Todd Jackson’s Post

Seizing every opportunity to maximize revenue has never been more critical. Yet we continue to use ineffective, disconnected methods to enable our teams. In fact, most reps spend 3–11 hours every week simply searching for answers 🤯 — time that they could spend selling. How does Spekit ensure your teams have what they need in the moment they need it? 🔵 Speks: agile, flexible, accessible training 💥 Spotlights: communicate changes with in-app alerts 👫 SpekitAI: automate content creation so you can create, sell, and enable 10x faster 📚 Knowledge Checks: access knowledge in the flow of work 📈 Analytics: access team knowledge for organizational goals And that's just the beginning of what Spekit can offer your teams - learn more about our product features here. 👉https://hubs.la/Q0259x-y0 #sales #product #onboarding

When is the right time to engage with customers? A) Before coming up with a solution B) During the design phase C) After releasing the first version of the solution It’s a trick question. The answer is — all of the above! Even though it can be tempting for innovators to jump straight to a solution or design a solution in a vacuum — it’s vitally important to get out there and learn from the people you want to help! You’ll discover a deeper understanding of your prospective customer’s pain points and context — and that will help you focus on their key problems with solution ideas that actually fit their needs. That’s why this week at The Greenhouse is all about customer discovery. We’re taking this week to build the skills and develop the practice of what we hope will become an ongoing habit for each of the members of the cohort. We want to give a huge shout-out to Sylvia Vaquer, co-founder of Context Nature, Public Benefit Corporation, who joined us this week to teach us how to conduct effective customer discovery. Her talk walked through how to plan and conduct customer discovery based on what you’re trying to learn and where you are in your product development process. In addition to sharing helpful frameworks and philosophies for understanding the role of customer discovery, Sylvia’s presentation was also jammed-packed with practical tips for finding interview subjects (LinkedIn is your friend!), reaching out to them, asking good questions, and organizing useful insights! Thank you, Sylvia for sharing your wisdom with the cohort!

The key to nailing GTM as an early-stage startup? Make sales a science 🔬 In the latest edition of B2BaCEO, I explain how founders can use their engineering mindset to turn early, scrappy sales efforts into a repeatable process that scales. 1. Map out your sales funnel into clear, measurable stages (prospecting, discovery calls, demos, etc.). 2. Find the key levers for revenue growth at each stage. This means investing in tools to track buyer journeys, measure rep productivity, and forecast pipeline. 3. Start building your sales infrastructure and hiring proven reps early, well before $10M ARR. Prioritize the deal size reps have experience selling over their domain expertise.    4. Focus on sales enablement. Train reps on your product, target customers, and competitors. Give them case studies, ROI calculators, and objection handling scripts to win deals. 5. Constantly refine your sales playbook using data and rep feedback. Analyze metrics obsessively to optimize messaging, talk tracks, and prioritization of target accounts. By treating sales like an engineering problem—with discipline, precision, and iteration—early-stage startups can build a scientific GTM engine that reliably turns $X of input into $Y of revenue. Full details here:

Here's how Advith Chelikani, Robert Eng, and I split day-to-day work. There are 3 big categories: Top of Funnel, Post-Sales/Solutions, Product. -- 1 Top of Funnel (Owned by Marty) -- My goal is to bring in new leads, get them to start trials, and close them. This looks like: - Marketing (LinkedIn Content, Marketing Site) - Outbound (Building Sales Automations, Email Sequences, Personalized Outreach) - Qualification (Demo Calls) - Trials (Initiating Onboarding, Check-ins) - Closing (Pricing, Payment) -- 2 Post-Sales/Solutions (Owned by Advith & Robert) -- After demo calls we immediately open up shared Slack channels with prospects. We treat prospects just like customers. They ask questions and provide feedback, and Robert & Advith will answer as quickly as possible. Feedback gets "processed" (meaning grouped with similar feedback or logged as new). -- 3 Product (Owned by Advith & Robert) -- You've probably never seen such an exhausting product process. In fact it deserves its own post written by Advith & Robert. The key is open debate. We have hour-long conversations about nit features. These debates can be exhausting. Here are unwritten principles we follow: - features should fit into our long-term vision - be flexible on sequencing as they relate to upcoming deals - think from first-principles on UX When it comes to planning, we have a loose roadmap, but strong vision. It's hard to plan because we build really really fast. As a result, the roadmap gets completed every month or two.

The topic of product market fit has been surfacing this year as startup and growth phase SaaS companies saw a sizable shift in deal dynamics. Tough economic times pressure test PMF to the extreme. Did you lose it altogether, or did PMF just shift a little? The pandemic created PMF for some that are now moving and shifting when we emerged the other side. So how should leaders be thinking about PMF? Solve a big business problem to achieve maximum PMF. Something that generates revenue or creates transformational cost savings. Big ACV’s for those that do. You can still find or adapt your product and find PMF by delivering product that create process improvements, but smaller ACv’s. Executive teams need honest reflection to see if your current offering solves a problem and if it does, great but can it be quantified? Important. It has to be a problem that exists TODAY, in current state. No aspirational outcomes here “we help customer drive x, y, z” - nope, what does it solve now? The good news is, the answers you seek lie in your installed base, your prospect calls, demos, closed lost and churn data. Commit to the process and you’ll figure it out. Good luck out there.

Founders, Startup Reality Check: Being obsessed with top-line revenue growth causes failure unnecessarily. If so, what should you focus on? How? Customer Retention. Some key responsibilities - -- > Founders + Go-To-Market Team: Understanding customer pain. Defining leading indicators of customer retention. Igniting key milestones. X% of customers achieve Y events within Z time. --> Product: Simplifying product to make it easier for early adopters to reach key milestones in a defined timeline. --> Marketing: Amplifying awareness where milestones are achievable. --> Sales: Showcasing why milestones matter to prospects. Not focussing on ROI but evoking the cost of inaction. --> Customer Success: Guiding success through milestone-driven onboarding.

Want to close more deals? Focus on high-quality conversations. By the end of the year, the biggest questions you need to answer are: What are your most monetizable use cases? Who is your buyer? What does your product need to look like for that buyer? What’s the best way to reach those buyers? Here’s how you answer them: Be highly structured. Go on sprints. Here's an example 🏃♂️👇 -What: Employee Portals in October. -Who: IT Directors at companies with 20-200 employees. -Their needs: Permission control, access to production data, and an easy building experience. -How we reach them: Google and YouTube are our best-performing channels. Don't just go after the sale. Prioritize customer insights and the results will follow. What sprints are you running in Q4? Let me know below!

Rarely do we come across a gem like the article "How To Become A Customer Acquisition Expert" by Brian Balfour. It's a treasure trove of insightful wisdom, brilliantly unraveling the path to mastery in customer acquisition. Balfour's knack for delivering intricate concepts with crystal clarity is a true standout. As a passionate advocate for skill honing, this piece resonates deeply. 🚀🔥 https://lnkd.in/dWPdnrYY #customeracquisition #marketingexperts #selftaught #growthhacking #digitalmarketing #skills #channelexpertise #baselayer #marketingfoundation #funnelmarketing

Unconventional yet Effective: The RevOps Strategy Guide for CROs Innovation could be your ticket to success. 🚀 Let's explore a few unconventional RevOps strategies that could supercharge your results. Strategy #1: Switch up your lead priorities. Consider focusing on product-qualified leads over MQLs, shifting the focus from marketing to the actual product. 🎯 Strategy #2: Agile sales. Keep up with the fast-paced market by quickly adapting to evolving customer needs and market conditions. 🔄 Strategy #3: Focus on 'Customer Lifetime Value'. It's not always about immediate sales – sometimes, long-term customer relationships pay off more. 💞 Ready for a revamp in your RevOps strategy? Let's dive deeper into these unconventional ideas! 👇

Check out our latest article from one of our fellow Product Rebels, Steve Cook. He helps us think about implementing a Product Led Growth go-to-market strategy and how that compares to an organization that is product led. Complimentary, but different. https://lnkd.in/g-5wbdAi