Lars Nilsson

What does 'Execution Excellence' actually mean? And why are Marc Benioff + Amit Bendov obsessed with it right now? Killer insights from Charlie Moss on how category leaders like Salesforce & Gong are resetting expectations to win despite headwinds!! 💥 “More rigor, more discipline, focused enablement, and a refined GTM strategy are a major part of their approach.” Specifically, Gong is investing in the following: - Greater accountability for the sales team + sales management - Weekly KPIs, weekly results, + monitoring key activities - Tracking every single deal with MEDDIC Achieving 'execution excellence' when it comes to running revenue teams is the WHY behind founding Accord... Ensure rigorous execution across each deal, and translating the winning strategy to the field in a way that actually works for sellers! Including tracking MEDDIC without feeling like homework, automatically updated in your CRM. Sales + CS Leaders using Accord to drive execution excellence understand what it takes for their sellers to win in 2024. Eg, we pulled data across 500+ Opps for a customers at their QBR, and saw: - 28% Win Rate across opportunities without Accord - 56% Win Rate across opportunities with Accord .... 100% increase in Win Rate when using Accord. This market isn’t about doing more with less. Its about doing the right things – consistently.

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A poorly executed #customersuccess strategy will kill your #NRR for years to come. I've seen it first-hand too many times over the years. Here is how you deliver a well-executed CS strategy to drive great NRR and ultimately, business growth: 🛣️ 𝐔𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝗗𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 & 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 The first step in any customer success strategy is understanding the full & dynamic revenue & customer journey. This means not just knowing what your customers do, but why they do it. How and why did they buy your services? How do they move through their journey with you (rarely ina straight line!)? By understanding their motivations, you can better anticipate their needs and deliver solutions that truly add value. And don't forget, the old-school customer journey is not the standard anymore, you need to use the full, dynamic revenue & customer journey to get the full picture. This stretches from pre-sale to post-sale and allows for the customer to move in and out of journey phases/stages dynamically. 📈 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 Customer success is not a reactive function. It's about being proactive, anticipating customer needs, and addressing them before they become issues. You have to ensure that your strategy is aligned around, and fosters, a proactive CS culture and process that allows your team to execute effectively. This not only improves customer satisfaction, but also reduces churn, and creates more expansion opportunities. Both key factors in improving NRR. 📊 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚-𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 In the #SaaS & #CS world, we have access to a wealth of data. By leveraging this data, we can make informed decisions that drive customer success. This could be anything from identifying usage patterns to predict churn, to understanding which features drive the most value for customers and beyond. And it needs to go beyond telemetry, usage etc. Also capture, track and understand customer goals and other qualitative data points. One problem is that this data is often siloed or hard to access, so make sure you have systems (like RevSetter) that can bridge that gap and allows CSMs to effectively action the data & insights. 🤝 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫-𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 Customer success should not be the responsibility of a single department. It should be ingrained in the company culture. When everyone in the organization understands the value of customer success, it becomes a strategic priority that drives business growth. This is why the dynamic revenue & customer journey, the engagement focus, and the proactive mindset are so important. When those are present - and a strategic & customer-centric approach is adopted by the CEO & leadership - the sky is the limit. Leverage these four building blocks and your CS strategy and execution will thank you for it ✅ *** 🛎️ If you enjoy my content, follow me for more ♻️ Repost to share with your network

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Great conversation with Joey Brodsky! Definitely one of the sharpest guys I know. I love his passion, drive and unique perspectives. I have followed his podcast for a long time and was super happy to be able to be a guest. I will share more insights from our time together but wanted to post a quick thank you to Joey and share the episode. #NextGenSales

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Running our Q1 retro with the whole Accord GTM crew in town! Despite coming in +120% to target, there're still SO MANY WAYS I want us to get better... - Getting onsite, to leaders, and multi-threading *earlier* in the process - Running tighter demos with relatable stories vs feature heavy - Do even more work for our buyers to help them evaluate - Exec updates post-sales to drive success + upsells - Document talk-tracks and key objections There's ENDLESS ways to up-level your team when it comes to deal execution... The question is, will you prioritize the time, effort, and growth? Or just ask yourself + your team to work harder, not smarter? Getting 1% better every day is incredibly rewarding and the only way to win over the long term 📈 📈 📈

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Investing in RevOps can improve productivity up to 20%.... As companies mature, the role of #RevOps evolves. Not every early-stage company needs a cross-functional RevOps team. But for companies selling multiple products across many segments and markets (e.g. Platform-Market fit) and still relying on siloed sales ops and marketing ops, they are missing out on key revenue insights and opportunities. Why? Data is vital – but let’s face it -- there is SO MUCH DATA… the big opportunity is how to best USE the data to inform strategy and next steps. 📊 Sound familiar? ….every department has its own tech stacks, its own platforms, its own metrics. 🖥 …too many KPIs and dashboards create confusion, not clarity. 📈 …when leaders don’t have a holistic view, they have issues and questions around the data. ❓ Two key strategies to get ahead of this: 1️⃣ Integrating various data sources, such as CRM, conversational intelligence platforms, marketing automation tools, and even unstructured data; organizations can unlock valuable insights and drive more informed decision-making. 2️⃣ Focusing on a few key performance indicators (KPIs) and ensuring alignment across the organization; companies can avoid information overload and drive greater focus and accountability. Smaller companies can apply the ideas with integrated data sources and streamlined KPIs. Read the summary and full information by GTM Partners of the latest leadership summit on RevOps, plus the latest GTM news, events, and more: https://lnkd.in/ezxKBba2 #marketingstrategy #GTMstrategy Sarah Allen-Short Sangram Vajre Bryan Brown

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The new episode of The Science of Scaling Podcast dropped today. In this episode, I speak with Ang McManamon the VP of Sales at Crunchbase. We dissect managing sales through a pivot, specifically how she managed the team as the market transitioned from one of the most bullish markets in tech in 2021 to one of the biggest down markets in tech in 2022. Example discussion points include: How to manage a board that is demanding an unrealistic revenue target? (1) Educate them on the current bottoms-up GTM model by showing them where the team has been performing on the key drivers of revenue outcomes over the past 2 quarters (i.e. the average productivity per rep (PPR), MQLs generated per month, average sales cycle and close rate on sales opportunities, etc.). We implement this framework with our portfolio companies Stage 2 Capital before issues like this even surface in order to establish the narrative from the beginning. (2) Illustrate where these metrics need to be to achieve the revenue outcomes they are demanding. Often this analysis yields the conclusion that the team would need to 2x PPR, MQL generating, and and close rates essentially overnight. Hopefully, they start to see how unrealistic the plan is and that the plan is going to lead to unnecessary burn and departures of top performers (3) Using the bottoms-up model, devise an aggressive but realistic plan that assumes say a 10%-20% Q/Q improvement in each of the performance drivers and the revenue outcomes that this performance would yield. (4) The board may ignore this line of thinking but at least we have educated them on the revenue mechanics and can use that framework to report back results at the next meeting. How to quantitatively assess whether a revenue miss is due to a macro condition, like the economy, or sales execution, like hiring and training the salespeople? An area few boards and leadership teams look at to conduct this diagnosis is the quarter-over-quarter performance of individual AEs, especially the consistent top performers on the team. If the company misses the target and you look under the hood and find that the historic consistent performers are still performing as usual and the miss was driven from AEs hired in the last year, we have a sales leadership execution issue. However, if we look under the hood and see that even the top performers' PPR decreased, perhaps at about the same time and about the same amount, then we have likely have a diagnosis outside of sales execution (i.e. economy, competition, product, etc.) Anyway, Ang is awesome and was completely open about this journey that so many leaders experienced over the past two years. Check out the episode here! https://lnkd.in/e2QiuPEH

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To win in the world of AI/ digital disruption, progressive startups are embracing structural change . #1. Right prioritise your planning model ( short vs long).The short game (i.e. short term planning and execution) is critically important until you get to $50 M ish, more important than the long game ( i.e. long term vision) #2. Right size-mix your organization model (i.e. hire special forces vs full time employees / build small teams vs large teams) #startup #scaling #winning #longtermvsshortterm #specialforces #growth

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Want to elevate your sales game and win over C-suite executives? 📈 Learn from the best with ZoomInfo's top sales tips, including insights from our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck!  Discover the definitive guide to selling to the C-suite in 2024: bit.ly/4aSCL3i

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For sales leaders only: During my time at Gong ($200k ARR to $7.2 billion valuation), I was mentored by the top revenue leaders on the planet. I reported to the CRO for three years (former LinkedIn exec with a 400 rep org). I reported to the President and COO for a year (from Tableau EVP Sales who took the company public). And I learned a ton from the VP Sales who built the entire thing at Gong. Along the way, I learned 128 priceless revenue leadership lessons. Documented every one of them during those 5.5 years. And turned it into a PDF. Want to see those 128 revenue leadership lessons free? I'll send them your way right now. Hit "like" and comment "revenue" and I'll DM you the PDF for free. Here's a preview of a few of them: 1. Create unmistakable clarity in your hiring. This is by far the most powerful thing you can do to improve your hiring. Get crystal clear on three things: A) Role outcomes B) Ideal rep profile C) Evaluation methods 2. Realize that coaching is more about self-discovery than instructing. Great coaching is about asking questions, guiding self-discovery, and creating new possibilities with your reps. The most effective coaching focuses helps your people think, analyze, and figure things out for themselves. 3. The behaviors you recognize, repeat. You will see the behaviors you recognize repeated more often. Reinforce best practices by recognizing your people when they do them. When you recognize a specific behavior, the person will know what to do next time. 4. Do not split your coaching time across reps evenly. You don’t get paid for splitting your time evenly across your reps. Split your reps into groups based on their desire and ability to change and spend time staggered towards the most coachable folks. 128 more revenue leadership tips if you want them. Hit "like" and comment "revenue" and I'll DM you the PDF for free. P.S. Want to upskill your revenue team and boost win rates to new heights? Explore pclub.io for teams, here: https://lnkd.in/g2CkE295

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Who would win this deal? Imagine this scenario: Sarah, Head of Sales @XYZ, wants to help her BDR team scale their cold calling efforts. On Monday, she reads 3 articles on Aircall's blog about cold calling best practices. However, she doesn't request a demo yet. The next day, Emily, a sales rep from Ringover (a direct competitor of Aircall)—𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐒𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝟑 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥'𝐬 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠—reaches out to Sarah and books a meeting with her. To make it even trickier, Ringover and Aircall offer solutions that are 95% the same. Who has the better chance to win this deal and why? 👉 Scenario 1: Sarah chooses Ringover because… 👉 Scenario 2: Sarah chooses Aircall because… I have my own answer but.. I'm curious about yours! Leave a comment below with your thoughts 😇

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An enterprise sales kickoff (SKO) is critical for aligning the sales team with the company’s strategic objectives, energizing the team, and setting the stage for a successful sales year. Beyond alignment of company goals, product and service education, motivation and morale boost, skills development, networking and team building, marketing and competitive insights, goal setting and accountability, inspiration and vision, strategic planning, and a feedback loop from the field, there are also several consistent mistakes/NOT-to-do many organizations ignore before, during, and after their SKOs! Here is my latest post on Ten Sales Kickoff Insights shared by GTMnow - https://lnkd.in/eQxQrKuJ GTMfund Sales Community #SKO #SalesKickoff #GlobalKickoff #KeynoteSpeaker #RelationshipEconomics #CoCreate #CurveBenders #ConsequenceOfAI

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Marc Benioff can I introduce you to new way to accelerate growth? Seven revenue solution implemented in a day. How many business would move to salesforce. In my view all of them in time. Lets talk simple math: 250,000 customers x $100,000 (the cost of one employee) which is 45 licenses equals $25B/year. Best part everyone can self-implement. Gokul Rajaram would you like to see what I am talking about?

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The #Salesblazer community is launching NEW biweekly coffee chats and would love for you to join! 🎉 💙 Up first on June 18: How to make outbound sales work for you in 2024. Jason Bay, CEO of Outbound Squad with 15+ years of sales experience, will be taking the mic, so make sure you attend! 🙌 Here’s how to participate: 1. Join the #june-18-coffee-chat channel in the Salesblazer Community on Slack. Not a member of the Community yet? Fix that here: https://sforce.co/June18CC 2. Ask your outbound prospecting questions in the channel above before the coffee chat starts. 3. You’ll be notified to join the huddle when it kicks off June 18 @ 1pm ET. 4. Grab your coffee and join as soon as you’re notified — capacity is limited to 200, and it’s first come, first served.

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You Need to 1) Close the gap in your sales maturity 2) Generate revenue > efficiently & effectively. THE SOLUTION: Run a Confidential & Complimentary Sales Audit https://lnkd.in/dPTGV9qm • Benchmark your function • Spot performance gaps and highlight areas of opportunity where 1 of your team excels that others can follow • Build an action plan that prioritises the highest impact activities to improve your function’s effectiveness THE PROBLEM IS HUGE Pipeline has always been sales forecast insurance / lifeline BUT required pipeline multiple has increased dramatically recently 1) B2B Sales Benchmarks from Ebsta / Pavilion, in 2024 YoY Win rates down 18% ACVs down 21% Sales cycles 16% longer Size of decision making unit expanded Number of touches for impactful engagement have increased 📉 69% of reps are missing quota 👨‍🔧 There’s an 8.9x delta between top performers and the rest of their peers 2) Objective Management Group's Sales Pipeline Benchmarking Data Reveal: Shortfall in pipeline quantity puts revenue targets at risk and hampers growth potential. Only 49% of salespersons self-reported four closeable opportunities in their pipelines, with a significant portion having even fewer. (=) > 59% of salespeople are not meeting the minimum threshold for pipeline quantity. Less than one of the three "closeable opportunities" reported by the average salesperson were deemed "truly closeable". Alarmingly, nearly 75% of opportunities were categorised as 'suspect' or 'prospect,' indicating a lack of essential qualifiers such as engagement with decision-makers or confirmed budgets. So only 3% of all salespersons had four "truly closeable" opportunities in their pipeline. AHHH. TOP TIPS 1) Go Outbound "There’s only one cure for elongated sales cycles and pipeline deficits... Go outbound" Andreessen Horowitz "Imperative that companies become obsessed at knowing, identifying, and targeting their ICP ... this means outbound" Pavilion Over reliance on partners & inbounds was blamed by > 90% of 6k+ EMEA B2B sales leaders polled for them missing their target Sales & Marketing Strategies & Technologies 2) Focus on & Optimise Live Conversations with Decision Makers Best-in-class / top 20% sellers "𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀” "Teams labeled as trusted partners achieved 48% higher quota attainment and 25% higher win rates than those who were approved vendors" Korn Ferry 2024 Sales Maturity Survey "Increase interaction quality by helping sellers: Focus activity on high-quality outreach efforts, not just batch and blast volume" Gartner Pick up the phone - Channel-Market-Fit is Moneyball today: https://lnkd.in/dt7PZMhG Top Sellers Make 82% more calls and send 24% less email McKinsey & Company #salesstrategy #salesleadership #sales #salesperformance

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Meet Karl Schutz, who finished as the #1 Account Executive at Snorkel.AI in 2023 after taking Sales Rocket Fuel. Karl has an incredible background, having been trained at Salesforce, MuleSoft, AWS and Snorkel.AI…top-tier tech companies. And yet despite all that training...he found Sales Rocket Fuel to be different & game-changing.  Here are a few quotes: "Sales Rocket Fuel is a masterclass in sales" "We were getting years of lessons condensed down into just a few weeks"  "So many countless gold nuggets" "Chris broke down the sales process into systems, step-by-step, at each stage how do we increase performance" "It really inspired me, I got really fired up after every session. It made me want to want to be a better seller" Results after taking the course: -#1 AE at a company filled with heavy-hitters -More Fortune 50 & Fortune 500 meetings including the C-Suite -Closed larger deals & more deals -Feeling more confident Karl is also an incredible person, who has become a true friend in the last few years. Hearing these kind of results from numerous people who rise to crush it and have their best years is fuel that keeps me going 🚀. If you’d like to change the trajectory of your second half of the year, I hope you’ll join us. The next cohort starts next Tuesday - July 16th. You can join other sellers, CEOs / Cofounders & Sales leaders on their journey to level-up. In the words of Karl, "I can't say enough good things about it. Go Sales Rocket Fuel, Go Sign-up Now" Enroll here to finish your second half of 2024 strong 💪: https://lnkd.in/ggTSzjjj How would you like to celebrate if you hit quota, make President's Club 🌴 🏄‍♂️ or finish as the #1 AE or Team for this year? Comment below 👇

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Q&A with Xactly CFO Jason Godley — key trends in the SaaS market, how to navigate business uncertainty, and why finance chiefs need to act as chameleons. More in his article with CFO! http://spklr.io/6040qwA2 

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After leading & advising #GTM teams for 15+ years one thing is clear: too many GTM executives don't deeply understand #CS. And it will cost you. Most GTM leaders, like #CROs, come from a sales background, which has many, many benefits. But in today's world, it is not enough to just be great at driving sales. You won't grow, and you will certainly not grow profitability, if your customer revenue is not growing. One key reason is that there is a fundamental difference between sales and CS. Sales is linear in nature. From lead to process to close. CS is dynamic in nature. From onboarding to....many paths...to renewal to growth to advocacy and start all over again. This means that you need to take a different approach to key areas like: ➡️ Analyze ➡️ Plan ➡️ Structure ➡️ Build ➡️ Execute ➡️ Evaluate How you do these things shift from sales to CS. So what can you do? 3 simple things to start with: 1️⃣ Check out the links in the comments, some good resources to review. 2️⃣ Join CS communities and talk to other CS executives to learn 3️⃣ Jump in, talk to customers, analyze the customer base etc - DO both strategic and tactical things Want more advise? DM or AMA 👇🏾 *** 🛎️ If you enjoy my content, follow me Haydar Al-Saad ♻️ Repost to share with your network

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Struggling with churn? Validate the value your customer receives. This is not a static metric/KPI - it needs to be nurtured, revisited, redefined, and reinforced throughout the customer lifecycle ♻ #customersuccess #sales #customervalue #value

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At the Gainsight conference last week, I had several folks ask me some version of "everyone used to talk about adoption....now everyone says that it's just about outcomes and ROI. What's your take?" It is and has always been about both. Can you get ROI without adoption? No. Is adoption by itself sufficient to guarantee value realization? Also no. You have to have adoption of the right capabilities that tie to customer business priorities with attached measurable outcomes. That is and has always been the formula. This is easy to say, really hard to implement and manage at scale. Which is why very few companies do it.

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