
20Sales: Why the Founder Should Not Be the One to Create the Sales Playbook, Why You Should Hire a Sales Leader Before Sales Reps & Why You Should Not Hire Sales Leaders From Big Companies with Matt Rosenberg, CRO @ Grammarly
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The PitchTue Oct 03 2023
Sales Hiring:
- Avoid hiring sales leaders or reps from big companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
- Instead, consider hiring ex-bankers, ex-consultants, or ex-lawyers who have strong listening and critical thinking skills.
Transitioning from Lawyer to Sales Leader:
- Matt Rosenberg made the transition from lawyer to sales leader by joining a startup in California during the dotcom boom.
- He fell in love with sales and the intellectual and emotional aspects of it.
Lessons from Career Pivots:
- When making a career change, remember why you made the pivot in the first place.
- Focus on celebrating small wins along the way to build momentum.
Defining a Sales Playbook:
- A sales playbook is a set of repeatable processes that lead to the best possible outcome.
- Each company's playbook will be unique based on factors such as product, market, pricing, and culture.
Founder vs. First Sales Hire for Playbook Creation:
- The founder should focus on identifying the playbook based on their understanding of the business and market.
- It is recommended to hire a sales leader as the first sales hire rather than a rep to create and execute V1 of the playbook.
Creating Urgency in Deal Cycles:
- Great discovery during the sales process can create urgency by quantifying value and aligning it with customer goals.
- Understanding what success looks like for customers helps identify pain points that need urgent solutions.
Discounting Strategies:
- Discounting should be approached with caution and used sparingly.
- Discounts beyond 10% can become problematic and lead to excessive discounting if not managed properly.
Using Data in Sales Leadership:
- Utilize data to understand individual performance patterns and identify areas for improvement.
- Data analysis can help optimize processes, track progress, and inform decision-making at both individual and organizational levels.
Prospecting Challenges:
- Cold calling has become less effective due to low response rates.
- Personalized and insightful prospecting approaches are more likely to generate positive responses.
Creating Collaboration in Sales Teams:
- Encourage collaboration among sales team members rather than competition, especially for new hires.
- Collaborative environments foster knowledge sharing and experimentation, leading to better outcomes.
Effective Discovery Process:
- Great discovery is essential for winning deals and should be a priority for sales teams.
- Conduct thorough research before meetings to understand customer priorities and objectives.
- Ask open-ended questions about successes, challenges, and desired outcomes to uncover pain points and quantify value.
Engaging the CFO in the Sales Process:
- Involving the CFO early on is crucial for successful enterprise sales.
- Be transparent with prospects about the need to engage the CFO due to budgetary considerations.
- Highlight how solving their pain points aligns with the CFO's goals and metrics.
Transitioning from Product-Led Growth (PLG) to Enterprise Sales:
- Moving from PLG to enterprise requires understanding the differences in language, messaging, positioning, customers, product, pricing, staffing, marketing, security needs, etc.
- Timing depends on feeling confident about controlling and optimizing the PLG motion while recognizing signals of demand from larger organizations.
Timing for Transitioning from Consumer to Enterprise Sales:
- Timing depends on having control and visibility into the existing product-led growth motion.
- Waiting until there is some level of control and understanding can help avoid resource allocation issues and ensure a smoother transition.
Testing without Committing Significant Resources:
- Testing can happen organically through observing signals within the existing customer base.
- Data analysis can provide insights into potential opportunities for expansion and upselling without requiring significant upfront commitments.
Importance of Incentive Mechanisms:
- Effective incentive mechanisms align with specific stages of the sales process (e.g., acquisition, retention, upsell) and reflect the differences between PLG and enterprise motions.
- Balancing compensation structures helps prevent cannibalization while encouraging desired behaviors.
Impressive Company Sales Strategy:
- Gong's ability to create a market around call recording technology stands out as an impressive sales strategy.
- Gong successfully positioned itself as a leader in its industry by creating brand awareness and providing valuable solutions.
Outreach:
- Outreach offers a platform leveraging automation and AI to increase efficiency and effectiveness of go-to-market activities across the revenue cycle.
- The platform is used for prospecting, deal management, and forecasting.
- Outreach provides sales engagement, revenue intelligence, and customer service.
- 6,000 companies including Zoom, Siemens, Okta, and DocuSign use Outreach.
ZoomInfo:
- ZoomInfo helps companies supercharge their revenue potential by landing new customers.
- Their all-in-one tech stack and B2B data enable businesses to be more efficient in closing deals and making money.
- Quality data from ZoomInfo delivers insights for identifying prospects at the right time.
- ZoomInfo's software helps engage prospects and convert them into customers.
- They have 30,000 customers including Snowflake, PayPal, Dropbox, and thousands of startup and growth companies.
Podcast Support:
- Harry Stebbings appreciates listener support.
- Feedback can be given on Twitter (@HarryStebbings).