First off, happy EOM!
I hope you’re cruising past quota and living your best life.
If that’s not your reality, don’t beat yourself up!
Last I checked only about 28% of tech sales reps are hitting their number.
Fuck it! Life goes on.
So, anyway… how’s your summer?
Mine has been pretty good considering everything going on.
It’s been a little less hot than last summer here in Austin. More humid than usual, tho.
My son and I took an awesome workcation out to west Texas. We did a lot of hiking and got to attend a star party at McDonald Observatory. My son is waaaayyyyy into space and he LOVED it!
I’m getting ready to head out to Kauai in early August and am stoked!
Then it’s back to school time.
It’s a really shitty time for sales, but a great time for life 😀 .
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about these past few weeks is how we’ve become so accustomed to big scary traumatic events in America. We just keep showing up to work while everything around us moves further from our ideals.
I’ve been posting about this a lot because I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that disassociating from reality for 8 hours a day in the interest of shareholder value and capitalism maybe isn’t super healthy for us as individuals.
I recieved comments on two different platforms saying this I was “softer than wet bread” 😆
Gif by laff_tv on Giphy “Softer than wet bread” is actually a pretty good burn.
At the end of the day nothing thwarts anxiety more than action. Well, actually medicine, but then action 😁 .
That said I went ahead and got registered in Travis County as Volunteer Deputy Registrar so I can go out and register people to vote.
It’s something… Feels good!
Gif by broadcity on Giphy
Quick hack to close more deals
Lot's of talk about aligning your sales process to your prospects buying process, but not a lot of actionable recommendations as to how to do that as a rep.
Sort of like making out in Junior High… everyone talking about it but no-one doing it 😁
An easy way to get started is to work from a basic buyers journey funnel like the one below.
Now plot the companies who you're talking to on the funnel.
Here are some easy tells you can use to help you do that...
Awareness - If you're talking with someone and they're saying things like "I just read something on Linkedin talking about {solutions like yours}" that may be a sign that they're just at the tip of that buyers funnel. If you reached out to them, and through discovery learned that, they're just now learning that tech like yours exists, or if they haven't done much to address the issues you solve, they're most likely at the Awareness stage.
Interest - An easy tell is if they've been to your site, and/or downloaded any content from you. That would immediately qualify them out of the Awareness stage. These prospects will be willing to take a demo from you, but usually under the guise of "just wanting to learn more". If you demoed for them and then couldn't get any next steps out of them other than "give me some time to talk it over to the team and get back to you", there's a good chance that they're here.
Desire - Prospects in the desire stage will be able to tell you what their problems are that align to you solution, and will usually have a really good sense of the impact those problems are having on their work. "We keep running into ABC because of XYZ". Some of the problems may even be related to a competitor that they're using. They'll straight up tell you that they want to fix this, but when you start asking questions like "Who else should be involved in this evaluation?", "How does {company} usually go about procuring solutions like this?", you'll quickly realize that they have no plan forward.
Action - Fixing the problems that your solution solves are a priority, and ideally one of their OKRs. They have a date as to when they need this fixed. They have the buying team identified and ready to go. They're actively speaking with your competitors. All great signs!
So, how do you use this info?
You can start by looking at your open Opps.
Look really hard and get honest with yourself as to where the prospect falls on the buyers journey funnel.
If they're in the Desire phase, work on coaching them up as to how procurement usually goes. Build a really strong business case and get it in front of the right people. Sell them on making this a top priority.
If they're in the Action phase, stay super tight on them. Open up text and Slack as communication channels with your Champion. Create exec alignment with the Economic Buyer and CFO. Get them to commit on a time bound joint evaluation plan. All of the usual things you do to get a deal done.
If they're in the Awareness phase, consider Close Losing the Opp and putting them in a long automated nurture campaign that's used to educate.
For folks at the Interest phase, push your close date out if it's within the next 90 days. Take more of an automated approach with them. See if you can get them to some events. Prospect additional stakeholders at the account. Don't spend much time on them.
Moving forward, you're ideally able to plot them on the buyers journey funnel with intent data and focus your outreach on accounts at the Desire stage.
As with anything online, take all of this with a huge grain of sales as this will vary depending on account size, deal size, type of solution, etc.
I appreciate you reading this long! Please help yourself to some of the free resources I’ve built for you:
Path To Quota Calculator - calculates how many people you should reach out to everyday to predictable hit your quota
Guide: Landing Your Dream Sales Job in 4 Steps
Guide: Pivot Out of Sales in 5 Steps