Melanie Fellay 🐙

CS teams NEED to start "managing up" with execs and the board by talking about REVENUE. Yes, you can keep talking about sentiment and feelings, but start with the $. Don't lead with churn- Bottom-line-focused execs don't like that headline, so you need to tell the story better. An informal poll had CS teams owning over 50% of the revenue of many SaaS companies. Lead with this and have it be your first talking point. From there you will be able to get more things done with other departments, as your requests will be revenue-focused Need to get a Customer Success Platform as you scale? Point to revenue and the potential to lose revenue without efficiencies Need to hire more to prevent burnout? Point to Revenue potential with renewals and upsells Talk in the language your execs and board want to hear.

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Ashi from Gong is fast (😮‍💨10k) But not as fast as Gong Engage users when they use Lavender. Access to your Gong calls in our personalization assistant ✅ Access to our coach & "Ashi fast" personalization in Gong ✅ Better 🤝 Faster 3.0 (and so much more) coming soon

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How can RevOps be more strategic? How can we drive more revenue with less resources? Right now, coming off "Growth at All Costs" we're all strained for budget and resources. Meanwhile, it's harder than ever to land and expand customers. What can we do as revenue and operations leaders to better utilize what we have, to build more efficient Revenue Engines? My team and I have spent years thinking about this. Here's a preview. 𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱 2. 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝟯. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲: 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Where do we start? On 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝟭𝘀𝘁, I'm joining Ben Murray to dive into this. In this webinar, we’ll introduce the: -> 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗣𝘆𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗱, a proprietary model designed to measure your company’s operational maturity and identify the most critical bottlenecks hindering growth. We’ll also show you how to: -> Prioritize projects and align your teams towards large strategic goals using a 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽. And we'll dive even deeper into a tangible example: -> How to conduct 𝗣𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀, a process used to spot issues in the sales process and reinforce optimal pipeline management. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e3qqMEaf ✌️

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"It's awesome to see companies are finding solutions for more efficiency - I don't actually find the numbers that crazy." This was the response from one of our HubSpot partners 😍 when I shared the link. 🙀 400% ! I still, find the numbers crazy! I am well aware that we are one of all, as important pieces, of the 🧩. I am BEYOND proud that one of the pieces is thanks to vloxq CPQ , integrated to HubSpot. But most of all, I am SO happy for the journey we have done together with the team of Retriever. With Alexander Mason in the lead, Ludvig Ljungström having perfect control of all details (the devil is in the details, right!) and brilliant Klas Hellqvist. Together we have challenged our self, our colleagues and our systems to work smoothly and efficient. To support the overall goal, and to be user friendly. We, and the setup up, can and will be improved. But for now 400% increased profitability is definitely something to celebrate! Well done team Retriever! You are really role models for working in a efficient way to enable customer centricity 🤸‍♀️ 💸. #efficiency #customercentricity #opex #cpq #hubspot #profitability

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CSM Comp - Milestone Velocity Bonuses Another way to do it is velocity. So how quickly are we moving them through these milestones? Remember it's a progress milestone. So if I can move customers through those faster, that doesn't mean that we're. We're skipping steps. It doesn't mean that we are doing things poorly. It's actual progress. So if we're able to move them, especially as we move into progress milestones that are more customer centric the milestones in the early days in onboarding they're more what we call, there's there's technical and administrative milestones. And as you move towards customer centric milestones, you get into operational and tactical and strategic. Those are so much more meaningful to the customer because they're they're customer centric. And if customers are making changes on their side through the use of our product, it's impacting their business in a meaningful way. That's great. And if we can do that at a faster clip. That's awesome. And so you can bonus on the velocity of those things. #CustomerSuccess

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3 Things SDRs could be doing better to make discovery calls more valuable: One - Once the meeting is booked, ask for or confirm the prospect’s mobile number. A meeting reminder over text is more powerful than a meeting reminder over email. And if the prospect is running late, you can call them on their mobile. Two - Don’t set it and forget it. Be on the discovery call with the seller and prospect. When you verbally introduce the seller, the transition goes a lot smoother. Explain why the seller is leading the call. Before the meeting, ask the seller if you can ask a couple of discovery questions so that you are perceived as more than an appointment setter. After all, many SDRs are future closers. How else will you learn? Three - Get a referral from the prospect if the call goes well. While the seller and prospect are conversing, check out the prospect’s LinkedIn profile. Search for a recent former employer. And at the end of the call, tell the prospect that you noticed they used to work for X company. ‘Know anyone over there who could use us’? Every referral is one less cold call you’ll have to make. After 20 years in the biz dev game and a few books under my belt, I hope this advice is useful.

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RevOps leaders are building their tech stacks around tools they are confident can scale alongside their growing teams (and complexities). Today QuotaPath has released a series of features that position us as the most adaptable commission software for high growth teams with complex compensation problems. I use QuotaPath constantly (a fun perk of the job), and we are constantly listening to our customers and evolving QuotaPath to address their biggest pain points. Features like a first-of-its-kind Mapping Manager that allows users to build data logic once in a template, save it, and re-use it anytime they need to add a new comp plan and connect to its data source. (A massive time saver.) Our Manager Plans and Dynamic Team Assignments are designed to seamlessly support the shifts that occur when reps transition between teams. These features ensure that your compensation plans stay aligned with your evolving team structure. And a new multi-level approval process promises that by the time Finance gives its final sign-off on commission earnings, reps and sales leadership have already seen and approved their earnings, streamlining the payout process while giving reps more ownership over their commissions. Congrats to our team and thank to every customer who has contributed to QuotaPath’s evolution. 

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Do you use Salesforce? How about LinkedIn Sales Navigator? Keep reading. Question: How many tabs do you have open with Prospects that you're going to call....at...some....point? Today that changes...well hopefully not the prospecting part. LinkedIn Sales Solutions is making your lives even easier. ❌ No more switching between platforms ❌ No more multiple tabs ❌ No more [right click, open in new tab] Instead ✅ Insights that you can use, right insight your CRM ↳Account IQ: Get clued up on your accounts so you know how to position your solutions ↳Find your decision making unit ↳Relationship map - no more lists - visualise relationships to find decision makers faster. All of this is available today! (click refresh on your CRM tabs). Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/EESalesInsiders #LinkedIn #SalesNavigator #DeepSales #Sales #CRM #Productivity #GoToMarketStrategy

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Want to win more of your pipeline? 💰 Multi-thread It’s one of the most important things you can do to help drive urgency in your sales cycle Most mid-market deals include an average of 6-10 DMs Enterprise deals can include upwards of 20+ DMs The trap that a lot of sellers can fall into is over-relying on your champion Champions are great - don’t get me wrong It pays dividends to have a champion but it’s 10x when you have 3-4 champions advocating on your behalf Unfortunately most buyers don’t know how to buy so our job as sellers is to educate our buyers on how to effectively buy a solution to solve their problems & it’s actually pretty simple to do Take a look at your closed-won deals - especially your high value deals Who all was involved? Who is currently involved? What was the buying process like? What unexpected obstacles did you have to overcome? Use this as a roadmap to educate your prospects on how to buy I love multi-threading at the end of discovery in driving next steps (and farther along the sales process as well) Here’s a quick talk track you can easily apply when driving next steps with prospects: “Next steps typically involve looping in ABC partners (this could be higher level DMs in their function or other cross-functional leaders who are involved in the buying process for your service/offering) to discuss XYZ priorities (this should be the key initiatives your prospect is looking to solve/improve/attain in implementing your solution). We want to make sure that we’re all in alignment and moving in the right direction together. We usually see that looping in cross-functional partners early helps us to uncover potential roadblocks that we’d need to account for and improves our collaborative efficiency. What does your buying process look like and who is usually involved? Would it make sense for us to go ahead and loop then in on our next call?” Why it works? 1️⃣ You’re educating the buyer on who’s typically involved with the buying/implementation process at other similar organizations 2️⃣ You’re collaboratively driving next steps and confirming the prospects buying process 3️⃣ You’re using multi-threading as a way to add value (helping reduce unforeseen roadblocks and improve efficiency) 4️⃣ You’re reducing the internal selling effort required for your champion (again - adding value) Expand your reach by broadening your decision-making unit through multi-tasking and watch your sales cycle shrink What other tips do you have for multi-threading within your pipeline? Happy selling, friends!

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When I was at Salesforce, they doubled spend on new customers in the first 12 months. New customer acquisition is so tough right now. Nothing is more critical than retaining and growing existing customers. Here are some of the plays I learned at Salesforce: 1. Product Whitespace - Run a report for each Account Mgr - Show products purchased by account - Show products not purchased by account - Account Mgr can now call down accordingly 2. Stakeholder Whitespace - Run a report for each Account Mgr - Show key stakeholder roles by account - Show who we’ve contacted and who not - Show who we’ve met and who we haven’t - Account Mgr can now call down accordingly 3. Monitor Customer Health - Create a Customer Health Score - Scoring their usage of the product - Integrate this score into Salesforce - Run a report showing unhealthy accounts - AM can then call down on these accounts - And work to get them healthy before upselling 4. Find Expansion Signals in Product - Look for potential expansion signals - Example: CS Cases => Premiere Support - Example: Lots of data => Extra Data Storage - Example: Lots of emails => Sell marketing tools - Create reports AM can use to call down accounts 5. Leverage Renewal Event - Meet every single CFO ahead of Renewal - Ask if them they would like “Optimal Pricing” - Very few of them will say they want to pay extra - Ask to review their spending across the company - Get sponsorship to talk to other key stakeholders - Sell bigger package at renewal w/ bigger discounts These are just a handful of plays that worked for me. What would you add? 🤔 More on expansion here: https://bit.ly/4ad3iHy ✌️

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Every AE should use "the menu of pain" on their discovery calls. Huge shoutout to 👩🏻‍🏫 Krysten Conner for the best sales strategy and name of all time. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: Simply give your prospect options based on your experience helping other customers. Here are some examples: 𝗧𝗼 𝗸𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹: Hey Jill - typically when Sales Directors join these calls they're facing a couple of issues: - Issue 1 - Issue 2 But I don’t know how much any of that sounds like your world and what did I miss that you’re focused on? 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀: Hey Jill - Thank you for sharing. I work with other Sales Directors in a similar situation and they were each facing a couple of issues: - Issue 1 - Issue 2 But I don’t know how much any of that sounds like your world and what did I miss that you’re focused on? 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴'𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿: 1. You establish credibility and build trust because you know the issues and they don’t have to educate you. 2. You take control. Open ended questions like “what brought you to ABC Company” are ok but it’s a lot of work for the prospect and nobody likes essay questions. 3. Customer experience: It gives prospects room to correct you and people love correcting people. So there's no real downside. You game for trying The Menu of Pain in your discovery calls? - Mike G 👉 For this week only get The Best Sales Course at 35% off with coupon code 𝗖𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗘𝗘: https://lnkd.in/gP_-mVXR

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When onboarding a new AE I focus their first 4 weeks entirely on understanding our clients and client success teams. This means shadowing our CS reps, watching onboarding calls, watching activation calls, sitting in on strategy sessions and planning calls, and handling CS calls in week 4. All of this before we ever begin to start talking about sales enablement or taking sales calls. Why? Because too many sales organizations are 100% seller centric. I am passionate, some may say maniacal about ensuring our sales force is the most customer centric team in the industry. This means our AE's need to understand our customers, their status quo, be able to deliver thought provoking insights, the problems we solve, why they work with us, and the results we get them deeply before they can sell that way. Sending someone into the deep end to "learn by experience" is a go to for many. But I will never be swayed that this is the best way. The best way to create "at bats" and build confidence without burning potential opportunities is to ensure your AE's are learning as much about your customers as possible. This coupled with strong sales enablement, process, and clear expectations will set them up for long term success. Sure they may not be making dials and having meetings 2 weeks in. But I can assure you they will be more successful a year from now then the rep in that situation the majority of the time. True sales leadership is about long-term results. I know this is an unpopular opinion but I believe it is one of the biggest advantages you can give your new hires to increase their chances of long-term success. At the end of the day, my responsibilities as a sales leader are to be fanatical about our customers ensuring our clients and potential clients receive a world class experience. Set our sellers up for success to deliver that, and create an environment where people grow, win, and are challenged on the regular. By doing this, revenue targets take care of themselves. If you're onboarding new AE's in Q3, I would challenge you to try this if you're not. Happy EOQ!

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Absolutely agree! Unless you're in customer success, it's hard to grasp what CSMs handle daily. They must be consultants, sellers, product experts, industry gurus, relationship managers and incredibly patient - all to excel at their job. When I hear jokes about CS not doing much, it’s clear I’m dealing with someone who has no idea what it takes to run a successful business. To be a CSM, you need to be on your A game constantly, without rest. If you want the best in the industry protecting and advocating for your business, pay them accordingly. End of.

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I interviewed over 20 top Enterprise AE's from the best SaaS companies over the last 60 days If you're in the market for a new role, here are some things to keep in mind  💎Treat your interview process like a enterprise sales process...  👉 If you ask me where I'm based at the beginning of the call, I am going to assume you didn't take 10 seconds to look on my LinkedIn. First impressions set the tone for the rest of the call  👉When someone asks "what do you know about our company?" do not fumble over your words. You should be able to give a 10 second elevator pitch of how we make money, **help the interviewer envision you already working there**  👉 Don't be lazy with questions "what's the culture like?" is an example of a lazy question. "I read on Glassdoor people really love X Y Z or have concerns about A B C, curious if you agree or have a different perspective?" This shows you did your research and you care  👉Write a killer follow up email Would you write "thank you for your time, I look forward to next steps."in a follow up to a big prospects?? I sure hope not. It should be personalized to the conversation, emphasizing why there is a good mutual fit. You will almost always be DQ-ed with no follow up email  👉Be creative Top companies receive thousands of applications for one role. Here are some ways you can set yourself apart: -send a pre interview video emphasizing your excitement for the conversation -create a candidate deck with your accomplishments, values, and ways you would contribute to the organization -have a pre-interview call with someone else at the company to get more insight into what's going on that will help prepare you for the calls

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Converting your AEs to start sourcing a majority of their own pipeline might not be such a good idea and here’s why: Typically this transition fails for three main reasons: 1) The pipe gen goal that’s assigned is completely made up and is based on the financial model and not relevant sales data 2) You don’t have the right resources in place including an airtight ICP, deep understanding of your persona, the right messaging or tech stack  3) Typically exec or senior level leaders are disconnected from the realities of how difficult cold outreach really is and don’t give the campaign enough time to be successful Here’s what you can do to give yourself a better chance at success: 1) Pick a few key data points to track (such as number of accounts worked, positive contacts, opportunities created, pipeline generated, closed won $$$s) and benchmark these over a period of time that makes sense for your sales cycle. Use this data set to understand what is or isn’t working and make adjustments from there. 2) Start with a small campaign to select accounts within your ICP using targeted messaging and an intriguing offer 3) Cold outreach is a team sport, get your execs and senior leaders involved by having them look through your target account list and see if there are any doors they can open from their network 4) Have some fun while doing it, celebrate the wins along the way! What do you think?

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Ready to be a Mixmax pro?!?! Join us today at 11am PDT! Whether you're an SDR, AE, or CSM... We're covering all the best practices to how you can be most successful with Mixmax! Not using Mixmax yet, but curious... This masterclass is also for you 👈

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3 Rev Ops practices you should be doing as a late-stage startup that you probably aren’t doing yet: 1. Regularly reviewing your ICP I speak to a lot of companies doing $1-3MM a year. It amazes me how many aren’t aware of who their buyer is. Markets change, signals change, buyer behavior changes. Reviewing the ICP and maintaining a universal document within your organization ensures your revenue teams can allocate time and resources to the right activities. ⭐Recommendation: Review this biquarterly. 2. Standardizing your revenue-generating activities Another major pitfall is waiting too long to start standardizing how your team brings in revenue. In the early days of a startup, that’s normal. Get money however you can. But in the later stages, this can rapidly evolve into a chaos that can’t be tracked, forecasted, or planned around to sustain growth. ⭐Recommendation: Workshop your Buyer’s Journey. Align your Rev Ops. 3. Relentlessly tracking KPIs I’ll tell you the major difference I see between late-stage startups that become scaleups, and those that don’t: The former prioritizes KPI tracking in everything they do - the latter does not. This is because to get from $1M - $5M, you need momentum in the right direction - and direction requires you to know *how* and *when* to adjust course. ⭐Recommendation: sit down with your revenue leads and uncover which indicators are tied to growth. Once you’ve done that, track them monthly or until you can see them in your sleep. — ♻️Feel free to repost #Startups #Scaleups #RevOps

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Your entire quote to order process can take literally 3 minutes.... If you've ever been in sales or finance of a growing tech company, you know the horrors of communication between sales and finance. Sales just wants finance to put the deal through, and finance just wants sales to politely tell them what was sold. It's a massive back and forth that wastes time and energy all while straining the relationship between two of your critical departments. The solution? A seamless integration between your CRM (in this case Salesforce) and your subscription management / billing platform (in this case Younium). This elegant solution removes manual re-entry of data from a PDF, and ensures that what was sold is what gets billed, no matter how complex (works with usage, metered, tiered, one-time, and any other fees you can think of). Take a look at my 3 minute walkthrough below, and DM me if you'd like to learn more. #saasbilling #saassales #salesops #revops #salesforce #younium

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Closing enterprise deals is tough. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Finding pain, solving problems, and getting buy-in from your champion isn't enough. You need to understand: *Legal terms and redlines *Contract negotiations *Multithreading *Building business cases that tie to core business initiatives *Bridging the gap between legal and business *KPI's for success Sales leaders, if you are not getting involved early in these deals and helping guide your AE's to the finish line, don't be surprised when these move to closed lost. It's on you to make sure your teammates see success on these. Hard stop. What can you do? *Engage senior leadership early-The faster you can get c-levels and senior execs involved the more velocity the deal will move with. *Push for conversations with legal teams early in the redline process rather than going back and forth via swapped edits. This can drag on for months, when often an hour phone call can bridge the gaps and get your respective teams on the same page. *Be involved and engaged with ALL legal conversations. Don't become a fly on the wall for these, but make sure you fully understand the conversation, asks and redlines both sides have. *Having coaching calls with your AE after legal calls to transfer, elaborate, and answer questions about the scenario for them so they are growing their skillset here. *Stay in consistent contact with your champions and POC throughout the process. Having a 15 minute touch base on the calendar weekly is a great tool here, even if its cancelled. It keeps you top of mind, and pushes them to move this along on their end as well. *Get buy in from senior stakeholders at your potential stakeholders business by multithreading deeply and presenting them with insights they don't know about the issues/risks their business units face. *Be very clear on the success KPI's your teams have aligned on. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a lack of clarity here bump the urgency of a deal. If you don't know these, you can't possibly create a strong business case. Legal is where I've seen more enterprise deals die than I can count in my career. Don't let it happen to you. Mitigate the risks, get involved, and make sure your teammate, champion, legal, and you successfully cross the finish line together. Happy selling!

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