Todd Grierson

Your TAM isn't as big as you think If you're a founder, founding AE or just an early sales rep. Remember, not every SMB in North America can use you your product... Most GTM teams get this wrong. Especially at the early stages. The harsh reality is that your TAM is typically a fraction of what you think it actually is. But this is ok... The earlier you are, the smaller it should be. Narrow the focus WAY in and go really hard into a sub-vertical. Your marketing, product and engineering team will love you for it. Get some traction, then slowly expand the scope. Doing too much too soon will break you and leave you spinning your wheels.

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My client's salespeople didn't... ...follow my advice. ❌They kept relying on old habits and disciplines. ❌They were banging away on the phone calls, DMs, and emails. ❌Focused on massive activity. 🔑They lacked Strategy, Intention, and Technique. → When we met the next week, their results were below par. → I challenged them by providing an example of what works. →To make my point stick, I took action following my methodology to demonstrate. →I executed my Strategy with Intention and the proper Technique. Results: 🎯I scheduled qualified meetings with 150% of the people I talked with. How is that possible? I followed Abraham Lincoln's advice. Lincoln didn't focus on massive action; he prioritized Strategy and Technique. Lincoln’s Quote: → “If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I’d spent five hours sharpening the ax.”🪓 But, I didn't focus on sharpening the ax but on a modern-day Strategy & Technique. 🎯I used a chainsaw to cut through the need for massive activity by doing the following. → I spent 10 minutes doing research. → 5 minutes thinking who could make introductions for me. → 5 minutes thinking about using leverage based on the prospect’s needs, not my wants. → 5 minutes writing my script → 5 minutes of practicing so I didn't sound scripted. → 5 Minutes on personal video messages to people asking for introductions. → 25 minutes making calls → That hour produced more meetings than the salespeople's efforts doing things their way in a week. 🎯Strategy + Belief + Intention + Focused Action = Explosive Growth🔥 Founders/CEOs, go to my profile by clicking my name, Chaz Horn, to reserve a complimentary copy of my book. 📕”The B2B Blueprint To Predictable Sales” #gorockthisday #business #consulting #consultant

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Sales leaders need to put an end to this MADNESS. Here's a strategic seller who was put on a PIP after hitting 166% of his $1.2M quota because he didn't hit the required "activity metrics.” There’s a better way to lead: It's simple... Stop treating knowledge professionals like factory workers. Specialized knowledge, building networks, and embracing tech innovation are more important growth levers than measuring activity inputs. This is especially true for strategic sellers. If you're leading sellers who have to engage with multiple executives at large companies and you're scrutinizing their "activity metrics,” I suggest you do an audit of your management style. Here are 3 great places to start: 1. WHO DO YOU WORK FOR? The average tenure of a VP of Sales is 17 months (down from 26 mos in 2010, per Gong). You’re in a high-pressure position, so it’s a good time to think about who you *truly* work for if this trend has any chance to reverse. Instead of thinking of your board and C-Suite as your bosses, what if you flipped the model on its head? This is known as Inversion Thinking. Instead of: “What do I need to show people at the top to keep my job?” Ask: “What can I do to help the people below me reach their full potential?” 2. WHAT IS THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS? Is the team you lead given a revenue quota or something else? Businesses need revenue to survive and grow… Not more meetings on the calendar. So why over-index on activity inputs if the important outcomes are being surpassed? This is known as Linearity Bias, the assumption that a change in one quantity produces a proportional change in another. More calls, emails, and meetings ≠ more revenue. Instead of chastising reps who are over quota but under activity, try deconstructing their unique approach and giving them a platform to share it with the rest of the team. Viewing sellers like this as “lucky” will limit your growth and tenure. 3. HOW MUCH TRUST DO YOU HAVE? “We had 2 reps put in their notice this week, and I know 2 more who are about to resign.” This was verbatim from a Strategic Account AE I spoke with last week at a Series D startup. Why? Because their senior sales team must participate in 2 cold call blitzes each week in addition to 80 outbound outreaches. “We feel like glorified SDRs. 1,000 calls have produced 10 meetings, a 1% return.” They’re fed up and burned out…so they’re leaving. If a tenured seller leaves tomorrow, what’s the cost of finding, vetting, onboarding, and training a new seller? What's the cost of lost momentum with existing pipeline? If you’re leading with activity and not strategy, I guarantee you don’t have trust in your sales team. As we enter the 2nd half of 2024, I encourage you to think differently. The era of 17 months tenure, <40% quota attainment, and 63% of sellers experiencing burnout doesn’t have to continue. You can be the change. 🐝 Strategic sellers, there's a better way: https://buff.ly/3noPjbn

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Tenured, forward thinking SVP of Sales for a large manufacturer that leads a tenured outside sales team...... "I didn't buy Map Map My Customers to have my reps get turn by directions to each of their accounts. They know how to get to the accounts they have. "I bought Map My Customers to highlight all of the accounts that they continue to not pay attention to." "I didn't buy Map My Customers to police where my reps are throughout the day." "I bought Map My Customers so I can plainly and easily, visually display for them where they should be spending their time." #outsidesales #fieldsales

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Special feature post in The GTM Newsletter today: Kyle Poyar broke down 10 “PLG plays” that every company should implement - even if they’re *NOT PLG*. Kyle consistently shares exceptional content around PLG, growth and pricing. It was a ton of fun collaborating and seeing his breakdown. The first point is an interactive demo on the website. The fourth point is to leverage product data to drive customer outcomes. This fourth point I found particularly interesting. The CRM is the "source of truth" for go-to-market teams, but often lacks product analytics to provide customer behavior understanding from in-product activities without human or sales rep involvement. But in reality, even non-PLG companies can use this data to assess customer health and tailor sales conversations. I'll drop the link to the details on these 10, including examples and screenshots 👇 -- The GTM Newsletter is a weekly newsletter by GTMfund's media brand, GTMnow, that goes out to over 50k revenue leaders who are scaling their companies and careers. If you aren't already subscribed, you can do so through the Substack post in the comments.

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I was putting a few slides together yesterday and went back to a presentation from 2018 by David Skok at Matrix Partners. While the context for this chart is SaaS businesses with inside sales teams, the same dynamic applies in most scenarios. Your rate of growth will be commensurate with the depth of your investment (assuming you play your cards right). - #marketing #shareofvoice #marketingstrategy #SaaS

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Top 5 key metrics I recommend CROs use for inside sales professionals: 1. Speed of response 2. Efficiency of progression through the process 3. Number of calls per day 4. Number of positive outcomes 5. Demo sets As a CRO leader, these are five metrics that I live by. 

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No, this is not a fake text. No, I didnt prompt this text. Just proof that using Sendspark is a gamechanger for booking meeting. Real life examples, done by real life people. #sendsparkpartner #salesrecruiting #salestraining 🦘

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When I resigned as CRO at Catalyst, I got overrun by 250+ hot leads who wanted to hire me, consult, do fractional work, and advise. I quickly became the rep who wasn’t following up with his leads the right way. I finally bought Hubspot. Off the bat → impressed. After 3 weeks, not so much. The “easy” solution quickly became another labyrinth of gated functionality, hitting limits for basic stuff, needing to be a PhD to find a specific setting, endless marketing emails and expansion calls, it was impossible to hit the easy button. As I sought out help, I got the usual advice: - go with Salesforce (huh? No way that’s easier) - hire a consultant (a consultant for someone consulting - too meta) - use a spreadsheet (it’s not 1994, not an option) I fired up my buddy ChatGPT and started doing some research. I wanted: - easy - not pricey - automations - deep connection to GMail and Google Workspace - pipeline management - invoicing Took me a day or two to wade through a bunch of options. None had it all. After a few calls, I found NetHunt CRM. I’m not a technical person but how does a small team build something like this? They didn’t have invoicing but... - insane integration to GMail - very helpful LinkedIn integration - strong pipeline management - easy reports ...were like WHOA!! I don’t need something sophisticated. I need something I can use. I don’t need a tool built to trap me. I need something I can get work done with. I don’t need a “peek” of a feature. I need basic functionality. I don’t want another place to go. I want tools where I use them. Simple is powerful. Simple is productive. Simple is effective. This isn't about tools. It's about what this tool reminded me of. Simplicity. Put it in your process, your visuals, your talk track. Take a lesson from NetHunt…give people what they want in a simple way aligned to where they are.

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How to do cold outreach. Old way - Hire SDRs to increase reach - Waste time pre-qualifying accounts or don't PQ at all - Everyone reaches out from main domain - Messaging all over the place due to lack of targeting New way - Top performers leverage tech to increase output - Strong account pre-scoring in place - Dedicated cold email infrastructure - Highly targeted segments for hyper-relevant messaging Efficiency > brute force

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If your solution requires behavior change of any amount, you require a top down selling motion. Why? Behavior change is too hard to do bottoms up. It just doesn’t work. A pretty large number of SaaS apps think that they can go middle up or bottoms up. Then they are frustrated that their “champion” or “power user” isn’t driving the change they want. If your solution requires change, get good at selling to the c-level.

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There will be a lot of Sales folks who won’t like to hear this… But in our new world of AI, Marketing needs to own Outbound. First off, this ain’t a new idea. Many marketing teams haver owned SDRs / BDRs for a long time. It just depends where you think the marketing 'job' ends. Does it end at leads? At MQLs? Booked meetings? ❓SO - WHY DOES SALES TRADITIONALLY OWN OUTBOUND❓ One of the main reasons Sales owned outbound was because the SDR team required many bodies and those reps were incentivised to become great at their job so that they could transition to an AE. It is rare for people to make a career out of SDR life. So, because you had a large number of young, inexpensive folks (to make the economics work) who need significant mentoring and moulding to become high-quality AEs, it made sense to integrate them into the Sales team. ✨ WHY MUST MARKETING OWN IT NOW ✨ With the wave of new AI tools (like Clay & Sendspark) that automate more and more of the Outbound process, it VASTLY cuts down on the number of people you need and moves the core skillset required to marketings domain (eg copywriting, automation, lead scoring). A single SDR can now achieve the same outbound volume that previously required a team of ten, all while maintaining a high level of personalization. In fact, with these new tools, you can make it appear even more personalised than anything big teams of SDRs were doing just 2 years ago. So - whether you like it or loathe it - Outbound is an ad type now. BUT - they can mark your ad as spam. That ruins your brand, stops you from speaking to them again and hurts your deliverability. So - given that it is an ad - you had better make sure that: - It is a really good ad with such high personalisation that never feels like an ad - You don’t abuse the relationship (more below) - Your team is ready to respond instantly to any signs of interest or intent (we use Qwilr’s new analytics to track intent). 😡 WHY DO PEOPLE HATE OUTBOUND? 😡 Because the emails suck. And they often suck for 7 emails in a row. Marketing needs to own the creation of excellent copy for the emails, but they also need to make sure that they are recycling lead lists. Instead of emailing someone 7 times in 14 days, email them 2 or 3 times the first time you reach out. If there is no reply wait 3-5 months, then try again with one or two emails. Again - if nor reply wait another 4-5 months… And so on. The beauty of this is that: A) You should never outstay your welcome in someones inbox B) You actually give yourself a far better chance of aligning with your buyers buying cycle. Your ideal buyer is not a buyer at all times. You need to find them at the right moment. This approach gives you far more chance at doing that. If you can do this without ruining your brand (ideally you actually enhance your brand!) then you will have a good chance to make outbound work spectacularly for you over the long term. 🚀

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Since January, I've spent 131 hours meeting with strategic account sellers. Here’s the #1 issue driving them crazy (and how to escape this hell): Being forced to sell by activity rather than strategy! I hear this story over and over again. Senior sellers at SaaS companies being pressured by their leaders to meet high outbound activity metrics each week. They're treated like glorified SDRs rather than Strategic AEs… But with $150K-$200K base salaries. Here's the problem: Surpassing $1.5M-5M+ ARR quotas will not happen by running call blitzes using senior reps. 7-figure transformation deals unfold by designing a high-quality executive buying experience for a smaller subset of accounts aligned to the AE's unique characteristics. So if you’re a strat account seller and find yourself in this sticky situation, here’s a playbook you can use to get out of it: STEP 1: Break down how you spent your time over the past 4 weeks The key is a deep understanding of revenue-generating activities (RGAs) vs non-RGAs. Remember: Research, prep, and follow-up are RGAs - not just the call or meeting. BTW, I like using Timeular for detailed time tracking. STEP 2: Draft up an internal business case Use this to present your case for replacing cold outreach time with more creative and impactful strategies, which will improve your performance and grow the business. STEP 3: Outline your strategy Structure your plan like this: ⇢ Title that includes your BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) Example: “The path from $400K to $4M deals” ⇢ Headline Example: “I will replace 2 mandatory call blitzes per week with strategic account win design sessions. This deep work will result in elevating my executive status within my top 10 tier-one accounts.” ⇢ The Problem Statement Example: “For the past 4 weeks, 200 cold calls during the mandatory call blitz windows have produced 2 meetings (a 1% call-to-meeting ratio), resulting in a 50% attendance rate.” ⇢ Recommended Approach Example: “By allocating two 1-hour blocks for strategic account win designs instead of the cold call blocks, I will develop specific plans for my top 10 accounts using tools such as account maps, creative strategies such as crafting open letters, and arranging peer network exchanges which have been proven strategies from other 7-figure sellers within a strategic sales community I have invested in. I will still have time to meet the required 80 weekly outbound outreaches.” ⇢ Outline The KPIs You will want to drill down into the key levers that matter (show current vs target): - Win rate - Deal size - Deal cycle Remember to set a date for your targets. The beauty of this model is that it’s also a blueprint for selling more effectively with prospects. Going through this exercise proves to both you and your leaders you can be more strategic. Which, in case they forgot, was what you were hired for in the first place! 🐝

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SDRs, a quick question: Do you really think offering a gift card for attending your demo increases my intent to buy? I'm curious — does this tactic actually help you hit your revenue targets? Share your experiences!

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Alright. I cooled off from posting about RevOps for a few weeks, but...I'm back. Listen, and listen closely: RevOps can include Sales Ops, but Sales Ops is not RevOps. RevOps can include Marketing Ops, but Marketing Ops is not RevOps. RevOps is a hub-and-spoke model. RevOps sits at the center as the strategic guidepost of your GTM motion. RevOps leaders spend a lot of their time translating organizational metrics like Revenue Growth, Retention Goals, Onboarding efficiency, NPS results, etc, into tactical roadmaps for Sales, Marketing, CS, and Finance Ops teams to drive improvement/attainment. Two action items to take from this post: 1️⃣ Ensure your RevOps function is serving the strategic outcomes of your org 2️⃣ If you do not have a RevOps function, find a strategic partner to help you build the strategy and relationships between your teams. #revops

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Between the age 23 and 24 I booked over 200 meetings with SVP or c-level titles. But John, yesterday you said that c-level prospects don't want to talk to 22 year old SDRs? That is true, they don't want to talk to them and hear a canned script that someone gave them. However, most senior people want to help young people who are just starting their careers. Why? Because most people who are in senior positions got help from someone along the way and assuming they aren't horribly cynical, they would like to return that favor. So here is what I said: Hey _____________, My name is John Thackston and I am just starting out my sales career. I have your company as one of my accounts and I would really appreciate your advice on how to best sell to ____________. Would you be open to spending 15 minutes with me to share your perspective? I won't try to sell you anything, I will just ask questions and listen. Once we are done, no follow up required. How would next __________ at ____________ be for you? Then, I would go to the calls and ask for their advice on how to best sell to their company. And I got a lot of advice! I also got some customers, some mentors and some friends. For all the advice on optimizing prospecting, sometimes the best advice is to be human. It worked for me, maybe it will work for you, too.

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AEs aren’t the Quarterbacks. SDRs are. 🏈 AEs are often referred to the QBs in sales. But let’s shift the focus to the true playmakers: SDRs. A qualified pass to set up a play delivered at the right time to the right player, has the best chance of a touchdown.  Shoutout to all the SDRs calling the plays everyday. It’s a tough, high pressure role 🔊 If you watched “Quarterback” on Netflix last year, watch“Receiver” this year which got me excited for the new season and inspired this post. P.s. cheat code for a full a team full of first round draft pick SDRs… Pareto USA and Pareto got you #quarterback #sales #sdr Disclaimer: Soccer is still my fave sport and here's Tom being a stellar SDR 😅

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Top-tier mid-market AEs close deals in 30 to 90 days. Mediocre reps take 4-5 months. Why are the best reps 2x faster? They’re personal trainers, not teachers. What is the difference? Teacher: “Here’s the gym” “Here are the exercises.” “If you do them you’ll see results” “Buy our membership” Personal Trainers: “What’s your goal?” “What’s held you back in the past?” “Here’s another way to think about it.” ”I’ll show you how to do it.” ”Now you do it.” “See you tomorrow.” Do you see the difference? It’s guidance and understanding. Not lecturing and pleading. A good personal trainer understandings their client’s limiting beliefs, helps them make a breakthrough and then holds them accountable. It’s the same in sales. Top-tier reps do the following: 1) Understand their prospect's limiting beliefs. 2) Develop a custom plan to break them. 3) Guide, encourage, and support 4) Lead them to a breakthrough 5) Hold them accountable If you want to be a top-tier seller. Be a personal trainer, not a teacher.

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I believe the inability to prove ROI is the single biggest blocker right now in getting a sale across the line. And there's now evidence to prove this... TrustRadius just released their 2024 B2B Buying Disconnect Report, which found that 71% of buyers end up purchasing the top option on their short list (ie the list they made before they started doing real research and talking to vendors and peers). Additionally, 47% of enterprise buyers said they wished it was easier to calculate ROI. What these two stats together mean to me: - In this turbulent market where budgets are tight, buyers are understandingly very risk averse - and so they are choosing solutions that are well known (and likely more established and "safer" vendors that their boss/CFO knows), and the sales process isn't really changing their opinion. - Emerging vendors aren't doing a good job with the content and sales process to change any buyer's minds, and prove that they have something better than the incumbent worth taking a slight risk on. One big part of this is not being able to show relevant, specific, evidence and success stories that they've delivered success in a similar industry, company size, region, use-case, etc. - Competitive enablement needs to be much more of a focus. While one finding of this report is investing in Brand is important so you make the top of the shortlist -- if you're an emerging vendor - you're not going to outspend the incumbent on Brand - so while important, it's not really an actionable strategy for a lot of smaller companies. What is actionable is harnessing the voice of your happy customers, to get super granular and authentic proof from customers that did switch from these incumbents. Evidence that talks about why you're better/different, what it's like to switch/migrate etc. - Buyers don't believe your (or your Forrester TEI's) 438% ROI claim. It's too broad, it's unbelievable, it's unsubstantiated, and not specific to your exact business and use-case. We need to break the ROI/value argument up into more realistic and believable sub-components (eg hours saved per week, improvements in win rates, FTE salary deferred, etc) that build into a more credible ROI/value narrative. Also - we can't just make sh*t up and pull numbers out of thin air, and pointing to one hand-curated reference customer isn't sufficient evidence, it's anecdotal at best, and a biased sample at worst. Showing more broad-based, relevant, statistically significant samplings of customer success will earn more trust that you've delivered ROI across lots of customers, not just one. Anyway check out the report (link in comments) - there's some great insights in there that should make you rethink how you sell and market.

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