount of time, there’s a flurry of new ideas, processes, and tools that are making their way to the surface.

What works, what doesn’t, and how is AI going to impact my job as a salesperson?

In today’s episode, viewers will learn about:

• The legitimacy of AI tech for salespeople
• The short and long-term impact of AI in sales
• How to talk about AI products for sellers
• AI sales tools you can start using in your process today

Travis is the Sr. Digital Content Producer for PandaDoc. Over the course of two years, he's taken the company's LinkedIn page from 15,000 followers to over 100,000.

In today's episode, we are going to discuss how brands can generate more awareness by creating content by leveraging their internal teams to support published content on social media and focus on connecting with their audience instead of being embarrassed by their sense of humor.

Ryan is the VP of Outbound Strategy with Apex Revenue and the Founder of Phone Ready Leads as well as the Co-Author of "Outbound Sales, No Fluff".

In today's episode, we talk about why people think cold calling is dead, a better approach to cold calling to revive it, and how to handle the preparation behind cold calling that can accelerate your outbound conversion rates.

Caspian is an Associate Sales Engineer at Gong after having risen the ranks from SDR to Senior SDR.

In today's episode, we talk about unique selling strategies that anyone doing cold outreach can rely on to help them hit their pipeline generation targets as it gets tougher to get in touch with prospects.

John is a 3X revenue executive who is the Executive Director of Brand at Club Colors. He's also the host of the In The Club Podcast.

In today's episode, we talk about team selling and building personal branding through content creation to establish trust and familiarity with potential prospects.

In addition to being an Advisor and Seed Stage investor, Tommy is the Founder & CEO of Rhythm, an AI revenue modeling tool to help sales leaders align with their CFOs.

In today's episode, we talk about how leadership can be refined to create consistent and accountable actions through the education of sales quotas to their reps.

Ajinkya is the Co-Founder of Trellus a live call coaching tool that leverages AI to help reps convert more leads into sales-qualified opportunities.

In today's episode, we talk about how AI can be integrated into cold calling, call coaching, and even determine the best metrics for success when cold calling.

Clayton is a product marketing manager at Meta and a private contractor helping marketing better craft their product narratives.

In today's episode, we talk about how product marketers can better align with the sales team, get feedback, and create incredible product marketing that gets buyers into the sales funnel.

Amelia is the Evangelist and GTM Strategist for regie.ai as well as an advisor for multiple early-stage companies.

In today's episode, we talk about the power of community for the professional growth of individuals and revenue growth for B2B companies and how training and skill development can help overcome a tough economy.

Eric is the Chief Marketing Officer at CIENCE, Podcast Host of the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast, and a 4X C-Level Marketing Leader.

In today's episode, we discuss how we can use inbound demand that never converted into outbound lists that double down on marketing's lead acquisition efforts and expands your marketing ROI.

Eric is the Chief Marketing Officer at CIENCE, Podcast Host of the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast, and a 4X C-Level Marketing Leader.

In today's episode, we discuss how we can use inbound demand that never converted into outbound lists that double down on marketing's lead acquisition efforts and expands your marketing ROI.

Eric is the Chief Marketing Officer at CIENCE, Podcast Host of the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast, and a 4X C-Level Marketing Leader.

In today's episode, we discuss how we can use inbound demand that never converted into outbound lists that double down on marketing's lead acquisition efforts and expands your marketing ROI.

Eric is the Chief Marketing Officer at CIENCE, Podcast Host of the Enterprise Sales Development Podcast, and a 4X C-Level Marketing Leader.

In today's episode, we discuss how we can use inbound demand that never converted into outbound lists that double down on marketing's lead acquisition efforts and expand your marketing ROI.

Scott is the Founder & CEO of scaleMatters the world's first Go-To-Market Optimization platform that helps B2B marketing and sales.

In today's episode, we discuss the importance of A/B testing and what Scott calls "Conscious Iteration", and the guidelines that should be set when creating any new type of process or strategy.

Scott is the Founder & CEO of scaleMatters the world's first Go-To-Market Optimization platform that helps B2B marketing and sales.

In today's episode, we discuss the importance of A/B testing and what Scott calls "Conscious Iteration", and the guidelines that should be set when creating any new type of process or strategy.

Scott is the Founder & CEO of scaleMatters the world's first Go-To-Market Optimization platform that helps B2B marketing and sales.

In today's episode, we discuss the importance of A/B testing and what Scott calls "Conscious Iteration", and the guidelines that should be set when creating any new type of process or strategy.

Scott is the Founder & CEO of scaleMatters the world's first Go-To-Market Optimization platform that helps B2B marketing and sales.

In today's episode, we discuss the importance of A/B testing and what Scott calls "Conscious Iteration", and the guidelines that should be set when creating any new type of process or strategy.

Ronen is a LinkedIn top voice for cold calling in 2023, and the Founder of Ronen Pessar Advisory.

Ronen is a LinkedIn top voice for cold calling in 2023, and the Founder of Ronen Pessar Advisory.

Ronen is a LinkedIn top voice for cold calling in 2023, and the Founder of Ronen Pessar Advisory.

Ronen is a LinkedIn top voice for cold calling in 2023, and the Founder of Ronen Pessar Advisory.

Garren is the Chief Video Experiences Nerd at Deskrig, helping companies and individuals deliver a better virtual experience through their virtual presence via video.

In today's episode, we discuss how companies and employees who are interacting with others via video can increase their quality and deliver a better virtual presence to their buyers.

Garren is the Chief Video Experiences Nerd at Deskrig, helping companies and individuals deliver a better virtual experience through their virtual presence via video.

In today's episode, we discuss how companies and employees who are interacting with others via video can increase their quality and deliver a better virtual presence to their buyers.

Garren is the Chief Video Experiences Nerd at Deskrig, helping companies and individuals deliver a better virtual experience through their virtual presence via video.

In today's episode, we discuss how companies and employees who are interacting with others via video can increase their quality and deliver a better virtual presence to their buyers.

Garren is the Chief Video Experiences Nerd at Deskrig, helping companies and individuals deliver a better virtual experience through their virtual presence via video.

In today's episode, we discuss how companies and employees who are interacting with others via video can increase their quality and deliver a better virtual presence to their buyers.

Dan is the Founder & CEO of TruCommish a company that helps create pay transparency between companies and their sales reps.

In today's episode, we discuss the battle for fair wages, compensations, and severance as more and more performance-compensated sellers are being laid off in droves.

Dan is the Founder & CEO of TruCommish a company that helps create pay transparency between companies and their sales reps.

In today's episode, we discuss the battle for fair wages, compensations, and severance as more and more performance-compensated sellers are being laid off in droves.

Dan is the Founder & CEO of TruCommish a company that helps create pay transparency between companies and their sales reps.

In today's episode, we discuss the battle for fair wages, compensations, and severance as more and more performance-compensated sellers are being laid off in droves.

Dan is the Founder & CEO of TruCommish a company that helps create pay transparency between companies and their sales reps.

In today's episode, we discuss the battle for fair wages, compensations, and severance as more and more performance-compensated sellers are being laid off in droves.

Collin is the VP of Sales at Leadium and the host of his own sales podcast The Sales Transformation Podcast.

Today we are going to discuss how teams can be more effective during their sales process by understanding a buyer's personality and how to align your skillset and reps to the right buyers.

Collin is the VP of Sales at Leadium and the host of his own sales podcast The Sales Transformation Podcast.

Today we are going to discuss how teams can be more effective during their sales process by understanding a buyer's personality and how to align your skillset and reps to the right buyers.

Collin is the VP of Sales at Leadium and the host of his own sales podcast The Sales Transformation Podcast.

Today we are going to discuss how teams can be more effective during their sales process by understanding a buyer's personality and how to align your skillset and reps to the right buyers.

Collin is the VP of Sales at Leadium and the host of his own sales podcast The Sales Transformation Podcast.

Today we are going to discuss how teams can be more effective during their sales process by understanding a buyer's personality and how to align your skillset and reps to the right buyers.