Fielder Hiss

Presales IS in the business of deal gen and pipe qualification. If you're producing things that go on the website like a demo - tie that to a marketing campaign! "...and dang it - go get some KPI credit for it!"   Didn't catch our last episode of Presales in a Pod? 🎙️ Listen in, and catch up before the next one drops: https://lnkd.in/eEDUgqqA #Presales #SolutionsEngineering

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Mea Culpa: Revisiting My Bold Statement on Precision Mailers vs. Trade Shows After my last post, I realized I should provide additional context because I made a bold statement about how the ROI of our Precision Mailer strategy can outperform attending a trade show. To be fair, this is a nuanced comparison, so here are the numbers I used to support my statement. This comparison relies on averaged numbers for our expenses—your numbers will vary depending on your circumstances. Scenario 1: Precision Mailer to 500 Key Decision Makers Here’s the breakdown for our mailer strategy: Cost Per Mailer: $14 (includes UPS delivery and packaging). Total Cost: $14 × 500 = $7,000. Response Rate: 4% engagement = 20 responses. Meetings Secured: 30% of respondents book meetings = 6 meetings. Follow-Up Travel Costs: $400 per trip for half the meetings (the rest are virtual) = $1,200. Total Investment: $7,000 (mailers) + $1,200 (travel) = $8,200. Cost Per Meeting: $8,200 ÷ 6 = $1,367 per meeting. Scenario 2: Trade Show Attendance Here’s the breakdown for a typical trade show: Booth Space Rental: $10,000. Promotional Items & Giveaways: $800. Staffing Costs: $3,000 (travel, lodging, and per diems for 2 staff). Follow-Up Travel Costs: $400 per trip for 9 meetings = $3,600. Dinners with Prospects: $500 per dinner × 2 dinners = $1,000. Total Cost: $10,000 (booth) + $800 (promos) + $3,000 (staffing) + $3,600 (follow-up travel) + $1,000 (dinners) = $18,400. Meetings Secured: 300 booth visitors → 10% qualify as leads (30 leads) → 30% of leads book meetings = 9 meetings. Cost Per Meeting: $18,400 ÷ 9 = $2,044 per meeting. Precision Mailers deliver a 33% lower cost per meeting while focusing directly on decision-makers. Trade shows, while excellent for brand visibility and networking, often involve higher costs and less targeted engagement. That said, let me be clear; I am not advocating for abandoning trade shows. They are absolutely critical for many businesses and play an essential role in industry networking, brand exposure, and relationship-building. What I am advocating for is a rethinking of how we allocate resources. Instead of overusing email and generic direct mail campaigns, we should consider reallocating those resources into precision marketing where it makes sense. Targeted approaches, like Precision Mailers, can complement trade shows, driving focused, high-value engagement with decision-makers.

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Want to elevate your sales game and win over C-suite executives? 📈 Learn from the best with ZoomInfo's top sales tips, including insights from our CEO and Founder, Henry Schuck! Discover the definitive guide to selling to the C-suite in 2024: bit.ly/4aSCL3i

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As we close out 2024, I’ve been reflecting on an incredible few months at Amper Technologies and the manufacturing industry at large. Here are some highlights, challenges, and a glimpse into what’s ahead: 🚀 Accelerated Growth This year, Amper hit new milestones, especially in our enterprise segment, with much larger deal sizes and accelerated growth metrics. It’s exciting to see the momentum build as manufacturers turn to us for solutions. ⚙️ Challenges on the Shop Floor Manufacturers faced a tough landscape—labor shortages, supply chain issues, and rising material costs left many stuck in survival mode, with little bandwidth to make improvements. Our team stayed laser-focused on delivering immediate impact by honing in on time to value for our customers. 🤖 AI in Manufacturing While robotics and AI remain hot topics, many manufacturers are still grappling with visibility and cleaning up historically bad data—a critical barrier to implementing AI effectively. The opportunity is massive, but the path forward requires solving foundational challenges first. 💡 A New Chapter at Amper Joining Amper has been a shift for me, coming from later-stage companies to an earlier-stage environment. Tackling problems from first principles and implementing nimble strategies—like our AI approach—has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding. 🌟 Looking Ahead to 2025 Next year is shaping up to be transformational. Amper is on a mission to unlock reality on the shop floor, enabling manufacturers to harness insights on their machines, jobs, people, and issues—and innovate with AI agents on top of that data. #Leadership #Manufacturing #AI #Growth

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To all the presales managers out there... you are distracting your team if you are randomly pinging them for deal updates. Do this instead! 💪 ✅ Schedule recurring deal reviews with your sales engineers, typically on a weekly basis. ✅ Keep them simple; you will have a lot of deals to review in a short amount of time. ✅ At a minimum, include these 5 items in your deal review checklist. ----- ✅ PRO TIP: Run your deal reviews directly out of your presales management solution (for example, Homerun Presales). When everyone is working from one central location for all-things-presales, you (1) eliminate the need for 'side tools' used for reviews and status updates, and (2) you eliminate all the admin burden and manual data entry by your SEs to provide ongoing updates. ----- If you want to see how to run effective deal reviews with your presales team… come get a demo of Homerun Presales: https://lnkd.in/gYKA6UvE #presales #salesengineering #technicalsales #salesengineer #cro #sales

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Can presales & PMM alignment be a secret weapon for GTM success? We think so. Join James Kaikis Kaikis Head of Go-To-Market and Meghan Spork, Product Marketing Lead as they take a deep dive into how to maximize the relationship between these critical stakeholders. They’ll cover:  Why alignment is crucial between presales and product marketing teams Some common misconceptions about these stakeholders and their functions How should presales & PMMs should work together tactically How to measure results that impact revenue and overall GTM success RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/gkvRFP-K

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Consolidating your stack isn't about cutting tech for the sake of it. As Craig Hanson from Gong says, there are two types of strategic consolidation: 1. Streamlining and simplification Avoid reps swivel chairing between different tools to make your sales process more efficient. 2. Gaining cohesive insights and actions Prevent your data from getting siloed and fragmented across different tools so your team has the best possible insights and can take the best possible actions. ^ That second one is what's going to create a bigger lift in revenue for your company.

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Too many startups are flying blind when it comes to their GTM strategy. They talk to prospects but fail to listen to what their sales performance data is actually telling them. Sales performance data isn’t just numbers. It’s the frontline insights that reveal what’s resonating, connecting, what’s missing, and where your approach needs to pivot. But most founders underestimate its value. If you’re not creating a feedback loop that leverages this data to refine your GTM function, you’re leaving cash on the table. It’s time for founders to prioritize performance insights. #b2bsales #saleseffectiveness #marketingeffectiveness #salesandmarketing #founders #cofounder #salesdevelopment #salesgrowth #newbusiness #startups #b2b #CEO

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We are seeing a big pick up in transaction activity at Catalant Technologies, and therefore "First 100 Days" planning and implementation. A BIG thank you to our partners in the Expert community below (Who combined have led hundreds of First 100 Days Value Creation Plans and Implementations) for collaborating on the playbook and deep dives on the critical factors you need to get right.   (1) Setting up the Integration Management Office: Michael Scherer (2) FP&A Investments: Benjamin Lehrer (3) Talent and Culture: Sapna Harichand (4) Change Communication: Niki St Pierre, MPA/MBA (5) Capitalize on Commercial Opportunities: Rob Lekai   Download the asset below: https://lnkd.in/euh8UJWu

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The best salespeople pass along key deal data to onboarding teams by doing this...🎥 The handoff from Sales to Onboarding is crucial. A poor handoff can lead to churn. Efficient teams have their CRM configured to make it easy for Sales to capture key data and pass it downstream. Watch the full webinar, "Nailing Customer Lifecycle Transitions: Part 2" with Jeff Kushmerek, to learn more strategies to successfully move customers from sales, to onboarding, to long-term success. ➡ https://bit.ly/3Wv1k1i

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Earning buyer trust will never be easy. But most B2B companies make it harder on their GTM teams with these internal roadblocks: ❌ Compensation plans designed for the "quota crusher" You can't expect Sales to be customer-obsessed when they're only incentive is to close deals quickly, for as much money as possible. While teams don’t have to rewrite their compensation plans to focus solely on customer fit, they can take steps to tie compensation to retention or longer-term customer goals. ❌ Lack of internal enablement Most companies train their employees, particularly Sales, on the product first when they *should* be shining a spotlight on the problems their product solves. If you care most about the solutions your product offers and the pain points it addresses, enable your people to care most about those things too. ❌ Misalignment between Product and GTM teams In a customer-obsessed company, especially PLG ones, there’s no “throwing something over the wall to the Product team or vice versa.” This means avoiding situations where the Product team is building for the sake of building or rushing features to close one deal. And instead, championing a clear consensus on the product or feature, why it's being built, and who it’s for. __________________________________ In the words of Jill Rowley, "GTM teams aren’t designing with and for the customer. Instead, they’re designing for their teams’ objectives and processes.” To truly be about the customer, you've gotta walk the walk with your internal ecosystem first. Then you can start talking the talk.

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Thanks to Dave Rigotti and team for a wonderful #PLGTM conference in SF. I had great discussions with sales and marketing leaders and here are some observations on how PLG has evolved. Part 1: Time to rethink PLG practice ✔ While the core idea of PLG revolves around self-service adoption and user-driven growth, the practice has evolved, and companies are recognizing the need for a hybrid approach. ✔ For a lot of practitioners, PLG means self-service and users adopt the product without sales support. In practice, PLG leads to increases S&M costs increasing CAC. So, it no more just about building a product but putting the marketing $ behind it. ✔ Enterprise buyers are researching on their own and have good information before they come to the call. Huge number of prospects want sales help in navigating the value prop but want to try out themselves. ✔ PLG does lead to execution speed driving the awareness, showing the value, decreasing sales cycles and enabling simple and faster expansion. ✔ There is a myth that only startups or B2C companies use PLG and has to be bottom-up approach. While many of the companies we know and products we use might be B2C, lot of enterprise B2B companies are PLG as well. e.g. users can simply signup and start using Calendly, Canva or Airtable. teams can start using the products like loom, figma and datadog. ✔ Bringing customers need a hybrid approach in 2024. You need to provide user value created by the product and buyer value created by sales teams. Think about product market fit and product customer fit - leading to greater number of happy customers ✔ Every KPI you are measuring should drive an outcome. If you collect data, ask "what is it used for? " and "how does it help customer or adoption?" ✔ As the PLG model continues to evolve, companies must adapt and embrace a balanced approach that leverages the power of self-service adoption while providing sales support to drive customer success and long-term growth. Thanks to David Yockelson and Dave Boyce for providing engaging discussion on the core of PLG. #productledgrowth #productledsales #salesledgrowth #startups #salesleadership #productmanagement

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"“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I would spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln 🪓 At Presales Leader, we believe demos are won in discovery. Proper preparation isn’t just a box to check—it’s the foundation for impactful ISV and ERP demonstrations. Discovery calls let us uncover the client’s challenges, align with their needs, and establish trust. Want to explore how discovery drives success in ISV vs. ERP demos? Read the full blog by Thomas Fitzpatrick in the comments! 👇 #Presales #DemoBestPractices #ERP #ISV"

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Not sure how to create a GTM motion that results in a healthy pipeline? Watch episode 17 of B2B Pipeline Pioneers, featuring Asher Mathew, the CEO of Partnership Leaders, to learn how he strategically shifted toward attracting enterprise buyers after realizing missed opportunities in 2023. Asher told our CEO & Founder, Manoj Ramnani, that he is doubling down in two channels this year to strengthen their market presence and win more business. What are these two channels? Watch the full episode to find out. https://hubs.ly/Q02tKfpw0 #enterpriseselling #icp #revenue

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What are the root causes of poor GTM team alignment? Our recent survey sheds some light on what your revenue team Ops peers are saying. These comprehensive reports provide all the information. https://gag.gl/4YHwRD #RevOps #DataQuality #RevTeamAlignment

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Struggling with pipeline accuracy? 🎯 Small missteps can lead to big misses when it comes to hitting sales targets. Learn how to sidestep 3 frequent forecasting mistakes and make your sales predictions sharper. Stay ahead, close more deals, and hit those targets. https://hubs.la/Q02-K1jS0 #SalesForecasting #SalesSuccess #PipelineGrowth #SalesPipeline via SBI, The Growth Advisory

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How to execute a great demo…

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