Randy Likas

AI SDRs like Piper aren’t a one size fits all solution–every team has unique motions that require different strategies for support. Demandbase is a great example of where Piper makes sense to help augment your human SDR team and provide support they desperately need in order to focus on discovery calls without missing pipeline on the website. They’d already seen success with Qualified, so they decided to double-down and implement Piper the AI SDR across their site, offloading a significant amount of front line work from their human rep’s plates. Piper was able to: ✅ Proactively engage target accounts on the website ✅ Eliminate wait times for buyers to get answers to FAQs ✅ Hand off VIP accounts to human reps for more nuanced conversations The results? In the first 2 months of implementing Piper:  ✨ 2x increase in pipeline ✨ 3X conversion to meetings compared to human SDRs ✨ 37% increase in meetings with Tier 1 target accounts  ✨ 100 hours saved per month of SDR time ✨ $80,000 cost savings in headcount These stories are why we’re so excited about Piper the AI SDR. The future of inbound pipeline generation is automated and results like this demonstrate the power of quick, efficient, and conversational buyer engagement around the clock. 

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🤯 “Ramping up SDRs, AEs and CS people  takes us no less than 6 months.” 💣 🙈 This is what I heard on a recent demo from  a CRO of a rapidly scaling tech business. 📈 Time to efficiency is a struggle Heads of Sales Enablement and Customer Success are going through across their commercially-driven teams… 📖 At the moment, they expect internal  sales and CS decks, call recordings,  business pitches, etc. should do the job. 🙄 But it doesn’t! 🗓️ They're wasting too much time for people to start performing, closing deals, effectively onboarding customers, reducing churn & upselling… ❌ Sometimes, they still don’t perform... And then guess what? Off leaders go through to recruiting mode again starting from ground 0. 🎯 Hence the need for action-based learning.  Not just passively reading through PDFs  and listening to call recordings. 👨‍💻 Below are some use cases we see our customers here at UJJI AI ✨ leveraging our tech for: 🔸 Business-specific lead gen and outbound 🔸 Pitching quick and easy over the phone 🔸 Delivering demos and answering queries 🔸 Effectively onboarding new customers 🔸 Efficiently implementing product features 🔸 Practising great customer support 🔸 Guiding customers to upselling 🚀 Ultimately, growing tech businesses comes down to predictable new business development, high customer retention and low churn. 💬 So, DM me if you want to see examples  of AI-powered. easy to build and consume knowledge equipping experiences. 👇 Anything to add to this, Sales and CS leaders? Gautam Rishi Rohan Dickinson George Heron Russell Mitchell Callum Hartley Jon Teale James Dixon Seán Colfer Caroline L. Guy Rubin Jake Carter David Muscat Arun Raveendran Steve Eveleigh Ayo Kukoyi,

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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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Most sales leaders focus on their top performers. But your best reps will crush quota whether you help them or not. Here's the uncomfortable truth about scaling revenue... Your top 10% will succeed despite you. They'll figure out how to sell your product and close deals even if you give them zero support, no collateral, and an undefined ICP. But you can't build a scalable revenue engine on top 10% talent alone. It's just math. Even with a rigorous interview process and strong recruiting brand, our 12-month retention rate at Levelset was around 55%. And that was GOOD. The key to scaling isn't finding more unicorns. It's raising the floor for everyone else. That means writing down exactly what success looks like. Not just hoping good people will "figure it out." I learned this the hard way. For the first 4 years (or so), we closed deals almost in spite of ourselves. No real sales playbook. No defined process. Just talented people working hard. When we finally documented our exact process - from first touch to close - our ramp time plummeted and consistency shot up. The uncomfortable truth? Most founders spend way more time recruiting than preparing to train and support their hires. Your playbook doesn't need to be fancy. Start with one document: "How to Run a Demo." Make it painfully detailed. Your top reps will hate it. Your new reps will love you for it.

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How do you set Gen Z sellers up for succes? Calling all sales leaders! This is a must-listen to cap off your week: https://lnkd.in/gj9izm8M In case you missed it, we've just launched a new season of the Redefining Sales podcast. Listen to our first episode with our fantastic guests Lucy Lee and Danielle Dacunha-Howarth from PurplePatch, and stay tuned for new episodes dropping soon. #Sales #Podcast #AIinSales #Prospecting #SalesEnablement #SalesStrategy #SalesTraining

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Most followed this model to Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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I did an informal poll on CSM vs Sales commission splits. I was pleasantly shocked to see that over 95% of companies do not have Sales take a commission on renewals unless it’s a particularly challenging one; the AE is there to help with it as a “bounty renewal”. in this case, the AE gets a % but is not taken from the CSM. Other interesting data points: "Commission on upsells and renewal made up 30% of the total compensation package. However, the exact commission % was determined by dividing the 30% by $$$ into the total ARR managed by the CSM." What metrics should this be based on? Most followed this model to Typically, companies that are earlier in their CS maturity will base this off a few leading indicators (adoption milestones, EBRs, etc.), and then move to comping on lagging indicators (retention, expansion, NRR, etc.) once their leading indicator activities have been proven. The following are examples of metrics you can use, not an exhaustive list: Leading: QBRs and/or EBRs (attained vs scheduled) Product adoption milestones (product dependent) Lagging: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - this is likely the most common Retention Expansion Advocacy (hard to make this scale across large teams and mixed portfolios - this is better as a SPIFF or annual metric to Bonus on) From there, you can determine the weight of each metric on the bonus. I'll give an example using a bonus that is achieved by a renewal retention goal and an NRR goal. Criteria for 100% Bonus Attainment: 90% Renewal Retention (50% weight) 125% Net Revenue Retention (50% weight) "This keeps it pretty simple with two priorities. Retain and Expand Revenue. The Retention goal being assessed separately ensures CSMs don't have significant churn masked by massive upsells. In this example, if a CSM had 85% Retention and 115% NRR, they'd end up at 93.22% to goal for their overall commission/variable comp."

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What do SDRs and AEs need to have as skills in 2024? Here we go... Data-Driven Decision Making: With 75% of sales teams leveraging data analytics, it's clear—numbers don't lie. But how good are we at it? It's not just about gut feeling anymore; it's about making informed decisions that drive results. 📊 Storytelling: In a world dying with information, your story is your secret weapon. Make your narrative compelling, and your meetings and sales process unforgettable. But how? Let's chat in the DMs my friend. Tech-Savvy: From AI-driven insights to CRM mastery, staying tech-savvy isn't optional—it's essential. So how long can sales stay away from tech? Not very long at all.. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): In sales, people buy from people they trust. Building genuine connections and understanding client needs will set you apart. Remember, 58% of successful salespeople have high EQ. Also, how this is not trained in school is INSANE to me. Are you ready to embrace these skills? Let's discuss in the comments! What strategies are you using to prepare for the future of sales? #SalesLeadership #SalesTech #StorytellingInSales Ps. Yeah, I know, I didn't mention one single tech solution.. why do you think that is?

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Here is the real impact that value selling is having for revenue teams: Tom Pisello David Yockelson 🔑48% improvement in winrate 🔑35% increase in deal size 🔑25% reduction in sales cycle time BUT...... ⛔️ only 19% of reps and 19% of pipeline is using value selling today. BIGGGG opportunity here...!

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Half the outbound prospecting tips I see on LI are RevOps tips in disguise. Things salespeople had to do to hit quota that RevOps should have, but didn't, do for them. Here are just two examples. 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 There's no bigger waste of time than calling suboptimal prospects outside of your ICP and Personas. The first step here is a data science exercise. You take your ICP and Personas definition and run it against all available internal and external data. Then you map out the capacity of each rep to determine how many accounts they can handle. How long does it take to complete each step in the sales process? How many accounts can they do that with before they run out of time and skip steps? Then you take that number of accounts and use your data to identify the absolute best accounts for each rep. Does any of this sound like a "sales activity?" Is this really what you hired expensive salespeople to do? To fumble through something RevOps could do 10X better and 10X faster? 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 What salespeople should be doing is research on that carefully curated list of accounts and contacts. RevOps can give them a BIG headstart by aggregating data into a single place so that they can quickly see things like: - Contact Info - Website URL - LinkedIn URL - Firmographic Metrics - Technographic Metrics - Marketing Engagement - External Intent Signals As an AE, I spent 30% - 70% of my time on all this stuff. As AE #1 in a small startup this took up most of my time, as I had to start from zero. But even at Salesforce, working inside their well-oiled machine, I still had to do a lot of this on my own. Most companies will give reps thousands of accounts when they can only handle a couple hundred or so and expect them to do the data science instead of spending their time actually selling. Don't waste money on AEs. Set them up to use their time more effectively. If you want to read more, we wrote up an article on this a while back in 📰 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙫𝙊𝙥𝙨 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙡𝙮 📰 https://bit.ly/43lFOxQ ✌️

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When RevOps is really just SalesOps (And the CRO is really just the VP of Sales) 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗘𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗘 - Closing deals should work - Clear pipeline management process - Forecasting is as accurate as possible - But everything before & after is an issue 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Has different goals - Maybe the target is MQLs - Has their definition of MQLs - And their definition of SALs, SQOs - Has systems with different metrics - Their reports don't match sales' reports - Leads routed from one system to the next - With lots of things falling through the cracks - Classic case of marketing/sales misalignment 𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 - Do SDRs report to marketing? - If so, we're misaligned there too - The goal may be meetings booked - So AEs have lots of leads and meetings - But maybe not the ones they really need - The ones that convert to pipeline/revenue - We have more misalignment & finger pointing - Do SDRs report to sales? - What content do they have? - What events and assets do they share? - What visibility do they have into engagement? - How does marketing align with their outreach? 𝗢𝗡𝗕𝗢𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚 - Sales is paid to close deals - How do they hand off customers? - What is the onboarding process? - Who builds/maintains that process? - What is done if sales drops the ball? - What is done if sales overpromises? - How are incentives and comp aligned? 𝗥𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 & 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 - Which customers are easiest to retain? - Which customers are most likely to churn? - Which customers are the easiest to expand? - How is this data used to improve sales targeting? - How do we maximize NRR if sales is in their own silo? For me RevOps drives value by getting into the weeds and finding ways to generate more revenue with the resources available. That includes SalesOps and optimizing the sales process to close more deals. However, if we stop there we end up with an expensive and inefficient revenue engine with high CAC, high Churn and low LTV. We end up with different departments chasing different goals in different systems with different reports and different definitions of success. What would you add to this? Anything I missed? ✌️

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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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Some predictable pipeline reflections from GTM audits this week: 1️⃣ Many companies are selling too fast, and it's ironically slowing down closed deals. Talking about product and price too early, pushing buyers faster than they're ready to go, dragging buying committee members along that have no idea what you're talking about. Sometimes three steps is faster than one. Be methodical to accelerate pipeline velocity. 2️⃣ Inbound is often fool's gold. The numbers make you feel good but the quality is fleeting and inconsistent. The healthiest companies combine inbound and outbound into an "allbound" strategy that drives more predictable performance and results. 3️⃣ Marketing programs and budgets in complex sales cycle situations need to be managed from the bottom up, not the top down. Cost per lead isn't nearly as important as customer acquisition cost (CAC) and managing a body of work that's at and below that number on a consistent, repeatable and scalable basis. 4️⃣ Smaller numbers are most often your most important numbers. Stop celebrating webinar registrations, booth drop-bys and social followers. Even engagement doesn't matter unless it's paired with an accurate, comprehensive ideal customer profile (ICP) definition. 5️⃣ Politics is killing internal progress and innovation. The most successful leaders create a culture of collaboration and transparency, maintain a "team sport" mentality to go-to-market, and encourage if not require ongoing professional development and learning.

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Sales360's automated custom pricing changes the game and shortens turnaround times. Simply... 1) Enter details and get a quote 2) Send to the customer for DocuSign 3) Instant automated enrollments + confirmations Book a free demo. ➡️ https://hubs.ly/Q02D_M0l0 #energysales '#fastercontracting

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What are your thoughts on seeing their deals mapped out in a deal velocity scorecard? This is part of the performance dashboard we're building for MidFunnel. The idea is that sellers can see how their deals are faring. Managers can quickly get a pulse on deal progress. The velocity is calculated based on the responsiveness of communication. Next we're considering adding qualitative insights on prospect eagerness as well. #sales #sales-tech

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How did ZoomInfo Copilot help Account Manager Dave Howell close a $195,000 deal? 🤔 From surfacing insights about customer sentiment and product interest to identifying a C-level decision-maker who helped seal the deal, Copilot empowered Dave with everything he needed to win his client's business. Watch the full story below. ⬇️ #ZoomInfoCopilot

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Should CRO’s even exist? Not if they’re going to be: - Super expensive glorified head of sales - With no marketing or CS experience - Compensated like an account executive  - No focus on ICP or aligning the entire GTM motion - No coordination with peers in cross-functions - No P&L fluency or ability to read a P&L  - Only focused on new business with no understanding of recurring impact - No knowledge of the bowtie or systems designed to deliver ongoing customer value - Have a short term view and only care about the quarter CROs should absolutely exist if they: - Can come from Marketing, CS, or RevOps not just Sales - Have foundational understanding and respect for other functions - Are compensated like all other executives - Are focused on driving tight alignment across the GTM motion - Are focused on collaborating across Sales, Marketing, CS leveraging data generated from RevOps - Are focused on a customer journey that begins when the prospect lands on the website and continues through at least 3 annual renewals - Have a deep knowledge of the bowtie  - Have built expertise as revenue architects - Have a long term view that balances short term urgency with long term enterprise value Revenue generation is a team sport. Recurring revenue is driven by recurring impact. If you’re leading the revenue function, you have to understand that and you have to be an expert at driving tight alignment across the customer journey to deliver that impact. This is the way.

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