Robert Akerele

Here's the stark facts in sales today. - 31% of reps are making quota - Nearly half (44%) of deals slip - Sales cycles are double digits longer, win rates are double digits down - Inbound leads are down - Salesforce recognised the need to increase pipeline coverage to by 50% (from x2 to x3) Most of those we speak to recognise all these challenges. But they are stuck. "Do more with less" is the message. They have cut teams and fought for those remaining. Their organisations are stuck with blind hope and knives sharpening. The only solution they know is to fire and replace. Because the real problems aren't acknowledged. The market has changed and it's harder. But are teams are not more skilled. The same teams, that could achieve in the old world are failing in this one. And the last message anyone wants, is we need to spend some money to solve that. "That's your job isn't it?" cries the leadership to time-starved managers and leaders. Anyone want to guess what's going to happen to sales manager average tenure (already at an all-time low of 18 months)????

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SDRs who deserve to be AEs... ✅ Help coach other SDRs ❌ Are in it for themselves ✅ Hit quota every month ❌ Sometimes smash it ✅ Build amazing internal relationships ❌ Moan about their AE and Manager ✅ Prioritise the team winning ❌ Think they're an individual contributor ✅ Train every single day ❌ Believe they know it all ✅ Compete against themselves ❌ Compete against others in the team ✅ Are genuinely happy when others win ❌ Get bitter when others are successful 99% of success is in WHO you are. And HOW you do things. Embrace being different. Embrace being better. What am I missing? ---- PS. My SDR to AE bootcamp closes tomorrow. 5 seats left; https://lnkd.in/ejFQERRF

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SPIN Selling/Challenger/Consultative selling/Solution Selling/Sandler/meddpicc/BANT/Gap Selling etc. They all essentially say the same thing with a few adjustments for deal size/cycle times etc. In my opinion all of these and sales in general comes down to: Saying the right thing at the right time in the right way and most importantly to the right person. The Right thing  The Right time  The Right Way  The Right Person Call it the 4 r’s. (copyright pending) Not selling a course….yet. Thoughts? P.S. "Saying the right thing" means asking a question.

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An SDR cold-called me... SDR: ''Is that Chris?'' Me: ''Yep, who's calling?'' SDR: ''It's James, here at XYZ we help companies like yours automate payroll, is this something you'd like to discuss more?'' Me: ''I don't have any employees for payroll but I'm happy to spend 5 mins with you now to help you improve your cold call opener, open to it?'' SDR: ''Erm...okay''. Me: ''So, here's 3 things you can try today... 1. Don't say ''is this Chris', if you don't know who you're calling they won't trust you. 2. Give me more about you in your intro. E.g. It's Chris, I'm an AE at XYZ. A touch more context = more trust. 3. Don't pitch straight up. Switch to a clear reason for the call. E.g. Calling as I know CEOs like you find [insert thing] time-consuming. Would love to chat more, got a minute now, or is later in the week better? We practiced twice, they were immediately better and we parted ways. Everything is a learning opportunity. Just gotta be open to it. PS. Outbound Systems [my new course] is 50% off until Friday. Click here to learn more: https://lnkd.in/e8YfMAyd

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SDR vs High Performing SDR 3 key differences that will get you promoted 👇 High Performing = Stays consistent & disciplined SDR = Process changes everyday High Performing = Extremely coachable SDR = Tries to do it all alone High Performing = Taking ownership of targets & weekly meetings with AE SDR = Let's AE run meetings & check in on target What are the other key differences that are important? #sales #sdr #bdr #ae

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Quota attainment has been lingering in the low 40’s for around a year now (~source RepVue). Meaning only 40% of sellers globally are actually hitting targets. Which is C R A Z Y Because years back you could get lucky with the companies you were joining. And with hard work & the right team around you, most were able to do pretttyy well. Which meant a lot of job searches were more focused on the company culture & the team you were working with. There wasn’t toooo much risk involved… Whereas now you need to be vetting the industry, deal sizes, quota attainment, leadership, inbound distribution, etc more than ever. Or you’ll just end up being one of the 60% of reps not hitting target. And what is super interesting is how, although quota attainment has been pretty flat at the low 40’s the past year, some sub-industries and deal size cohorts are starting to recover… So whether you’re looking for a new role or feel you can’t be as successful in your current company, I would check out the trends shared in RepVue’s new Quarterly report. Check it out here: https://bit.ly/3SjLlAL P.S. Recommend looking at some of the “Recommended Companies”, this would be the list I’d be researching if I was looking into new roles…

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Some great advice here for those in the Biz Dev world! Let's go!!!

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2024 SDRs are not like 1990 SDRs SDRs are crucial for achieving pipeline goals. Why do I say this? Sales development is no longer a smile-and-dial function. Sales development no longer just registers prospects for events. Sales development no longer just calls someone they've been told to call by an AE. Sales development is the conduit between the demand generation of Marketing and the targeted sales accounts to create a product, a quality meeting, that will impact the bottom line. So, to sum up.... Before you start your 2025 planning, have you considered how to best utilise your most critical pipe gen asset? Whats your take? #salesdevelopment #growth #sdr #GTM #sales #coldcalling 🇬🇧 living in 🇳🇱 | Get more content like this ➡️ Follow David Wilkins 🔥 hit the 🔔 for updates on new posts | Fix your outbound TODAY: Saleswise: Top of Funnel Consultancy

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SDRs and AE's - There's always a next Q. Here's what I'm doing to set myself up for success moving into a new Q after a couple of weeks away: 1/Auditing outbound blockers - I take a look at my current outbound blockers and decide what worked and what didn't. Simple, I keep what worked and rejig what didn't. 2/Edit and adapt scripts - I'm a big fan of A/B testing so I take time to edit and adjust my scripts to test a new concept I've found or cut out something that wasn't effective. These aren't wholesale changes just simple tweaks. 3/ Find my outbound channels - I take a look at my outbound channels and choose which to focus on. My favourites tend to be Lost opps, past customers (LI sales nav), Event attendees and customer lookalikes. 4/Cut any non-essential internal meetings - time is of the essence as a rep, so making sure you're ruthless with your time and spending it on pipe building or closing activities is essential. 5/Reflect on small wins - Even though the scoreboard has reset. It's essential to stop and smell the roses from last Q, and revel in your wins - even just for a little while. Use it as fuel that you have the ability succeed but still so much to learn. 6/Self-development goals - Each Q I set myself a self-development goal, last Q was Salman's discovery course (highly recommend) and this Q I'm targetting MEDDPICC. As well as big self-dev goals for the Q I also have regular 30min blockers at the end of my day, to make sure I'm sharpening my skillset. Anything I've missed?

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Many SaaS companies underestimate the power of a strong Sales Development Rep team (SDR). Yet, I've seen how skilled SDRs dramatically improve lead qualification and conversion rates. Here's why: Focused Prospecting: SDRs laser-target ideal customers, saving senior sales reps time. Personalised Outreach: They build initial rapport, warming leads for deeper engagement. Pipeline Management: SDRs ensure smooth handoffs, increasing sales efficiency. Any sales leaders agree or have a different experience? I'd love to hear your insights. #SaaSgrowth #SalesTeams #HiringAdvice #SaaSJobs

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Discovery calls I see so many reps overcomplicate them. I have been using this one for years, and so many people who implement it report it helps them kick off discovery. It works well on outbound. You can tweak it slightly for inbound. Do you have a favourite? If you do a good job in discovery, you can prevent getting ghosted later. If you're being ghosted a lot, steal my Ghosting Playbook: https://lnkd.in/eNx9JVvE

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BANT doesn’t work. It makes sales people lazy. Especially when using it for outbound. I had a call with a sales leader this week. They were asking me to sense check their qualification framework. They are selling Enterprise SaaS and she was using BANT for the SDRs. A tick box for the SDR to see if the person has Budget, Authority,Need and Timing… BUT most buyers don’t have or don’t need any of these to be an opportunity. It's the salesperson’s role to create demand… Here is my thinking: - "Budget" can come from anywhere - They could be a champion and therefore actually have “Authority” - You called them so of course they don’t have a “Need” - You reached out to them, there is no “Timing” yet I asked them to describe the perfect opportunity. And what they described didn't include anything in BANT.... So we created a specific qualification framework for them working back from what excellent looked like. Don’t try to make a framework fit. You can create your own. But I don't think there is a use case for BANT.

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🛑 Promises broken. Another Sales VP was made redundant, less than one year on the job. Many of you have been blindside with an unexpected redundancy, despite the immense investment of time, burden of pressure and constant sense of pipeline anxiety that comes with the job. >> 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘙𝘖'𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨: 1. 𝐐𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐚 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Your ability to achieve quota is the binary measure of your success (and future stability) 2. 𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Your pipeline and activity is scrutinised heavily (ignoring the lack of investment as well as market conditions) 3. 𝐇𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬: Hire the best talent, while being restricted to Internal Talent based overseas (who don't have relationships with top performers with knowledge of their territory, achievement, motivators and timing for a move) >> 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘙𝘖'𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦: 1. 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐪𝐮𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐬: Achievable quotas, reflecting market conditions and company maturity in region (rather than aspiration) 2. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Adequate support from marketing to generate leads and create opportunities for your sales team (rather than just dialling for dollars) 3. 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: Leaders who provide the resources, support and recognition of milestones (rather than just demanding results and creating pipeline anxiety) >> 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘝𝘗𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 (𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘖𝘙 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘫𝘰𝘣) 💡 Put on your oxygen mask first. If your company isn't supporting for you, exploring new opportunities without worrying about misplaced loyalty or fragile promises is crucial. Winning is a team sport. Find the right team for your success. What would you add? #SalesLeadership #SaaS #CareerGrowth #NewOpportunities #switchgears

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Tactical things AEs can do to increase their Win Rates & Average Deal Size. ➡ Slow Down: Particularly in the early stages of the sales process. Go deep in discovery to identify and implicate pain. The bigger the business problem you attach to, the larger the deal. ➡ Deal Qualification: Again, particularly crucial at early stages. Don't invest your time or cross functional resources in opportunities you a) can't win or b) are tied to surface level customer pain. Qualify out early and often. ➡ Sales Process Rigor: Don't skip stages. Meeting the exit criteria between stages, particularly if they're customer verifiable, will help you develop solid opportunities and not end up with a bunch of stalled S2-4 deals in the pipeline. ➡ Multi-Threading: Identify a Champion, build a Champion, and earn the right to engage the broader buying committee, including the EB. ➡ Exec Alignment: Facilitate Exec to Exec relationships and do it early. Many AEs leave it too late or don't do it at all.   ➡ Cross Functional Partnership: e.g., Services, Solutions Consulting, Value Advisory, Customer Success. Bring them in early. They will help you identify and implicate business pain, communicate business impact and increase the buyer's confidence in your ability to deliver value post sale. It will also help you multi-thread. ➡ Creative Commercials: Particularly key in the midst of increased budget scrutiny and tool consolidation. Creative commercials e.g., multi product bundling, multi year step ups, etc can help increase your size of a pie that isn't necessarily expanding. #sales #salesenablement #salesleadership

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How do you know when to fire your SDR leader? When the SDR team isn’t performing, it’s not always their fault. Here are some things to consider. SDR leaders were often promoted from SDRs - Without any training on operations/process - They try to run the playbook they were taught - But they didn’t build that playbook themselves You may not have the fundamentals in place - Are ICP/Personas clearly mapped out? - Does the messaging resonate with them? - How many accounts/leads can SDRs work? - Without skipping critical steps and losing them? - Have we identified the absolute best leads/accounts? - Have we segmented them to match the right messaging? - Do we have an efficient process built out in the systems? - Do we have clear reporting to see what’s working and not? There’s a BIG difference between coaching SDRs and building a repeatable process and system for them. Anything you’d add here? 🤔 If we don’t have this in place, it’s hard to put the blame solely on the SDR leader. If we do have this in place, there are some experiments we can run to try to improve things quickly. 1. The 3-Week Messaging Experiment 2. The Conversion Rate Experiment Details in tomorrow’s 📰 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙊𝙥𝙨 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙡𝙮 📰 Subscribe to get it here: https://bit.ly/49RCm0h ✌️

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Sales Lessons from Gareth Southgate and England at Euro 2024 ⚽   Anyone in sales or sales enablement knows the feeling. One minute you're celebrating a smashed quota, feeling like you're unstoppable 💪 The next, you're staring at a spreadsheet of missed targets, questioning every sales tactic you ever learned. It's a rollercoaster and sometimes it feels like the freefalls are never ending. 😭   This emotional pendulum swing reminds me a lot of Gareth Southgate and the England team so far at Euro 2024. Remember the heat he took after some shaky performances? The pundits were calling for his head, questioning every decision. Tactics? ❌ Lineup? ❌❌.   Then, Southgate did something bold yesterday. He subbed out his captain, Harry Kane, for a player, Ollie Watkins, that played ZERO minutes in the entire tournament. 😱 😱 A gamble some might say, but a gamble that paid off in spectacular fashion – Watkins bagged the winning goal against the Netherlands!   The lesson here? Even when the pressure's on, and the critics are circling, stay true to your strategy. Just because someone hasn't had their big moment yet doesn't mean they can't be your game-changer. So, the next time you're feeling like you're at the bottom of the sales well, take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and remember: 💠 Believe in your process. You got this far for a reason. Keep refining your approach, and the results will follow. 💠 Don't be afraid to make bold moves. Sometimes, shaking things up can lead to breakthroughs. 💠 There's always an "Ollie Watkins" out there. New ideas and approaches can come from unexpected places. Stay the course, and never lose sight of your self-belief. Let's go!!

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RANT: Time For School - Intelligent outbound calling puts ANY other B2B sales channel to shame... let's talk facts: https://lnkd.in/d4j7_WAY Want to enable your sales team to effortlessly have 1) Live conversations on-demand in 4.5 mins with ONLY impossible to reach named decision makers at your dream accounts (whether you have their direct dial or not) 2) Get smarter with every call I can get you set up for FREE... 1) To have more conversations in a day than you've likely had in the last month 2) Identify areas of opportunity to levelup your targeting, data, messaging, rep sales craft that you couldn't learn any other way Book in a time to discuss here: https://lnkd.in/dPTGV9qm I'll share my own cold calling metrics for 2024 year to date below... if you want to operate at this level... We can operationalise this in days for your reps to deliver your phone-optimised value proposition to your unqiue target list... #outboundsales #insidesales #sales #coldcalling #salesleadership ConnectAndSell, Inc CRO Connected Pavilion RevGenius GTMfund Modern Sales Pros

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The greatest sales objection is actually bandwidth for implementation. You heard that correctly. If you're solving someone's problems, but still not closing deals... it's most likely a bandwidth issue for your buyers. Your buyer can't be in a million different places at once. No matter how big of a problem you solve, or how attractive it is for buyers... It's just noise for them after they buy it. They'll never be able to spend time in it just like they never spend time in most of the other tech they buy. So how do you mitigate risk for that? If you don't provide services for implementation and customer success post sale, you will never win these deals... or if you do win them, you certainly won't retain them. And no, I'm not talking about a bi-weekly sync during the first month... I'm talking about getting your hands dirty to help them drive the outcomes they need to drive. #saas #saassales #ecom #cro #salesleadership

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So, we have an engaged prospect - They’re in the ICP - They have buying intent - It’s the right timing for them - But they’re the wrong Buyer Persona! What do we do here? 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗚𝗼 𝗔𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺 (𝗬𝗲𝘁) In my experience this is a fantastic way to piss of your prospect (AND their boss) while coming across as salesly and losing all credibility. 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 if we try to sell to the wrong persona, more often than not we lose the deal, and any time we’ve invested, if we don’t get to power. This is a fantastic way to work really hard and miss quota. 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗮 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 Instead of selling the product, we sell them on partnering with us to run an evaluation together. Let me walk through how I’ve done this. 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝘆 Find out why this is important to them and the impact on them personally of getting this right, of getting it wrong, and of it not happening at all. We need a good reason to ask them to stick their neck out to introduce us to their leadership team. 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸 There’s often risk for our champion. If this goes south, they may be blamed for it, or even fired. I’ve seen it many times and I can share specific stories of how this goes down and how it could all be avoided by engaging leadership in the right way. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝗜𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗲𝘁 It’s critical not to skip key steps. To earn trust, we have to add value. They want to see an introductory demo, understand pricing, etc etc. These things are fair. But we can’t go too far without looping in the right people and we need to stay in the pocket until we can. 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗧𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 Once we’ve earned their trust, we can and should ask to build a plan together. This involves bringing the right people, from both sides, in for the right steps. If we build this plan together we stand a better chance they’ll follow through with it. 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝘆, 𝗡𝘂𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶-𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 If we cannot get them on board with this we need to walk away and nurture them until that’s changed. We can share relevant marketing content, events, etc with them to do this. We can also start to share that with others on the team. I’m a big fan of role specific marketing content for this reason. It’s a lot easier to invite a CEO to a CEO dinner than it is to just go around our champion with a cold email pitching a sales meeting. RevOps can really shine here by helping to map this process out and align sales and marketing to do this. What would you add here? 🤔 More on nurturing tomorrow in 📰 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 📰 Sign up here to get it: https://bit.ly/3xgqF55 ✌️

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