The results speak for themselves. We worked with two AI/ML Co-Founders and helped them create their custom GTM Teaching Conversation. They shared with me 18 months later that they used the Teaching Conversation to successfully land their first thirty subscription clients representing approx. $3M in ARR.

And they did this without needing to raise any external VC investments. Please contact me if you’re interested in learning how we can help you build a kick ass Teaching Convo that just wins!

The post How Effective is the Teaching Conversation? first appeared on True Sales Results.

We leverage our proven Go to Market (GTM) Sales Strategy and Field Execution methodology to deliver optimal sales performance. Understading that in 2023, Investors are most keenly interested in the Time to Profitability. This is a hard pivot from the “Grown at all Costs” startup-mantra of the recent past.

How do we work with Investors?

There are a variety of different ways that we work with Investors and provide value. Our diverse services offerings for Investors range from:

• Sales Due Diligence Analysis (Pre Investment)
• GTM Sales Strategy
• Sales Performance Optimization
• Best in Class Sales Enablement & Sales Training
• Sales Coaching and Mentoring (Indiviudal and Team based)

We have extensive expertise working with scores of early stage startup introducing truly disruptive technology to the Enterprisemarket (Fortune 1000/Global 2000). Our startup client company roster includes: AI/ML, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, HealthTech, FinTech, and Cyber Security companies.

Want to learn more?

Let’s set up an introductory call to learn more about your needs as an investor and how TSR can best help you address them. What do you have to GAIN?

The post True Sales Result (TSR for Institutional lnvestors) first appeared on True Sales Results.

• Deals are taking longer to close (60 days – 120 days)
• More Deals are ending up in the dreaded “No Decision” state (67%)
• Less Sales Reps are attaining their annual sales quotas (64%)
• Inadequate Sales Pipelines (1.5X-2X vs. 3X-5X target)
• Taking too long to ramp up new Sales Hires (9 months+)

Does this sound familiar? What if I told you that I just made it up. Well not really… as I talk to SaaS Sales Leaders every day and they are my customers that we partner with to help solve their biggest sales problems. But I did make up the recent research study and the cited statistics.

My point here is that there is a HUGE difference between anecdotal evidence (e.g., gut feel) and statistically significant empirically researched facts. I had the best College Professor for both Statistics I and Statistics II. He actually found a way to make being a Math nerd cool.

At the start of the semester in Stats I, I would sit in the very last row of a huge lecture hall that sat 200 students in ridiculously uncomfortable wooden chairs that squeaked every time you moved. I would attempt to quietly drink my giant Dunkin’ Donuts (Double D’s to any self respecting Bostonian) coffee while reading the Boston Globe Sports section. My Professor had eagle eye vision and would proactively call me out to engage in Stats Q & A sessions.

I hated him for this at first. Then the requisite 50% of the Stats class would drop out of the class before the deadline because it was really hard and demanding. What did my Professor do? He made the remaining students in the class collapse into the first few rows in the massive lecture hall. No longer could I hide unnoticed in the dark back row and peacefully drink my Double D’s coffee while reading every article in the Boston Globe Sports section. Foiled! This lazy student was forced into being engaged and interactive in the class.

Professor Chakraborty loved Statistics. It was his passion in life to teach us students to at least appreciate the value of Statistics in business and life. It worked with me. I found myself looking forward to his class each week. I actually did the studying and homework for the class vs. my regular mid term and final cramming studying sessions for other classes.

One key principle that Professor Chakraborty taught us was the significance of “N” in Statistics. What is “N” and why is it so important? “N” is the sample size or number of people/companies, etc. that participated in the research or study that Statistics are commonly cited from. Here is a Wikipedia primer on Sample Size for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

Remember the Crest Toothpaste’s famous advertising and promotional campaign; “Four out of Five Dentists polled recommended Crest Toothpaste to their patients.” What if the sample size or “N” that the Market Research company that did this research for Crest only polled five Dentists? And in fact Four out of those Five Dentists that they polled did recommend Crest to their patients. Crest could extrapolate from this poll and make the claim that 80% of Dentists recommend Crest to their patients.

What’s the problem with that extrapolation? It simply is NOT a statistically empirical fact. Why? Because the sample size or “N” of 5 as a percentage of the total population of Dentists in the United States is far too smalI to infer anything with statistical confidence. In 2022, there were over 200,000 Dentists in the United States. That sample size compared to the total population of Dentists (5/200,000) equals .00000025%.

After Stats I and Stats II, I ended up working for a prominent Marketing Research company in Boston while still in College. I started off as a researcher conducting polls and surveys in malls for consumer products. Then I graduated into recruiting people to participate in high end professionally video taped Focus Groups. Finally, I was a night shift Manager where we would do outbound market research polls and surveys on behalf of our customers.

What did I learn from the owners of the Market Research firm? The whole thing is rigged! We would reverse engineer the stats and results that our clients wanted. And then we would word the surveys and polls and Focus Group questionnaires to produce the results our clients wanted. It was not unbiased and objective. We chose specific demographics to suit whatever results our clients wanted to provide as unbiased market research. We gerrymandered the sample size or “N” to suit our client’s needs and get the survey/poll results they wanted.

So next time you see a recent research study cited on LinkedIn (LI) with some associated charts full of Statistics… challenge the “N”! What sample size did they use in their research study? Is that sample size statistically significant or not compared to the total population? There are between 30,000 and 50,000 SaaS companies worldwide. When a LinkedIn Snake Oil Salesman posts an article on SaaS sales benchmarking trends with associated research/study Statistical results… what is the “N” or sample size cited in their study?

I’ve seen numerous LI posts on SaaS Sales Benchmarking studies with an “N” or sample size of 39. That means they only polled 39 SaaS companies in their study. 39 SaaS companies as a sample size out of 30,000 total SaaS companies. Your bullshit meter should be going off in full force.

Good selling!
For those that want to geek out, here is a sample size calculator from the Gold Standard for Empirical Statistical Research, Qualtrics:
https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/

The post Beware the Modern Day Snake Oil Salesman! first appeared on True Sales Results.

You’re not supposed to have favorite customers as a Consultant. But I’d be lying if I did not admit that I absolutely do have favorite customers. Two of my all time favorite customers share something in common. They both are perpetual students of the game (e.g., the Complex B2B Sales profession), yet are both world class masters of the game from a leadership and execution perspective.

That is extremely rare. To be so accomplished in terms of generating massive amounts of revenue and shareholder/investor wealth over the course of their respective careers. But still retain that elusive humility to acknowledge that there is always room to learn new and better ways and improve their execution as executive leaders (C-Suite) in Technology companies.

Our shared collective professional passion is to build and lead a Continuous Sales Learning culture in their sales organizations. We have collaborated on designing and building out a Continuous Sales Learning platform and program to deliver this. This is beyond sales enablement and an onboarding program. This is different than just experiential Sales Bootcamp Training and great Sales Playbooks.

This is all about institutionalizing Continuous Sales Learning into the very fabric of your sales culture. This is the foundational pillar to building and scaling a world class, high performing sales organization that attracts, develops and retains the top sales and sales leadership talent out there. Sales becomes your distinct competitive advantage.

This is the first in a series of posts that I’ll be writing on this topic that is so near and dear to me. Imagine a world where anyone of your sales team members at anytime could respond to a bot prompt asking; “What do you want to learn today?”. How impactful would that be?

The post Continuous Sales Learning first appeared on True Sales Results.

1. Opportunity: There are the select few Sales Leaders that actually see an opportunity in the chaos and economic downturn that we’re experiencing in SaaS Tech Sales. They see the opportunity to upgrade their sales talent. They see the opportunity to distinguish themselves from their competitors by investing in their sales team to optimize their sales performance via technology (AI) and through a vastly improved qualification process (e.g., NOT BANT!). The great value investor Warren Buffett always buys when everyone else is selling and panicking. There are always great value stocks and sales people that become available during a Bear market.

2. Building Deeper Customer Relationships: Enterprise customers are always striving to cut the number of high tech vendors they work with… not expand them. Particularly in an economic downturn where SaaS renewals and churn will likely increase precipitously. Building more meaningful customer relationships will be paramount to all SaaS companies over the next 18-24 months. Do you really know your customers? Or are they just an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that you sell to? What do your customers really think of you as a business partner? It’s time to ask yourselves as Sales Leaders the hard questions that the inferior Sales Leaders are afraid to ask themselves.

3. Business Outcomes: Stop selling features and capabilities. The customer could care less about your cool, whiz bang features (real world customer quote from one of my Exec Buyer customer interviews). They only care about the business outcomes that your solution drives and enables that are important to their business. For example, I recently heard the CISO from Levi Strauss say on a Webcast… “tell me how you’re going to help me sell more jeans. Not how your Cyber Security technology is going to prevent from being breached.”

4. Build a Winning Sales Coaching Program: Think like a highly successful Football Coach like Bill Belichick (New England Patriots) or Nick Saban (University of Alabama). They have built a coaching system and framework for consistent success… year after year. They are incredibly adept at recruiting people that fit their system and will be successful. They adapt “in game” (e.g., analogous to “in a sales process”) better than their competitors and as such, are able to overcome early point deficits and win the game at the end. They out prepare, out practice and out scout their competition. Open Disclaimer: I am a die hard New England Patriots fan having grown up in Massachusetts and living in Boston for 12 years between College and early business career.

My son played football growing up in the East Bay of San Francisco from 4th grade through High School. I was a coach or assistant coach for many of his football teams over the years. Rob Ryan had just been hired to be the Defensive Coordinator for the Oakland Raiders. He had just spent four (4) years as the Linebackers Coach for the NE Patriots. During his tenure, they had won two (2) Super Bowls and ranked 1st in NFL scoring defense (both points allowed and points scored by a Defense). He gave the football season kick off speech when my son was in in middle school. I stalked him at the hot dog shack and ended up chatting with him for 15-20 minutes about what makes the NE Patriots so consistently great. He laughed and said it’s all Belichick. He shared with me that the level and depth of preparation before a game was nothing like he’s ever seen in his football career. He told me that the Patriots do things in building their football team that no other football team is doing in the NFL.

5. Build out a world class Discovery Framework: I’ve always submitted that the top performing sales teams that I’ve had the pleasure to work with fundamentally out discover and out discern their peers and competitors. As a result of their deep dive discovery and discernment process, they simply have a much richer pool of information to formulate a winning sales strategy from. And oh by the way, sometimes the best sales strategy is to qualify out because the deal is not realistically winnable if you’re being sober and honest with yourself as a sales team. I call this “ruthless qualification”… not BANT (see above). Again, great sales teams are not afraid of asking the hard questions of the customer. Rather, they embrace asking the hard questions early and often in their sales pursuits so they don’t waste their time. That’s why far less of their deals end up in the dreaded “No Decision” state. That’s why they have a much higher winning conversion rates on their deals versus their peers and competitors.

Good Selling in 2023 to All!

The post 2023 Complex B2B Sales Predictions first appeared on True Sales Results.

The single most important common denominator between the two is constantly assessing your odds or the probability of winning the hand or the deal. Math is simply fundamental to your success in poker and sales.

What are some of the key traits and attributes that make for a great poker player or a great high tech sales rep?

Patience: Complex B2B Sales (aka Enterprise Technology Sales) and poker require an. incredible amount of patience. In poker, you must play the hand/cards that you’re dealt. Often it can be quite frustrating in Texas Hold’em to stay patient when you’re constantly getting dealt crappy “hole cards” (the first two cards dealt to each player that only the player can see). You’re a competitor, you want to compete, bet, and win the pot.

In sales, the exact same challenge exists. It is incumbent on great sales reps to qualify out or fail fast. Great salespeople are highly competitive and hate to lose. And the bigger the stakes (e.g., the larger the deal size), the higher the desire to win. This is coupled with the fact that there is tremendous pressure on salespeople to build their sales pipeline and win the deal which brings in the revenue.

Discipline: Adhering to a qualitative process is paramount to your success in sales and poker. The parallel is having an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that delineates in great detail the demographic, company graphic and technology graphic data where you have a high probability for sales success.

In poker, you need to know the different winning handstrengths. As poker players, we all aspire to get a Royal Straight Flush hand that beats every other hand. Remember the importance of knowing the odds/probability?The odds for actually getting a Royal Straight Flush in Texas Hold’em is approximately 1 in 650,000.

Discernment: In my not so humble opinion, the most important skill that all great salespeople have is their ability to discern from their discovery process with customers. They are constantly trying to divine with the customer why their solution is the best fit for the customer’s needs. And they are sober and honest with themselves when they divine that they are not the best fit for the customer and qualify themselves out of the deal.

The same logic applies in Texas Hold’em. As the”community cards” (e.g., those dealt face up so all players at the table playing can see and use them in their hands) are rolled, the great poker player starts discerning what the odds are that they have a winning hand or not. And they are sober and honest with themselves when the probability of winning the hand is really low, they’ll fold their hands and cut their losses short.

Bluffing does not work in the long run: Smart customers in sales and smart players in poker will eventually call your bluff. You’ll lose the hand and the deal should you insist on trying to bluff your customers/poker players. And salespeople will likely lose their jobs if they insist on trying to bluff themselves and their bosses. As a long time Complex B2B Sales leader, I can personally attest to the fact that successful sales people are always honest and fully transparent about the status of winning a deal.

Marginal and poor salespeople think that by having happy ears and telling their Head of Sales that they are going to win that deal this quarter will make their bosses happy. And they would be… Dead Wrong! That’s the fast track way to getting yourself fired in sales.

Being a perpetual student of the game: One of my Cybersecurity clients CRO/Head of Sales would come to every new hire sales onboarding bootcamp that we developed and delivered and welcome them to the company with a thirty (30)minute talk. He never used slides and would just sit at the front of the training room and answer his new sales team hires questions. The #1 question that each new sales hire cohort would ask him was what was the single most important thing that he observed to be successful selling for his company.

He would always say the single most important thing that he observed in his top performing salespeople is that they were all obsessed with being a perpetual student of the game. He would go on to say that what he meant by that was that they would learn more about their customers and their customer’s business than any competitor salesperson would. Great poker players are always looking to up their game and yet are humble enough to learn from other great poker players.

There are huge ebbs and flows in the process: There are only four rounds of cards being dealt in Texas Hold’em. But each round of cards being dealt changes your probability of winning substantially. Just because you were dealt a high pair in your hole cards… does not mean that when all of the community cards have been dealt that you still have a winning hand.

The exact same logic applies in Complex B2B Sales. In an enterprise technology sales process, there are lots of different meetings/interactions with different key stakeholders. And they each have different agendas, priorities and things that are important to them. That’s why the average sales cycle length associated with a net new logo Complex B2B Sale can be 9-12 months.

Great sales teams conduct a post-mortem after every single customer interaction and re-qualify what their probability is of winning or losing.

Look for the blind spots and risk: In Texas Hold’em, I’m constantly monitoring with each community card that is dealt whether another poker player at my table could possibly have a straight or a flush. When that fifth community card is dealt face up, many times another poker player at your table just hit a straight or a flush that will beat your hand of three Aces. I’ll write another blog post on why I think three of a kind or trips should be ranked higher than a straight in poker someday soon.

Great salespeople are constantly monitoring the strength or weakness in the deal as they’re engaging with new key stakeholders, key influencers and decision makers. They are always on the lookout for deal. blockers or key stakeholders that prefer a competitive product or simply don’t like their sales team.

Good Selling!

The post Complex B2B Sales is very similar to a high stakes poker game. first appeared on True Sales Results.

RAs have analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of their team and their competitors. They deeply understand their customers and the business outcomes that they want to achieve. RAs know where and how they will win and lose. They know what sales skill development areas they need to invest in and build in their team to optimize overall sales performance.

There are a ton of variables that you need to consider when developing an annual sales plan. Here is just a sampling of the variables that factor into a well thought out sales plan:

• Macro-economic forecasts and projections for 2023
• Micro-economic forecasts and projections for 2023 by Region of the World (ROW) and major industries that you sell to
• Geopolitical issues and risk
• Projected sales growth rate Year over Year (YoY) and on a Quarterly basis
• Average Deal Size
• Average Sales Cycle Length
• Win Rate/Loss Rate/No Decision Rate
• Pipeline coverage (e.g., 3-5X ARR goals)
• Sales headcount needed
• New sales hire ramp up time to full productivity
• Projected sales team attrition
• Competitive threats (existing and new)
• Budgetary constraints

Again, the bullet points above represent just a small sampling of all the variables that need to be factored into a well architected sales plan. What’s the bad news that is inextricable linked to building sales plans? Regrettably, the bad news is not just that as a Sales Leader you have to figure out how you are going to create more hours in the day in Q4-2022 to successfully close out your 2022 fiscal year and build out your sales plan for 2023 in parallel.

No the bad news is that your 2023 sales planning process needs to include multiple contingency plans. The good old backup plan to the backup plan. The “What if” analysis. Two years ago no one planned for a global pandemic and how that would impact their business. What if the madman Putin starts World War III in Europe over the Ukraine invasion by using nuclear weapons?

One of the best Sales Leaders that I know is a pilot. He uses a lot of Aviation and pilot analogies as part of his sales leadership style. He is an expert Revenue Architect (RA). He is fond of saying; “Plan the Flight and Fly the Plan.” That is until the plan no longer makes sense. And rather than thinking of them as backup plans, think of them as alternative plans. That way it’s easier to mentally and emotionally accept that there were changes outside of your control that require an alternative plan.

In Aviation, pilots need to constantly monitor the weather and the aircraft mechanical issues. They have to figure out their fuel needs as part of their flight plan. Pilots have a dashboard of sophisticated gauges that need to be constantly monitored for changes called avionics. Sales Leaders similarly have a dashboard of analytics that need to be constantly monitored for changes called Salesforce.com.

But Sales Leaders and Pilots simply can’t afford to make the mistake of getting too distracted when a single indicator alarm in your dashboard goes off. In Aviation, you are taught three priorities (A-N-C) you need to focus on as a pilot:

1. Aviate: Fly the plane
2. Navigate: Figure out where you are and where you’re going
3. Communicate: Talking to Air Traffic Control (ATC), fellow crew airplane members or passengers

But above all else, always Fly the aircraft first! I’d submit to you that the analogy in sales is always keep talking with customers and really listening/discerning what their needs are. They may have unmet needs that you can solve well for and deliver transformative business outcomes. If your sales team can become experts at discovery and discernment with your customers, you can bring substantive commercial insights to the conversation.

Best of luck to all you Sales Leaders and RAs as you go through your 2023 Sales Planning process!

The post Working on your Sales Plan for 2023? first appeared on True Sales Results.

So what has transpired over the past 14 months since I wrote that blog post? The herd mentality was in full force. The vast majority of Sales Leaders were simply gutless. If very few folks are hiring sales people… then I certainly shouldn’t be hiring new sales people now. Covid effectively paralyzed the Complex B2B Sales hiring market for too long. My commentary here is certainly a generalization. Not all Complex B2B Sales Leaders froze in their tracks and acted like lemmings. There were some outlier Sales Leaders who had the presence of mind and the conviction to upgrade their sales team talent during the past year when really good sales people were being laid off by cowardly companies.

Fast forward to present day… every CEO and CRO I talk to are saying the exact same thing. This is the most competitive Complex B2B Sales hiring market ever. In my 32 years of Complex B2B Sales, I have personally never seen a hiring market that it is so hard to find good people at all levels. From Sales Development Reps (SDRs) all the way up to CROs, there is simply a dearth of good sales talent available. The current sales candidate pipeline metaphor that comes to mind is a barren wasteland with arid tumbleweeds blowing across a cracked landscape due to extreme dryness.

How has this affected sales compensation plans? As you might expect, this is a supply and demand equation. And presently, the demand far outweighs the supply… therefore the cost has gone up dramatically. I’m seeing Complex B2B sales rep, sales engineer and SDR compensation plans that are significantly higher than even one year ago. There is a corollary effect in how long it takes on average to fill an open sales position. That in turn affects your business plan and revenue model. In short, it’s basically a shit show out there these days!

Now for all those reading this that know me, I’m not one that is generally inclined to gloat or to say “I told you so”. But when only 16% of Sales Leaders said they had the necessary sales talent on their bench to succeed just 14 short months ago and sat around and did nothing to fix that until it was too late. What were you thinking?

The post How Does Your Complex B2B Sales Hiring Candidate Pipeline Look? first appeared on True Sales Results.

Here’s an example: “What is Hooli? Excellent question. Hooli isn’t just another high tech company. Hooli isn’t just about software. Hooli…Hooli is about people. Hooli is about innovative technology that makes a difference, transforming the world as we know it. Making the world a better place, through minimal message oriented transport layers. I firmly believe we can only achieve greatness if first we achieve goodness.” — GAVIN BELSON

We love to create our own proprietary acronyms and buzzwords in high tech. The problem is that while we fall in love with our clever acronyms and buzzwords, we are confusing the shit out of our customers. And the last time I checked, it’s never a winning sales strategy to make your customers feel dumb. Which is only exacerbated by the fact that when a customer doesn’t understand what you are saying and feels dumb… they’re not inclined to let you know that.

I’ve facilitated many workshops with startup exec teams around customer messaging and our story. One of my workshop rules of engagement is that no one is allowed to use a proprietary acronym or buzzword. I have an obnoxious sounding game show buzzer that I use when anyone violates that rule of engagement. It’s. incredibly annoying when I push the game show buzzer and really creates. distraction and confusion in the conversation flow.

This is quite by design and often the exec team will get visibly frustrated, even to the point of a stop that flash of anger moment. That’s when I explain that is precisely what I was trying to have you learn. That teaching moment is showing the exec team how their customer feels when they talk to them in cliche SiliconValley speak… rather than in just plain English. More often than not, this produces an “aha” moment with the exec team.

Maybe by using fancy words with lots of syllables and what you think are clever acronyms, you believe that you are impressing the customer with how smart you are. I can assure you that plan is not working. Why? Because I do tons of discovery calls with my customer’s customers. And my customers are not allowed on those discovery calls because I need to learn the unvarnished truth of what their customer’s experience has been in working with them.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve done thousands of these discovery calls with my customer’s customers. It’s a fascinating exercise because the amazing insights that I glean from these customer discovery calls far outweighs the insights that I glean from the discovery calls with my actual customer. The vast majority of the discovery calls with my customer’s customers are conducted with very senior execs… think VP and C-Suite level folks.

Do you know why your customers are buying your solution over other alternatives including doing nothing? Do you know why your customer decided to buy your solution when they did and not wait to buy until later? Do you know what alternative solutions they were considering and what was their back up plan if they couldn’t come to terms with you?

I think you’d agree that these are super important questions to ask your customers and know the real answers. Why? It can inform everything you say and do with a customer and provide much better alignment and understanding. You’ll find that you can build much closer relationships with your customers when you are not afraid to ask the tough questions and really listen and absorb what the customer says.

Good selling!

The post Are you speaking in a language your customer understands? first appeared on True Sales Results.

Here is the coaching that I always provide to sales reps struggling with overcoming pricing objections. Price is simply a proxy for value. It is incumbent on us as sales professionals to build the appropriate value proposition with the customer as a core part of our sales process.

In fact, all sales reps should be able to deliver pricing to their customers with complete conviction. Why? Because the sales rep should unequivocally believe in the value that their product will deliver to the customer. Based on what? What other customers similar to this customer have derived for value from using your product.

Based on what you learned from your discovery process around the customer’s pain. Quantifying the value of addressing the customer’s business problem and making the pain go away. Getting concurrence from the customer on what the cost of doing nothing is or sticking with the status quo.

This can be done formally through an ROI exercise/calculator based on what value your real world customers have experienced by using your product. Or informally through a “back of the envelope” math exercise jointly with the customer using their numbers and getting concurrence.

When you master the art of building your value proposition with a customer, the pricing discussion becomes simple. Rather than something that you dread as a sales rep, customer pricing discussions become something you look forward to because you know that you are that much closer to a deal.

Good selling!

The post How much does your product cost? first appeared on True Sales Results.