Mike Rowland

If you decide your sales team needs to help with renewals make sure they are incentivized correctly (I usually see a 70% new bookings goal and a 30% renewal / upsell goal). If you don't incentivize hunting, sales tend to farm too much and your growth will slow.

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If you answer YES to this question you're doing outbound wrong. Do you still have "connected" as a call disposition in your SEP/Dialer? Item #23 on our outbound sales maturity checklist is "Custom call dispositions and contact stages" The default call dispositions in CRM and SEP are worthless. "Connected" "Left Voicemail" "No Answer" etc More granular call dispositions means better segmented lists for recycling / re--engagement. If you want outbound performance to compound over time you have to get this stuff right. Problem is, fundamentals are boring. This change isn't going to get you 15 meeting requests this week. But it's a piece of the puzzle of a sustainable outbound engine. There are more pieces to the puzzle. I've listed them in our outbound sales maturity checklist. I'll send it to you if you'd like. Let me know. 

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Myth: Custom sales collateral takes forever to create. The truth? It doesn’t have to. The real problem isn’t the complexity of customization - it’s the lack of the right tools and processes. Sales and marketing teams often rely on outdated workflows: ❌ Email threads for feedback. ❌ Version control nightmares. ❌ Templates scattered across platforms. This leads to delays, miscommunication, and materials that don’t hit the mark. Clatter flips the script by centralizing collaboration and streamlining the entire process. With our platform, teams can create, edit, and approve tailored sales collateral in record time—all while keeping it on-brand. What outdated workflow myth is holding your team back?

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To all SDRs or anyone entering B2B sales, read this post to avoid falling into common traps. 1. The most successful AEs I have met were the best SDRs. 2. SDRs who didn’t excel in the role and are now AEs are still struggling to generate their own pipeline. 3. AEs who skipped the SDR role, often due to an MBA or strong interview skills, fear switching jobs and roles without inbound leads. They’ve never faced the grind of building a pipeline from scratch, filled with rejections. 4. AEs who have never been an SDR majorly rely on their SDRs or Inbound leads from marketing to help them build pipeline and if any Quarter they don't get inbound or enough meetings from SDRs they sh** in their pants. 5. When these AEs become managers, they often question their team—"Where are the numbers?" or "Why isn’t there a pipeline?"—instead of guiding them on building it. Lacking experience in pipeline generation, they fail to lead by example and eventually lose the respect of their team. Learn the art and science of being an SDR and excel at this job at any cost, you will never have to look back or depend on anyone for pipeline EVER. Prospecting and Generating Pipelines is fundamental to Sales whether you are an SDR, AE, Sr Manager, or VP if you don't know how to do OUTBOUND you will continuously live a sales life of fear and anxiety. So SDRs ask yourselves do you want to be such AE and Managers in the future who depend on others to determine their performance and faith or would you like to own your job? #sales #prospecting #outbound #pipeline #sdr #ae #b2b #saas

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🚨 🚨 🚨 Attn: All employed (and unemployed) SDRs/BDRs! 🚨 🚨 🚨 Want to earn the easiest $50 of your life while learning about yourself and also learning how to make a quick $500 as a fast follow? SurePeople will send you a $50 Amazon gift card for: ✅ Taking our Prism self-assessment (it’s fun and you will learn a lot about yourself – including which of the 16 Prism personality archetypes you are) ✅ Attending our half hour webinar this Friday, November 1st at 2pm EST. That’s it. No catch. You must either currently be an SDR/BDR or be looking for your next role fresh off an SDR/BDR gig – that’s the only caveat. On this webinar we'll educate you about People Intelligence and how to earn an additional $500 Amazon gift card for introducing us to a potential buyer of our product. Folks in my network, please comment for reach 🙏 Link to register for the webinar in first comment. Offer is limited to the first 100 registrants! ⌛ We will email you a webinar invite and info on how to take the Prism once registration is complete. 🧠 #SDR #BDR #InsideSales #Sales #PeopleIntelligence

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Hiring sales reps is tough Mediocre sellers can sound great Different people fit at different stages of a business Founders want a young, hungry seller who will work for the opportunity and bust their tail For $35k + unlimited commission Expectations are misaligned Combine these factors together and you get mis-hires and reps get fired Hiring the right reps is a process and strategy, not a desire

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I agree with my Silicon Valley buddy, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight on this. ⚙ Why? One of the things I always say is that, "It all starts with sales." 🤔 Without sales, there is no company. The better the sales org operates, the better the company will do. So why not optimize and unify the sales organization by having the CCO report to a CRO (rhetorically asked). 📈 It's a great way to ensure that customers are delighted post-sales and that they keep coming back. 🤝I've seen this configuration foster a cohesive strategy for maximizing customer satisfaction and revenue growth. This alignment ensures that customer-focused initiatives are deeply integrated into the organization's broader revenue strategy, enhancing the effectiveness of both functions. 🙌 It seems to promote a unified approach to identifying and capitalizing on customer insights, ensuring that customer needs are addressed proactively. This reporting structure also facilitates better communication and coordination, leading to more comprehensive customer engagement and streamlined decision-making processes. 💪 I believe this configuration strengthens the organization's ability to enhance customer experiences and drive sustainable revenue growth, contributing to long-term business success. #leadership #management #sales #innovation #venturecapital

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Startups building sales teams in Utah... I’ve talked to >5 founders in the last 30 days that want to build GTM teams here. Makes sense to me... If you're on the fence, here's a handful of reasons to lean in: Note: the culture is uniquely different than most anywhere else. All of these reasons are based on this culture. → Everyone knows everyone. For the most part, it's an extremely small community. Everyone seems to be 1 or maybe 2 degrees removed from someone else. This is deeply rooted in the fact that a good majority spend their Sunday's at church → It's an extremely competitive environment. In a community where a lot of people believe the same thing, drive similar cars, buy similar homes, have the same looking kids... it breeds an extremely competitive environment to stand out. Many attempt to do this with their careers. → Since everyone knows everyone, college grads come with an immediate network. Not just college friends, but people they've networked with their entire lives. This makes recruiting a hell of a lot easier → Since there's an extremely high bar to 'stand out' amongst the crowd, many of the high performers are coming from even higher performer families. This means broader networks and an expectation of their lineage to keep performing high → Many are married young, with kids and a mortgage. I was one of them. 22, married, mortgage and 1st kid on the way. 25, married, two mortgages, 2 kids and a 3rd on the way. This is kinda normal here. You gotta perform early in your career to make it work. What else am I missing? What companies do you know of building GTM teams here? If you're considering building a GTM team in Utah, shoot me a note. Always happy to chat.

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Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech, & Live Events:   1. They really will steal from you.   In the early days of TicketManager, we’d get calls from “Strategics” looking to “learn more” or “invest.” They’ll say things like they “have sincere interest” to get you to let your guard down.   Everyone around us told us this was normal. Don’t be too guarded. Just build and trust that they won’t steal from you. They almost shamed us for being so arrogant as to think others would take their time to steal from us.   They were wrong.   They all stole from us.   GMR, a major agency, feigned interest and even attended our customer conference in the mid-10's. They hit the market with a copycat just over a year later.   MSG took us to the contract phase—even assigning a project manager—and then built a cheap copy that looks exactly like our tech. The UI is so similar.   A private equity software currently for sale told us, after we rebuked their interest following two months of diligence, they were going to build a competing product. I respect they did.   A major, now public, ticket marketplace spent months in diligence with us then, in the StubHub case six years later, tried to testify they didn’t have “any real interest” in doing the deal and their IOI was “just preliminary.” (On the bright side, they were a star witness for us. They tried to bury us and it was so gross it backfired.)   And StubHub spent two months feigning interest in us before deliberately trying to crush our business, leading to four years in court and a $16m judgment.   Investors and bankers are wrong. Guard it all and protect yourself.   Yes, some sell and that’s the process, but others are just phishing. Protect your fish as best you can.    2. "I don’t give b--w jobs but I know when it's being done wrong"- Bill Maher.   When starting a business or becoming a new leader, there is so much pressure to let your team do their job and trust the experts around you. And that's great advice - most all of the time. But….there will be times those teammates or advisors have bad ideas. And you know they're bad ideas.   When that happened, I found it hard to stand up for myself.   An example: Back in 2013, right before we signed our largest customer, two of our advisors were adamant we sell the business for $10m and "find something more scalable." They spent an entire drive to dinner trying to convince us it was the right course of action and leaning on their vast experiences. I'm glad we didn't listen.   3. Scott Galloway is wrong: Part one million   Walking through baggage claim on Wednesday returning from the All-Star Game I mentioned to my wife I'd be working long hours the next few days as I'd been out of the office Monday and Tuesday.   Her response: "Tony, I didn't see you. You were at work events from the minute we landed"   Ignore the cynics. They only know their own path.   Do what you love and you won't work a day in your life. 

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Early morning office hours discussion this morning... "Hey Jeff, we're thinking about bringing on some new sales people to help us kick into gear our revenue generation. Any tips on how and who to hire because we've been burned before with underperformers?" Question. Are they responsible for lead generation or do they just handle inbound leads, demo's and closing sales? "They are responsible for lead generation." Well, there's your problem. Lead generation should come from your marketing and your biz dev teams. Sales people, especially commission only ones, don't do or completely suck at lead gen. They are typically great at 2 things, nurturing relationships and closing/making deals. It takes a different breed for the top of the funnel. So, what you need to do is figure out how to keep the top of the funnel full at all times and then hire the appropriate nurturers and closers. It adds more people to the process, but that's where most people get stuck in this process, they lump 5 jobs into 1 and wonder why the "salesperson" isn't performing.

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🗣️ "BUT I WANT FREE!" Ok, here are 5 free Utah Business services for you: 1. 💻 A free SEO analysis of your website so you know how you're doing. Just ask me, and I can run one for you. 2. 🌐 Founder Fridays are free at the SLC Kiln, thanks to amazing sponsors. It’s a great way to learn from founders and network. (They usually have breakfast treats, too!) 3. 📌 Our editorial team publishes press releases to our 20,000 LinkedIn followers and on our website. Great way to get free press! I can connect you to them. 4. 📊 A free marketing consultation. We want your business to succeed, and we have access to tools that other companies only dream of. 5. 🗳️ Nominate people for awards. Have an amazing colleague or know a great founder? Get them nominated to be recognized! Open nominations right now: - Marketing & Communication Awards - 40 Under 40 Nomination forms are here: https://lnkd.in/gKgqDDfk

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How we drove $2.5+ mil in pipe for a 50+ BDR org: Look at a list of key contacts who left their previous company Enrich in Clay with current company, company size Cross reference with Salesforce to see account owners, ROE Check previous, current accounts with Gong AMA to build out an account brief Push into Evabot AI for Sales Outbound 2.0 to build a 100% custom AI sequence BDRs execute Super admins start a new deal cycle $2.8 mil and counting in pipe generated (Granted... 1 mil came from Coca Cola... but if we helped start an opp at Coca Cola, I'll take it)

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New sales ops hires have no idea what they are getting into with Salesforce. Here's why: Imagine you’re building a deck. And you are given the keys to a Home Depot. You have access to unlimited equipment and supplies. But you get no instructions on what deck you are building or how to build it. This is what situation most sales ops roles are in with Salesforce. Without training in its full capabilities, admins will be stuck and overwhelmed. This is why I created the Salesforce Accidental Admin Accelerator for sales admins. I recently did a webinar on YouTube that talks about how we are helping SalesOps and sales administrators with Salesforce. You can view it here: https://lnkd.in/g297XegA

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PE investors / operators: have "hire additional sales capacity" on your VCP or annual plan? HIRING new reps is only half the battle. For the ROI math to math, gotta then make 'em productive. As quickly as possible. But when it comes to making reps productive quickly, B2B companies face two big challenges: →The average tenure of a B2B sales rep is less than two years, YET... → Reps hit their peak performance two to three years in. Translation: Most reps leave before they’ve reached max productivity. Eek. In many cases, weak sales onboarding is to blame. But taking a more intentional approach to sales onboarding has a bevy of obvious benefits: • Reducing sales turnover • Shortening time-to-revenue • Higher odds of achieving your rev targets Hit on this in the book in Winning Move #32, but check out the vid below for a deeper dive on the P's and Q's of sales onboarding ▶️ * * * * * Found this helpful? Plenty more where that came from. Check out the Winning Moves Platform: the ambitious PE leader's toolkit for accelerating value creation. ↳ A digital arsenal of resources, how-to's, and tools to help private equity leaders make value-generating Winning Moves with confidence. Link in the comments below. ⤵️

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How do you define an MQL? And how does this compare to what other companies do? 🤔 Someone asked this question in the ROC Slack group recently, here's how the RevOps Co-op responded 👇 1️⃣ 2 out of 4 BANT criteria met Consensus here was BANT is the responsibility of the sales team, not the marketing team, so shouldn't be used. 2️⃣ Exceeds lead score threshold based on demographic and behavior data This was a popular choice. Lots of folks said an MQL should be a hand-raiser that meets some sort of grade / score threshold. 3️⃣ Based on account and title fit with ICP This can be the basis of a lead score or grade mentioned in number 2 above. ☝️ 4️⃣ Based on Minimum Viable Customer Profile (MVCP) This is basically a twist on number 2 and 3 above, but I thought it was intriguing. It's basically a more broad version of your ICP using secondary criteria. For example, if your ICP is a Fortune 500 account, your MVCP may be any company with > $50M revenue. Or if your ICP is HQ in the US, your MVCP could be HQ in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. What do you think - anything missing here for different ways to define an MQL? PS - thanks to Malorie Packard, Colby Ricker, Colin Illar, Jeff Ignacio, Jacqueline Freedman 🦋, Rex Biberston, and others for participating in this 🧵 #revenueoperations #revops #marketingops #marketingoperations #mops #GTMOps #alltheops #MQL

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What’s your best advice on how to communicate in sales? Mine below. This is primarily HOW you say what you say, not WHAT you say. A very important skill to improve. - Communicate with people the way *they want* to be communicated with (KYA / Know Your Audience) - Communicate in a way that *signals* to the other person how you want to be perceived - Simple is persuasive - Be yourself (but remember, you are not one-dimensional) - Vary your tone and pace when speaking the way you use bold and italics when writing: to signal emphasis Generally, speaking to executives: be more direct and to the point, slightly more formal >> I like to think “crisp” Generally, with your main contact: be more normal, casual, yourself, talk like you would with a friend Avoid: jargon, talking too fast, nervousness, commission breath Agree? Disagree? Other ideas?

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If your exit interviews *aren’t* being conducted by a 3rd party… You’re likely getting BAD FEEDBACK. There are two reasons why letting CSMs conduct customer exit interviews is a bad idea: ❌ Not all CSMs will ask the hard questions (to avoid looking bad) ❌ Customers will hold back from giving raw feedback (to avoid hurting the CSM) If your goal with these interviews is to gather valuable feedback to improve your product, attract the right customers, and prevent future churn... this will likely lead you even further away from the truth. Here are some better options for getting better departure feedback: ✅ Let someone else in the company conduct the interview. This could be someone from marketing, engineering, finance, etc. What’s important is that they *don’t* have a stake in that particular customer leaving from a relationship standpoint. ✅ Let an outside firm conduct the exit interviews manually. Probably your best bet if you have a high-ticket offer, wide margins, and low churn volume. ✅ Automate the exit interviews with a cancellation flow. Ideal for companies with a high volume of subscriptions at low-to-moderate price points (south of $200/mo).

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How do you get your AEs and SDRs to do more outbound prospecting? No, really? How? If we're honest, almost everyone hates prospecting. It's hard to get up the energy to face the rejection, the dial tone, the repeated unanswered emails. There's always something that sounds more fun and interesting... Or at least that's how I felt as a sales rep and PR manager cold-calling. This is why I LOVE this program that 6Sense has built around "Pipe Gen Tuesdays," where they rally the whole company to actively outbound on Tuesdays and have a really distinct program with weekly materials, tests on stick vs. carrot motivation, and all departments actively doing outreach. I heard the 6sense CRO Latané Conant (she/her) share the program at the Pavilion CMO conference a few weeks back and broke down her strategy on my blog at carilu dot com today: - Aggressively Prime the Pump:  - Keep it High Energy - Make it Company-Wide - Hold everyone Accountable. Sneak peek - the stick (meeting with your manager and VP for underperforming) beat the carrot (SPIFF/incentives) by a pretty big margin: 55% more opportunities the first week and 74% more the second. So they use both. What other tactics have you used? How do you overcome the inertia problems? Thanks to Kathleen Booth, Sam Jacobs, and the Pavilion team for bringing us all together. #Prospecting #CMO #CRO #Pipeline

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By simplifying their Quotes, we saved over $300K for our first client at RevSolutions. If you’re a VP, you know that: Accurate quotes close deals. But getting them right is a major challenge. Sales teams often struggle with: → Inconsistent pricing, → Manual errors, and → Lengthy approval processes. These issues erode trust and can cost you business. That’s where the Q of the CPQ system comes in handy; Especially if you’ve complex pricing structures. CPQ tools make the quoting process efficient, ensuring consistency and accuracy across the board. → Automate complex pricing calculations → Standardize discounting practices → Speed up quote approval times With accurate quotes, you build trust with your clients. They know they can rely on your pricing, which makes them more likely to do business with you. Moreover, your sales team can respond faster, turning leads into customers with minimal friction. Accuracy in quoting means credibility and efficiency. How reliable are your quotes? #cpq #quote #pricing

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