"Business problems are personal problems in disguise." -Michael Port
Here's how personal problems get in the way of building more pipe and closing more deals
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Armand Farrokh wrote a post last week calling out AEs...
"Stop being a lazy buffoon waiting for hand-delivered Michelin Star leads."
I don't totally agree with this take because more often than not—I see the opposite problem.
A poorly set meeting by an SDR who expects the AE to be a miracle worker.
Here's my take + tips to set higher quality meetings that'll become qualified opps
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The ceiling of your outbound success is your company’s marketing engine.
The future of outbound is...
Drumroll...wait for it...
Getting back to basics: sales & marketing alignment.
My clients who experience the best outbound results have world-class marketing teams.
And here's how they work better together to massively increase outbound success.
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âś… 1) Customer snippet bank
Create a bank of 2-3 sentence customer story snippets with:
- Customer name
- Industry and size of business
- Personas
- Problem statement
- Result/outcome
- The transformation
Reps will LOVE marketing for this. This can be repurposed for cold emails, talk tracks, discovery conversations, demos, etc.
✅ 2) “The offer you can’t refuse”
Increase the value prospects get in return for their time. Make prospects feel silly for turning a meeting down.
My best clients lead with free website audits. They secret shop the prospect. They share world-class industry reports. They experience the brand.
Teach don't take.
âś… 3) Collaboration with customers and prospective customers
Create world-class content with your customers (AKA your prospect's peers). Get them on webinars, create ebooks, share short video snippets, etc.
Don't make the content a big pitch about you. Make it valuable in and of itself.
Then have reps send tailored, 1:1 outreach to check out the content.
Adam Robinson calls this Inbound-Led Outbound.
âś… 4) Marketing: Ride shotgun with sales for a day
It can work in the opposite way as well with sales.
One of my best clients had 3-5 folks from the marketing team in the oubound workshops I led. Marketers...that's right...marketers...were learning how to cold call, handle objections, and had to role play with reps.
Make sure both parties understand what it takes to do their job.
âś… 5) Build a messaging team
Last but not least—assemble a team of 5-10 of the best reps, marketers, and sales leaders. Folks that really know the personas inside and out.
Involving both marketing and sales punches up marketing messaging by making it "sales-ready."
Instead of slide deck on new messaging, you get ready-made sequences, talk tracks, sales collateral, etc.
WFH vs. in-office
I see a lot of debate in this area:
- What reps prefer
- What leaders prefer
- What is better for your mental health
But NOTHING around what's more effective in-person vs. hybrid vs. remote sales jobs on:
- Quota attainment
- Retention
- Ramp time etc.
I have a lot of opinions on this, and one you're probably not going to like.
If I were running a sales team right now, I'd prefer a hybrid to a fully remote team. This is coming from a guy who's worked from home since 2012. And hated driving into the office.
But you can't beat meeting in person, the culture you build that way, and how much faster new reps learn.
Remote salespeople are twice as likely to switch jobs compared to those working in office (HubSpot).
But I'm dying to see data on what is actually more effective.
Give me your take.
Not whether or not you prefer in-person vs. hybrid vs. remote...
But what do you think has the highest quota attainment and retention rates?Â
My face when I hear sales leaders say:
“We don’t want our AEs to outbound, their time is too valuable.”
Here are 3 reasons why this thinking is dangerous:
⛔️ 1) Entitled Culture
Self-sourcing will always be a must. The SDR : AE ratio in your sales org will never be perfect. Marketing can ebb and flow.
And if you plan on moving up-market—execs don't fill out demo request forms. You must proactively start conversations.
Building a self-sourcing culture from scratch is WAY harder than turning up the dial when you need to.
Don't allow a "my pipeline isn't my responsibility" mindset.
⛔️ 2) Missing opportunities with execs
I love SDRs. I've worked with and trained dozens of top-notch SDRs.
But here's the thing: most SDRs haven't spoken much with execs. They're not as equipped to engage a senior exec if they happen to catch them on a phone call.
AEs have had more of those conversations. They have more business acumen and experience.
They'll be much more effective at engaging execs and landing meetings.
⛔️ 3) AE sourced pipeline is usually better
This is almost always the case with my clients.
AE self-sourced pipeline has:
-Higher win rates
- Shorter sales cycles
- Larger deal sizes
Have ops run a report on this. If any of the above is true for your sales org, all the more reason why self-sourcing should be encouraged.
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AEs don't need to self-source 100% of their pipeline. And I agree that the majority of their time should be spent selling. But they should know how to self-source at-least a third of it.
Agree or disagree?
The best AEs I know use this two-part strategy to:
1) Drive double-digit replies from their sequences
2) Self-source a sh*t ton of meetings
3) Avoid wasting time on bad-fit prospects
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