Zachary Reiss-Davis

Discover how PreSales teams are evolving, adapting, and unlocking new opportunities in 2024 👀 From organizational structure to budgeting and analytics, explore the trends shaping the industry: https://lnkd.in/eGvrCeJT ​

4

1 Comment

Our latest survey offers a comprehensive look at the current state of selling, featuring insights from 800 front-line sellers. A standout finding: 3 out of 4 respondents believe they could save at least an hour by eliminating the task of creating personalized emails for prospects. While personalization is essential for connecting with prospects, it’s also incredibly time-consuming. Sellers understand its importance, but those hours quickly add up. We know time is money, and we’re dedicated to providing today’s sellers with the tools they need to personalize efficiently and effectively. Additionally, we asked sellers, “What specific tasks in your role do you think would benefit most from AI and automation?” The top three responses were: 1. Follow-up and engagement tracking 2. Reporting and performance analytics 3. Data entry and CRM updating Our survey uncovers valuable insights into the future of sales. Discover how AI can revolutionize your sales process: https://lnkd.in/gMr_3UNA

2

In a complex selling environment, businesses need to improve the seller experience, drive more revenue, and optimize how they go to market. New capabilities for @Salesforce Revenue Lifecycle Management address these challenges by providing an AI-guided quoting experience for direct sellers and more:

5

B2B ecommerce is on the rise! Over half of the B2B organizations in our recent survey are looking to move their revenue from in person to ecommerce channels! With AI and search at the top of many of their priorities they are certainly taking the right steps to make it happen! Learn more about the latest B2B ecommerce trends we found in our survey in this @Digital Commerce 360 article:

7

Engaging the right buyers at the right time is critical to sales success. ZoomInfo Copilot's Target Account Digests alert you when your most promising suspects are showing the right buying signals. 🔔 Get personalized daily digests — delivered via Slack or email — with AI-powered recommendations for next steps. Never miss a sales opportunity with ZoomInfo Copilot: bit.ly/3yxBNes #ZoomInfoCopilot

4

It’s never been more difficult to be in sales. To be successful, you need high-value outbound messaging that distinguishes you as the right solution for your prospect. But let's face it — not all reps have the time or access to real-time data to truly understand each prospect's needs...  It's time to meet SAM, the AI-powered sales assistant from Similarweb. Only with SAM do you get: 💡Prospect-tailored insights based on buyer intent, sales signals, and your prospects’ use case 📬Hyper-personalized, ready-to-use outbound messaging that spotlights your company as the right solution 🗓️Instantly generated insights accessible through Gmail and Google Calendar, making sales reps ready for any meeting  You can learn more about SAM’s capabilities here → https://bit.ly/3QOi5BB

17

Going to Connections24 this week in Chicago? It's Salesforce's biggest marketing & commerce unveil of the year -- and this year it's going to be epochal. Interested in what's going on with Data Cloud, our fastest-growing native product ever? Of course you are. So don't forget to bookmark my two sessions where you can: "Find Out What’s New and What’s Next for Data Cloud" Weds 5/22, 12:30 - 1:10pCT Breakout #5 w/ special guest Amy Kitscher from Publicis Sapient Thurs 5/23 1-1:40pCT Breakout #4 w/ special guest Robert Marusi from Turtle Bay Resort Learn about our latest innovations with Data Cloud and its role in the future of data-driven experiences from powering customer-centricity and personalization to AI-driven efficiency. Objective 1: Learn about the latest Data Cloud innovations and what’s coming. Objective 2: Learn how AI will transform businesses and how Data Cloud is the trusted foundation for AI. See you there! #cnx24 #connections24 #cdp #AI #genAI https://lnkd.in/eBwrx5XQ

86

3 Comments

Looking for ways to get high-value insights from documents faster? I shared some thoughts with Entrepreneur Media on how AI Assistant for Acrobat can super charge productivity

31

Overheard at Gainsight conference: Explaining #customersuccess to Andy Cohen. Elevator pitch time! My explanation: Happy customers = loyal customers, reducing churn and driving business growth. What's your elevator pitch? #Pulse2024

8

Enablement is all about empathy — for both reps and for customers. It’s crucial to coach this into reps so they can bring the best into their deals, but it’s just as important for managers to bring empathy into their meetings with reps to offer them concrete guidance and advice. That’s what I loved about this success story from Nick Lewis, Global Head of Revenue Enablement at Uber for Business. AI-backed revenue intelligence gave them data-driven insight into what high performers who are great at building pipeline, but struggle to close are doing. This empowered leaders with the data they needed to provide solid coaching to help these reps outperform. Those are the kinds of wins that makes enablement successful and I’m so proud that Gong is offering this intelligence to amazing revenue orgs like Uber. Read more about Uber for Business’ incredible story here:

35

Thinking that Partner Enablement is the same as Onboarding READ POST HERE: Partner Enablement: Glaring Gap or Shocking Shortfall? - Starting in Partnering: What most Tech CEOs get wrong #7 https://rb.gy/tug2xz #SalesChannels #PartnerEnablement

1

A few weeks ago, Salesforce announced the need for 50% more pipeline to hit their plan. Traditionally, the response is to enhance sales team enablement, providing them with resources to sell more effectively. Over the last five years, sales leaders have invested over $3B in enablement teams, programs, and tools. Yet, despite these investments, we still need to push teams to work twice as hard to achieve the same goals. While I have immense respect for enablement, the reality is that we're spending more money for less attainment. The math ain't mathing. I propose an alternative approach: invest a fraction of the enablement budget into the Sales Engineering function. Investments in content, training, coaching, and tooling can benefit the entire sales team in ways that enablement alone cannot. By scaling technical coverage, we can better identify buyer problems, map solutions, and deliver compelling technical narratives at every stage of the process. I've personally seen the value of this approach in transforming sales outcomes, particularly in these three areas: 1. Shorter Sales Cycles: The technical validation stage is often the longest part of the sales cycle. Empowered Sales Engineers can significantly reduce this stage. On average, Vivun customers spend 42 days in this stage, with varying results by segment, geography, and go-to-market motion. 2. Higher Deal Sizes: In a product-centric sales motion, identifying one or two killer use cases can get the ball rolling. Empowered Sales Engineers can quickly assess underlying challenges and present holistic, differentiated solutions. Vivun customers see an average 15% increase in deal size when Sales Engineers are involved early in the sales process. 3. Accurate Forecasts: Forecasting is critical, yet even the best organizations get it right only 85% of the time. Empowered Sales Engineers can spot technical fit risks early, helping to mitigate them. Vivun customers have identified 59% of their pipeline with some level of technical risk, allowing them to adjust accordingly. By scaling up the Sales Engineering function, companies can achieve better outcomes with less strain on their sales reps. This approach enhances execution and ensures that technical aspects of the sale are thoroughly addressed, leading to more successful deals. At Vivun, we are passionate about empowering companies to scale their Sales Engineering teams effectively. Explore more about this transformative approach and discover how you can shorten sales cycles, increase deal sizes, and forecast more accurately by leveraging technical expertise. ---

95

19 Comments

Go from signal to sale in record time. 🏎️ 💨 ZoomInfo Copilot — the AI-driven solution for sellers — empowers sales teams to sell smarter and win faster. 🔍 Uncover prospects who are ready to buy 🤖 Get AI recommendations for next steps 📧 Personalize outreach with AI-generated emails 💬 Ask questions about your accounts with ZoomInfo Copilot's AI Chat Ready to revolutionize your sales game? Make every seller your best seller with ZoomInfo Copilot: bit.ly/3xF1z0j #ZoomInfoCopilot

5

Forget Inbound and Outbound artificial boundaries...and your old-fashioned play(s)/silos by Sales or Marketing in our new "B2B buyer in full control" world. No more spamming, sequences, non-personalised, un-engaging messages please SDR/AEs bombarding me;)... ending up straight into our Junk and Trash WATCH my one-min summary shown (SLIDES AVAILABLE) in June's Revenue Marketing Alliance Product Marketing Alliance ABM summit (watch on demand see link in comment) on https://lnkd.in/e2-4aZXR Thx as always Andrei Zinkevich Vladimir Blagojević Fullfunnel.io too for the usual inspiration, Elena Simou also, lkg fwrd to sharing more soon! It is all about an integrated AllBound, "a la ABM" playbook and even more importantly a GTMOps / RevOps mindset and framework. ABM = GTM: Pure & simple. Not Marketing, not Sales but cross-Product, CS, Sales, Marketing and related teams, all for the full customer journey benefits...from new sales to renewal & expansion (incl Partners) You need to (1) focus on enabling & boosting your Go To Market strategy, which motion(s) or which mix of, PLG, SLG, PLS or whatever.. (2) adapt your ABM playbook, craft your strategy and segmentation as you see here from top to bottom. What are the cohorts, firmographics, attributes, triggers, HubSpot properties, you name it, that are critical to define these cohorts with first, second or third-party data or other... selecting your most promising accounts using predictive AI, scoring, buying intent tactics and MarOps set-up

27

6 Comments

Is Customer Success in an existential crises? After almost 30 years since the role was invented*, Hubspot launched their CSM platform yesterday. They are launching in beta with all of the features you would expect; activity pipelines, application usage, and customer health scores It is interesting that Salesforce who helped popularize the CSM function after implementing CSM’s in 2006 after the Doom Memo** has never sought to build that functionality into their platform. And after 8 years since Nick Mehta published his book on Customer Success that helped create the category, I believe Customer Success is in crisis mode. I think this opinion is heretical, because we love our CSM’s too damn much. Customer Success was first created to help drive adoption to ensure that customers wouldn’t churn because if a customer was using the product, why would they churn? However, the past 24 months has shown that truism isn’t correct anymore. I have seen customers use the crud out of a product and churn and I have seen customers barely use a product and sign up for a 3 year renewal. It is and always has been about value and executive alignment. But that is not why I believe that Customer Success is in crisis mode. In the past few weeks we have seen posts about the “Death of the SDR” and the “Full Cycle Sales Rep” - but we haven’t talked about CSM’s CSM role has morphed into a “everything catch all.” From the humble beginnings of driving usage - we have seen many CSM teams now taking on;  customer service, professional services, renewals, implementation and account management (cross -sell and upsell) (QBR's) and often while their portfolio of companies has more than doubled. That cognitive switching to try and do everything has real costs. Not being able to creatively create renewal contracts, not being able to understand the true ability of the cross sell or upsell In a booming economy, CSM’s were getting credit for a lot of things that were macro tailwinds and now in a bear market they are struggling with fire fighting and churn is still affecting a lot of companies because executives at the customer have not understand the value that a lot of platforms bring. My hope is that gen ai, will allow customer success teams room to breathe and will elevate the profession. However, seeing execs giddy that gen ai will cut their support costs, I am not sure that will be true. *https://lnkd.in/gh9wS4PV **https://lnkd.in/gggKupRd

14

2 Comments

What co-selling feels like to most AEs: too chaotic, too complicated, too unpredictable. So how do we change that? How about another enablement session, a few more amazing stats on why working with partners is better, maybe another Salesforce field? None of those truly deliver sustainably and at scale… Here’s my take: We need to stop telling AEs that what they do sucks and that they need to change their workflows. Instead: 1️⃣ We need to show up when they have an issue (e.g., a deal that’s stuck) and provide solutions when they need them. 2️⃣ We need to figure out ways to make it ridiculously easy to work with partners. So easy that they don’t need to be trained.

37

5 Comments